Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“I’ll clean this up and get ready.” He was all business again, but then he looked at me and winked. “Unless you have another lesson to teach me?”
“Mind your own damn business.” I grunted and stalked off.
If I didn’t, I knew I’d be teaching him a lot more lessons all over the rest of the gym.
Fucker.
Chapter
Thirteen
LOTTO
Good thing I had already taken a swig of my beer, or I would have spat it all over the screen.
The newscaster droned on and on, even as I choked from breath.
“Point Seasons, the parent company of Bay Area giants Seasons’ Seasonings and Point Jay Holdings, is under suspicions of embezzlement and money laundering after it was found that—”
I stared at the chunky man in the photo on the TV.
Nathaniel Fritz
CEO and Founder of Point Seasons Inc.
Lucien Fritz’s goddamn father.
Our fucking sponsor.
The same Lucien Fritz who was on our ass for “being the worst in the Circuit,” even with our winning record. Third place out of 24 was nothing to laugh at. Keeping up with that would send us straight to Vegas. But that wasn’t good enough for Lucien. No, we needed to be number one. The best. He rode our asses after every single match to do better.
Now it all made sense.
He needed us to be the greatest so he could embezzle some more money for dear ol’ dad and One, Two, Hook’s parent company.
Troy’s bitter laugh rang in my ears, drowning out the rest of the news story. The inside of my chest felt hollow. I wasn’t going to sit here and pretend I trusted Lucien. He was up to something, even if my contacts didn’t have more than a few rumors here and there. But none of those rumors pointed to anything close to taking dirty money. If Lucien paid us with laundered money, we’d have next to nothing when the feds came knocking.
And I was sure they wouldn’t stop sniffing around until they figured out where the rest of our funds came from.
“Damnit, damnit, damnit,” I muttered as I pulled up Lucien’s name in my contacts.
He answered on the third ring. “So you saw the news.”
“Hard to miss when your dad’s face is front and center, Lucien.”
He huffed. “Because my father’s name gets views and clicks. That’s it. It’s absolutely nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
That meant I needed to be really fucking concerned.
“Is this going to affect our upcoming matches?”
“No, and I don’t see why it would. One, Two, Hook is under my name and has nothing to do with my father.” There was a pause on his end before he grunted. “I’m getting another call. Win the next match and get the media talking about something else.”
His unspoken “or else” hung in the air long after he ended the call.
I tapped my phone against my temple, keeping my eye on the news. But there was nothing more about the Fritz misfortune. Only a little segment on a puppy parade that was much cuter than any of the Fritz family, and probably more well-behaved, too.
Shit. I needed to tell the others, but we were already wound up as it was. Bones had told the others about his hand, and Ari had forced him to see a doctor. “Resting the injury” was kind of impossible when we made a living with boxing. And it wasn’t like he could take some big, long break. Now we were tied for third with St. Luka’s Underground and tomorrow’s match was against the bastards. Well, I probably shouldn’t call them bastards. The good nuns who acted as their trainers would probably knock my ass out then call on God himself to pray over my body.
I spent the rest of the night nursing a flat beer and a host of messages from others in both the Circuit and my circle. But no one, even the clickbait hacks who called themselves internet “sleuths,” had any more information. If info was that wrapped up tight, the Fritz family was in some hot shit.
Taking the last swig of my lukewarm beer, I shot the Smiley’s group chat an SOS.
Family meeting, bright and early. Get some beauty sleep because we have a lot to talk about.
Bring extra coffee or face my wrath, Ari wrote back not even a minute later.
I snorted.
If we got out of this meeting without some kind of explosion, I’d personally pay for some coffee beans from elephant shit, roast it, and pour it for her myself.
“I told you we shouldn’t have trusted that dickbag.” River lifted a shoulder and settled back in his metal chair.
It hadn’t even been ten minutes, and the elephant poop coffee was out of the picture. At least I’d save some money, but I definitely wasn’t saving any sanity. Frankie was on his feet, his chair kicked over to the side. Ari dug her nails into her elbows so hard she had crescent-shaped divots in her skin. Bones had put his head in his hands and not looked up since I pulled up the news report and read it out loud. The only ones who didn’t look fazed were Teo and River—Teo because he still looked half-asleep and River because he was right. Again.