“See, everybody wins, Brody. More money for you, more money for me, and Lily gets her dog shelter.” Shifting in his chair, Dick clasped his hands behind his head. “Besides. You might not want to ask for that release. Take this trade for the blessing it is.” Glancing at the photos, he tipped his chin. “How do you think I came by those, anyhow?”
Was he implying that... Oh, no. No, Lily wouldn’t. “She wouldn’t do that, you sadistic fuck!” I jumped from the chair needing to move only to find my legs shaky as I paced. “Lily wouldn’t sell me out.”
“She wouldn’t, would she?” He kept a hand poised under the edge of the desk, I’m sure with a finger on his panic button. “Not even for the dogs she loves so much?”
Shaking my head, I clasped the back of my neck as my stomach bottomed out and I fought back the bile.
Lily used me. She set me up.
“Now, she can finally get back to planning the wedding.”
She lied?
She’d fucking told me she loved me, and she was planning on marrying some other guy? One she said had cheated on her, but fuck, was that even real or did she lie about it, too? Was any of it real with her?
No, you couldn’t fake the kind of chemistry we had.
Maybe she has it with him, too.
Dick’s smarmy grin was salt in an open wound. Rage flooded me. Gut-searing, all-consuming, blackout hate for the bastard. I’d never wanted to crush another man’s windpipe so much in my life. To feel it give underneath my palms until his eyes bulged and he gasped for his last breath.
“You better hit that button now, Dick.” In something out of a movie, I turned, reached across the desk and lifted him out of his chair by his shirt front. His face blanched. He clawed at my hands, tried to reason with me, but I blocked it all out. “You arrogant, narcissistic piece of shit. You whored out your stepdaughter for a game. You really do think everyone else is shit on your gaudy-ass Lucchese alligator boots, don’t you?” I felt people pulling at my arms, I was fairly sure I smelled urine, but it was all the buzzing of flies.
I knew I couldn’t kill him.
But I would get one hell of a punch in on this diseased microdick who was a scourge on the game I loved. The woman I loved. “Well guess what, you sack of donkey shit. You bleed. Just like the rest of us.”
I loaded up and punched.
But I didn’t hit Dick.
Hayes stepped into it and I nailed him in a pectoral muscle.
That’s when I realized I’d had a security guard on one arm, Hayes had been on the other, and a second teammate around the side of my desk was trying to pry my hand off Dick’s shirt. I could hear his assistant screaming into a phone and the last guy had me around the waist with his feet braced against the desk. I put both my hands down.
Dick tried to straighten his shirt. “Get this asshole out of my sight. Your new team will hear about this, Shaw. So will the commissioner.” Everyone turned to me like they weren’t sure they should move. “Now!” Dick yelled like a recalcitrant toddler.
Leaning down, I picked up the folder that had fallen to the floor, and I walked out of his office like my life hadn’t gone up in flames and the ashes weren’t floating all around me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Wear your brown pants, Dick Head.
I’m coming for you.
Lily
Brody wasn’t answering his phone.
I left him voicemail after voicemail, texted him, tried calling again. Nothing.
I spent a solid hour in the shower crying. Thank God for tankless hot water heaters. My classes—all those dogs and people. I wouldn’t get to see them two or three times a week, watch my puppy class grow up, and my agility students at their first trial.
I wasn’t sure I’d even have time to trial anymore. There was no national team in Jet’s future if I didn’t have a career that allowed me to run my own dogs between classes. Now, they’d have to stay home.
After drying my hair, I put on clean clothes and got in my car to head over to Brody’s place. If he wasn’t there, then I’d wait until he got home.
I’d have to tell Brody about Trey, too. I’d been trying to avoid that. I knew Brody had regular appointments with him and I didn’t want to taint things if I could help it. But part of me was embarrassed, too. He’d cheated on me before he worked for the team, and my stepfather hired him after the fact. Dick chose my cheating ex-fiancé over me because Trey’s father was a senator. I guessed politician trumps stepdaughter.
I rolled down the window and cranked up Post Malone, letting my hand dance through the wind.
The dude wasn’t right. At first, it had been pleas to come back and pledges of undying love, but it had eventually progressed to repetitive phone calls and texts where he was verbally abusive. He even tried threatening my livelihood with false accusations. Trey threatened to tell my clients that I abused my own dogs unless I came back to him. When I refused, he went as far as to report me to animal control who showed up at my home to search for signs of abuse. It came to a head when he confronted me while I was on a date. He screamed in the middle of a crowded restaurant that I was a cheating whore, then punched my date. Trey’s daddy covered the arrest up for him, but not before I managed to file an order of protection. Dick had asked me not to, spouting some bullshit about uniting two great families in a bid for world domination or whatever.
I had zero doubts this job with Dick would reescalate things.
My one bright spot in all of this was being able to tell Brody I’d leveraged the Bulldogs into funding the rescue and helping us locate the mill. I’d tried him back several times, but the calls were going to voicemail.
Pulling in the garage, I noticed Brody’s truck was in his spot. I checked my eyes in the mirror. The change of attitude and fresh air had taken out most of the redness. When I knocked on the door, Staci answered.
“Hey, hi. Is he here?” I put on a smile.
She didn’t return it. Instead she called over her shoulder, “Babe, I think we should give them some space.” Stepping back from the door, she motioned me in, and Erica sent me a sad smile on the way out. Brody was in his bedroom packing a bag.
He didn’t acknowledge me when his eyes darted up. Something was very wrong, here.
“Shaw, what’s going on? I tried to call you back about a million times.”
He didn’t look up.
I walked his direction and he didn’t answer. Instead he slipped past me, going out to the living room. Following him, I stood behind the couch as he tucked several suits into a garment bag. “Brody?”
His head came up slow. “Just don’t.”