The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(4)

Thomas was my favorite, the funniest of all of us and the one who did his best to hide how much he knew about football and cared about the Wolves. After spending too much of his adult life drugging and partying, he was six months out of rehab, even more fun clear-eyed and sober than he’d ever been under the influence.

The mayor was noticeably absent. But both of California’s US senators were in attendance. The owners of the Warriors and the Giants. Station managers and anchor monsters from their stations. Jim Nantz was here, and Tony Romo, and so was the owner of the Horseshoe Tavern, my father’s favorite bar. The archbishop had just arrived. So had my ex-husband, bless his heart. He waved when he saw me. I acted as if I hadn’t seen him.

“It’s like a scene out of Succession,” I heard from behind me. “Just without any good actors.”

I turned to see that the voice belonged to Seth Dowd, the one-man investigative unit in the Tribune’s sports department and someone I trusted about as far as I could throw the buffet table.

“I forgot how much I didn’t miss this,” I said. “It’s like the Tournament of Ass Kissers Parade, without floats.”

“May I quote you on that?”

“Hell, no.”

He smiled.

“Everybody always says you’re the one most like him.”

“You didn’t know him, and you don’t know me. But thanks for sharing.”

“Why are you here?” he said.

“I finally decided I’d make more trouble for myself with guys like you if I was marked absent.”

“I’m not guys like me.”

“Sure. Go with that.”

There was a reason why I’d stopped watching Wolves games up here long ago. Not hanging out with a lot of the people standing around this suite was worth not watching the games with my father anymore.

“I kept waiting to hear that the governor washed up, too,” Dowd said, “as a show of solidarity.”

Then Dowd said he was going off to work the room. I told him to knock himself out—I’d had about as much fun as I could handle for one day and needed a drink.

Just not here.

I was starting to ease my way toward the door when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder and turned around to see John Gallo.

He was tall and silver-haired and far more tanned than San Franciscans were supposed to be at this time of year. Or any time of year. He was also rich as shit—if not Silicon Valley rich, then close enough. Gallo had been the sworn enemy of Joe Wolf for as long as I had been alive, from the time my father—and not Gallo—had been awarded the right to put the NFL franchise that became the Wolves in downtown San Francisco.

My father had always told me that the biggest reason was the unproved rumor that John Gallo might have been more mobbed up when he was starting out building East Coast shopping malls than a boxed set of The Sopranos.

And probably still was.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Paying my respects, of course.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right,” he said, and smiled. “I’m not. But I’m too well-bred to have ignored Rachel’s invitation.”

“Bullshit.”

“She did invite me. You can ask her.”

“I was actually calling bullshit on the well-bred part, John.”

He let that go. Maybe he was worried about the two of us making a scene.

As bad as things had gotten between my father and me, blood was still blood. Sometimes I couldn’t keep myself from looking for a good fight, and I felt myself spoiling for one with this slick bastard who had never stopped trying to screw my father over every chance he got.

During the past two years he had been doing everything humanly possible with the politicians we knew he had in his pocket to prevent the Wolves from getting the new stadium the team badly needed. Gallo had even wildly overpaid for a local sports radio station, one built around Wolves programming, to keep Joe Wolf from getting it.

“Funny how things work out, if you really think about it,” Gallo said. “Your father once told me that the only way I’d ever end up with his team was over his dead body.”

“Now you’ll end up with it over my dead body.”

“What, the little high school teacher is now speaking for the whole family?”

We stood staring at each other, as if waiting to see which one of us would end up with the last word.

“Listen,” I said. “We really need to stop talking now.”

“And why is that, Ms. Wolf?”

“Because if I don’t walk away, people might start to think that I’m the asshole.”

He smiled.

“Ah, your father’s daughter.”

“You’re happy about this, aren’t you?”

“You want me to lie?”

I said, “My dad always told me that you lied to stay in practice.”

“Your dad always said the last goal he had was to outlive me. Catch me up: How did that work out for him?”

“You really do still think you’re going to end up with the Wolves, don’t you?”

“What makes you think I’m going to stop with the Wolves?” he said.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder, quickly leaned over, already whispering in my ear before I could back away from him.