Game (Gentry Boys, #3)(22)

“Don’t do it,” I told him flatly. “You want any spread plus juice on anything in the NFL and I’ll take it. But I’m not going action reverse, buddy. It’ll f*cking bury you.”

Jose sighed. “You refusing to take my money?”

“In this case, absolutely.”

Jose didn’t listen. Someone put him in contact with Dustin O’Shea, a shady guy who also worked for Xavier and who would happily bury his own mother.

I didn’t find out about it until Jose called me.

“You were right,” he said and I could hear it in his voice, the weary defeat.

“How bad?” I asked and let out a hiss when he told me the terms. Poor bastard, already full of despair and heartbreak, was on the hook for ten grand. That wasn’t something Xavier would allow to slide.

“All right,” I said, rubbing my eyes and trying to form a plan. “You just stay low. Be with your kid at the hospital and I’ll see what I can do about getting you out from under this.”

Jose coughed. “You don’t owe me nothin’, Stephanie.”

“Maybe I don’t. Or maybe I owe a lot of people a lot of things.”

After I hung up with Jose I called Dustin and began bawling him out for poaching my client list, arguing that Xavier wouldn’t be pleased.

“You’re right,” he answered and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Xavier isn’t pleased, bitch. You’re turning down big money bets because you’ve let your f*cking * get between your ears.”

My stomach dropped. I threw the phone across the room and cursed a blue streak. I must have been making quite a racket because Truly shouted from the other side of the door with alarm, asking if I was okay. At that point I hadn’t even told her about all the gambling bullshit. I just shouted back that I was fine.

Alonzo was the one who came for me. It was him and a pair of other guys I vaguely recognized as some of Xavier’s henchmen. Luckily Truly had already gone to work. I didn’t want her getting mixed up in my crap and those two animals standing next to Alonzo might have tried to grab her.

As for my brother’s friend, he looked rather grieved and haggard. “Come on, Steph,” he said sadly. “Xavier wants to see you.”

Xavier ran his business from an old, shuttered bar he’d rented in a dilapidated downtown Phoenix neighborhood. I sat in the backseat next to Alonzo while Xavier’s goons silently occupied the front. A few times I glanced questioningly at Alonzo but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. I took that as a bad sign.

One of the guys pulled me out of the car and started dragging me to the door. I yanked my arm away and shoved him.

Alonzo was instantly at my side. “Take it easy,” he whispered. “Don’t make it worse.”

Xavier was waiting behind a table in the rear of the dimly lit bar. He suffered from some kind of medical condition and he couldn’t stay in the sun very long. He kept his pasty skin covered from head to toe, probably an inconvenience in one of the hottest climates on earth.

As my eyes adjusted to the interior I realized there were other men there too. Some of them I recognized. Some of them I had never seen before.

I stood before Xavier with my chin held high. How bad could it possibly be? It wasn’t the biggest offense in the world to turn down a bet if the bet was crappy. The only problem was I knew it wasn’t crappy from the bookie side. It was a sure f*cking thing. And I wasn’t working for myself. I was working for Xavier. I wasn’t allowed the luxury of a conscience.

There was a second problem. When I met Xavier I’d figured him out as the kind of man who held women in limited esteem unless they were lying on their backs. As I stood there in that bar surrounded by hostility I realized I’d been wrong. Xavier wasn’t just dismissive of women; he hated them. He hated me.

“I knew he wouldn’t be able to cover it,” I said by way of explanation, trying and failing to keep the panicked waver out of my voice.

Xavier nodded. “Well someone will be covering it.”

I crossed my arms. “Take it out of my cut. Hell, I’ll collect enough in preseason NFL play to satisfy this shit.”

Xavier laughed. The other men in the room laughed with him. “Not good enough,” he said coldly.

“Well what the f*ck do you want?” I gestured around the room. “An after dinner gang bang?” Even as I said the words I was terrified he would say yes. I wouldn’t go quietly. They would have to kill me.

“Noooo,” he drawled, evidently enjoying my fear. He coolly looked me up and down and pointed to the dark area behind him, which was suddenly illuminated with a glaring spotlight.

“Take the stage, Stephanie Bransky. You’re gonna be a star.”

And then he told me what I needed to do.

I’d only cried about it once, when it was still so raw and awful that I felt like I couldn’t stand to be in my own skin. That night, after Alonzo had dropped me off, I burst through the apartment door in a sobbing fit and scared the crap out of Truly. The tears stopped quickly but my paranoia grew. I was petrified that Xavier wasn’t done with me. I started sleeping with a baseball bat and nearly clubbed Truly with it when I mistook her for an intruder. That was when she sat me down and made me tell her a thing or two about myself.

As the sun began to lower itself on the horizon I dragged a kitchen chair out to the back patio and sat in the shadows. I remembered I had an upcoming exam but I felt too unfocused to tackle financial modeling at the moment.