by Sybil Bartel
“You sleep.” He said it so succinctly, like it was the answer to everything.
“That isn’t going to fix anything.” I wanted the comfort of my own bed, but I also didn’t want to deal with the media.
“I’m not sure what there is to fix, ma’am. The media will find another scandal to stalk in a day or two.”
Now I was a scandal. “And until then?”
He smiled, wide and charismatic and all white teeth. “Until then, you’re the woman who scorned Miami’s favorite quarterback.”
My head fucking pounding, I stared at my phone. Regret ate at me like a festering wound.
“Mr. Brandt, did you at any time engage with Mr. Ahlstrom when he showed up here last night?”
The lawyer, Mathew Barrett, looked young as shit, and he was a dead ringer for fucking Clark Kent. “How old are you?”
“What I lack in age, I make up for in experience. Please answer the question.”
She hadn’t called. Not that I expected her to. “I didn’t fucking touch him.” The quarterback was lucky he was still alive.
“Mr. Luna said you grabbed his wrist in self-defense?”
“Watch the tapes.” I was sure Con had them. “The doorman downstairs can get you a copy.” Why the fuck did I send her away? I should’ve fucking talked to her. I should’ve done a lot of shit I didn’t.
“Yes, he’s working on it as we speak.”
Fucking great. “Anything else?” I stood up. I couldn’t fucking sit still anymore. I needed to know where she was. I needed to touch her. One night without her and I didn’t give a fuck who took her virginity.
“In light of last night’s events, I think we have a solid argument in getting the lawsuit dropped. If not, I’m going to recommend a countersuit. In the meantime, I’m advising you to file a temporary restraining order.”
“No.” I needed to go to her.
“Mr. Brandt—”
“I’m not filing shit.” What a joke. I could take care of myself.
“It’s a simple process that will ensure—”
“I said no.” Was he fucking deaf?
He put his pen and his damn yellow pad of paper down and looked at me like he was about to tell me someone was dead. “One last question.”
I knew what was fucking coming. I tipped my chin.
“What is your occupation?”
I didn’t even blink. “I’m medically retired from the Marines.”
His elbows on his knees, his hands clasped, he nodded. “I understand that. What else do you do for income? And may I remind you that you have attorney-client privilege. Anything you say is in confidence.”
Confidence my ass. “Who told you?”
“It’s my job to defend you, but I cannot be effective if I am not armed with the truth.”
“Fucking Luna.” I didn’t have to guess.
Clark Kent sighed. “He suggested you may be at risk.”
Jesus Christ, what a prick. “What kind of risk?”
“He didn’t elaborate, but I assumed he meant the kind that could land you in jail. I’m not sure what you do, and that’s why I’m asking. I need to know if this will impact—”
“Escorting isn’t illegal.” But my past was a big part of why I sent her away last night. Shit would escalate for her in a fucking heartbeat if it came out who she was dating.
He frowned. “Is that what you were doing with Miss Montclair?”
“No.” I jumped down his throat. “She has nothing to with this.”
“With all due respect, she has everything to do with this.”
“She’s not a client,” I ground out.
The placating fuck nodded. “Understood.” He held up a finger then paused for a second. “But I do have concerns that your… occupation will become an issue with regards to this suit.”
“How the fuck does what I do in my spare time affect any of this?”
“Mr. Brandt, a ten-minute search last night netted me evidence of your biannual trips to the Cayman Islands, and in light of your recent admission, it’s not a far leap to assume you’re putting money in an offshore account. I’m sure Mr. Ahlstrom’s legal counsel could find the same information.”
What the fuck? He’d looked into me? “So I like to go on vacation.” With six months’ worth of cash that I deposited into an offshore account that was the only fucking numerical sequence I’d forced myself to memorize.
“For twenty-four hours every January and June?”
Goddamn it. “I don’t have twenty-five million, and if I did, that pussy quarterback would be the last person I’d give even a single cent to.”
Clark fucking Kent held up a hand. “Understood.” He tossed his pen and paper in a messenger bag and stood.
What kind of lawyer had a damn messenger bag? “Just do your job.”
“I will.” He eyed me. “Refrain from any sexual interactions in exchange for money until this is over.”
“I’m not a fucking prostitute.” Not anymore. My dick hadn’t even been hard since she’d called me a coward and walked out.
With his piss-ass grave expression, he nodded. “Next time something arises like Mr. Ahlstrom breaking into your building, or any other football player for that matter, call me.” He walked to the door. “I’ll be in touch.”
“You do that.” I knew I was being a fucking asshole. Problem was, I just didn’t care.
The second I shut the door behind him, I was reaching for my work phone. Turning it on, I ignored all the texts that started popping up and glanced at the forty-seven numbers I’d painfully entered over three years. I’d spent two grand on a fake identity to get this fucking phone. A phone you couldn’t trace to my real name. A phone that’d been my life for three years.
I pulled the SIM card out and crushed it. Then I walked out on the balcony, broke the phone into pieces and hurled them over the fucking railing. The past three years of my life fell seventeen stories and mixed with the debris littering the beach from the hurricane.
André turned into my neighborhood. “For the record, chica, I think this is a bad idea.”
“You already said that.” He’d told me a dozen times that going home was a bad idea. I’d wandered into his offices early this morning looking for him because I hadn’t slept a wink. “I appreciate your hospitality, but I need to get home.” I didn’t want to be around twenty men all dressed like André who acted like the former marines that they were. All they did was remind me of Jared.
“You could’ve stayed at the apartment until this died down.”
“Thank you, but I’ve already put you out enough.” A news van gunned their engine and passed us.
André slowed down. “Something you’re not telling me?”
Another news van pulled up behind us and honked. “No.” I looked out the back window as dread started to creep in. “What’s going on?” The second van raced past us and turned onto my street.
“Hold on.” André picked up his phone and dialed. “What’s your location? I need assistance. Recon.” He told the person on the line my address. “Copy. Holding back.” He hung up and made a U-turn.
“Where are you going? My house is the other way.”
“I’m circling until I find out who those news crews are chasing.”
My stomach twisted. “You gave someone my address.”
“Just doing my job, chica.”
He’d stopped calling me ma’am last night after he’d dropped me off in a fully furnished apartment. I’d asked him what Dan had said to Jared but he wouldn’t tell me. He’d just squeezed my shoulder and said, “Get some rest, chica.”
“I didn’t hire you,” I reminded him. I didn’t even know if I could afford him. With his fleet of SUVs in the garage of his building, and all the men wearing Luna and Associates polos, I was sure if you had to ask how much André charged, you couldn’t afford to hire him.
“I’m still gonna protect you as if you had.” His phone buzzed and he answered with a command, “Report.” He
listened for a moment. “Copy. One support, one backup, separate vehicles. One shadow on perimeter. Five minutes. Switch to coms.” He hung up. “You have company at your house.”
My stomach dropped. “Who?” I asked, but I could guess.
He took an earpiece from the center console and put it in his ear. “Plates are registered to Kenneth DeMarco.”
Surprised, I frowned. “It’s not Dan?” What was Coach doing at my house?
“I don’t have confirmation. The vehicle is idling in your driveway, but the windows are tinted out.” He glanced at me. “And the team’s general manager has called a press conference.”
Oh God. “For what?”
“We’re about to find out.” He circled the block and two black SUVs identical to the one we were in turned onto my street. Like a well-coordinated marching band routine, one pulled in front of us, the other behind, and with bumpers practically touching, we all pulled up to my house.
A dozen news crews, with their vans and equipment and reporters, blanketed my street. “Oh my God,” I whispered, staring at them all.
“Listen to me, chica.”
I started to panic, like seriously panic. My heart racing, my breath short, a dozen scenarios started running through my head, not the least of which was that I was being fired for hiring a male prostitute.
André touched his earpiece. “Twenty seconds.” He grasped my shoulder. “Chica.”
I dragged my eyes away from the circus that’d become my life. “I’m in trouble.” My voice shook.
“You don’t know that. I’m going to get you out of the vehicle then I’m going to take you inside. Do not look up, do not answer any questions, do not pause. Walk quickly but normally. Do you want DeMarco to have access into your residence?”
Did I? Coach had never been to my house. I’d never even seen him outside the complex. “I guess.”
“I need an answer.”
“Okay.”
“Keys.” He held his hand out.
My hands shaking, I fished them out of my purse.
He took the keys and gave me a warning look. “I don’t know who else is in the vehicle.”
I understood what he was saying and I wasn’t going to let Dan into my house. “Just Coach can come in.”
“Copy that. Wait for me to open your door.” André pressed his earpiece as he quickly scanned the street and Coach’s SUV in my driveway. “Advance. DeMarco is allowed access.” He got out of the vehicle, and at exactly the same time, the drivers in the other two black SUVs got out. Both in the same outfit as André, they flanked him as he opened my door.
Lights flashing, my name being yelled, the reporters rushed us.
“André.” I panicked.
“Perimeter,” André barked over his shoulder.
The two men turned toward the reporters. One said “Private property” as the other said “Back up.” They both held their arms out like I was a government official.
André took my hand and helped me out of the vehicle. Without letting go of me, he put his arm around my shoulders and led me toward my front door. The reporters barked questions at me about Dan, about Jared, about the team, about the owner.
We passed Coach’s old Ford Expedition and all four doors opened at once.
The reporters flew into a frenzy as Coach, Dan, TJ and Sunshine all got out.
“Dios mios,” André muttered, then he barked out for one of his men. “Tyler.”
“On it.” Tyler veered off.
Coach and his players walked toward my house. Their strides were all relaxed but purposeful, as if they dealt with this type of media frenzy all the time, but I could see the tense set to Dan’s shoulders as he shoved his hands in his pockets.
Tyler cut him off. “DeMarco only.”
Dan halted, but he looked at me, and for a moment, it was the man I’d lain in bed with late at night and talked to about his upbringing in Oklahoma. “Sienna,” he said, quiet enough for just us to hear. “This is important. Please let me and Coach in. I’m not here to cause trouble.” His eyes blackened, his nose still swollen, he wasn’t desperately pleading like he was last night at Jared’s.
I glanced at André as he unlocked my door.
“Your call, ma’am.” He ushered me to just inside the front door and punched in the alarm code that I’d given him.
I made a rash decision. “Dan can come in only if you stay.”
“Understood.” André nodded at Tyler. “DeMarco and Ahlstrom only.” He gently pushed me against the wall. “Stay here while I do a sweep.” He disappeared while Coach, Dan and Tyler stepped into my foyer.
Tyler shut the door and the shouting from the reporters muted to a dull murmur. Dan started to move toward the living room, but Tyler stopped him. “Until the house is secure, you need to wait here, sir.” He paused just enough before he said sir.
Dan didn’t notice Tyler’s tone of contempt and Coach stood with his back to the wall and his eyes on his feet. I didn’t know which upset me more.
André returned from the hallway that led to the bedrooms and started closing my plantation shutters. “All clear.”
Coach spoke for the first time. “I need to talk to Sienna alone.”
Dan took two strides and kissed my cheek. “I’m here.”
I didn’t have time to hate him for the way he thought he could kiss me after everything he’d done. Coach, with his shoulders dropped and his head bent, nodded at me to follow him as he walked into my kitchen.
He pulled out a chair at my small table. “Sit.”
I glanced back toward the foyer where Tyler stood in front of the door like a guard and André peered through the shutters of the front window as he spoke quietly on his phone. I looked back at Coach. “They can still hear us.” Desperately holding on to what little dignity I had left, I didn’t want to be fired in front of them all.
“It’s going to be all over the news in an hour anyway.” He looked at me without raising his head. “Please sit.”
I lowered to the edge of the seat.
He pulled the other chair out and set it in front of me. Sinking into the seat, he rested his elbows on his knees. Hazel eyes that were red rimmed and tired focused on me. “Jed Burrows died last night.”
Confusion clouded my mind. “The owner of the team?” Why was Coach coming here to tell me this? I was sorry Mr. Burrows had passed, but I didn’t understand what this had to do with me.
Coach took my hands and closed his eyes for a second. When he looked back at me, it was with the most emotion I’d ever seen him display. “Your father never told you.”
It wasn’t a question, it was resignation, but my heart beat too fast for me to breathe normal anyway. I fought not to jump out of my seat and yell at him to stop looking at me like that. “Told me what?”
He exhaled. “Jed was your grandfather.”
I blinked.
I blinked again.
Anger pulsed, my mind scrambled and tears of shock welled. “No,” I whispered. “I met my grandparents before they died.” They weren’t Jed Burrows. They were kind and smiled and my grandma had made me cookies.
“Jed was your mother’s father.”
I sucked in a shocked breath as the reality of it sunk in. “But… then that makes you….” Oh my God. “You’re the owner’s son?” How could this happen? How come he never told me? No one ever told me. My own father never told me.
“Stepson,” he explained.
“You have a different last name.” It came out like an accusation, and part of it was because I couldn’t believe what was going on.
“My mother was Jed’s second wife. I was fifteen when he married her.”
I knew Jed Burrows had survived two wives and a daughter, it was in his bio, but no names were ever given and I never made the connection. Why would I?
Confusion warred with anger. My father knew. He knew when he put me in touch with Coach who my grandfather was.
Coach squeezed my hands. “I know this is a lot to
take in. You’re going to have to reconcile it however you need to, but in the next few weeks, there’s going to be a lot of press.” He inhaled. “And they’re going to read Jed’s will, probably tomorrow.”
My back went ramrod straight. “What does that mean?”
“You’re his only living heir, Sienna.”
Denial burned in my throat, and more anger than I knew what to do with threatened to boil over. I pulled my hands away from his fake comfort and lying secrets. “You’re his son,” I bit out.
“Like I said, I was his stepson. I wasn’t his blood relative. That meant something to him.”
Means something? I didn’t mean anything to Jed Burrows. I was nothing to him. He’d never so much as looked at me. Five years working for his team and countless events and all his monthly walk-throughs to make sure everyone was “doing their job.” He’d seen me. I’d been introduced to him. He hadn’t even shaken my hand or so much as acknowledged my presence.
Coach looked at me with pity and maybe something else that said he knew what I was going through, but I didn’t care. I hated him. I hated him right then more than I’d ever hated anyone in my whole life.
I pushed my chair back and stood. “Get out.”
André glanced up from his phone call. One look at my face and he was behind Coach, his hand on his weapon. “Time for you to leave, DeMarco.”
Sad, like a middle-aged man who’d been defeated by life, not like a coach who yelled at three-hundred-pound men to sack harder, he stood and nodded. “Call me when you calm down, Montclair.”
“Get out of my house.” I was sick. Not even my house was sacred anymore. I’d bought it with money I’d made working for a liar. Money that’d come from my grandfather’s beloved football team. A team that meant more to him than family.
André ushered Coach to the door as Dan stood and watched me.
“Did you know?” I demanded.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“Did you know?” I yelled.
His hands still in his pockets, he glanced down at his feet. “Jed told me to keep an eye on you.” He looked up at me with guilt all over his bruised face. “I didn’t figure it out at first, but, Sie, come on, you have his eyes.”