Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (19 page)

“I could picture you in one of those short, sexy tennis skirts,” I said, smirking. She smiled at me and was about to say something when she suddenly paused. Her eyes were trained above my head, and her smile dropped. She had seen something. Had someone managed to follow us here? A photographer? I whipped my head around and saw four men walking towards us. They were all big dudes,
bully
-looking motherfuckers, but none of them were familiar. One had a bandana on his head. Another was wearing a leather jacket and his head was shaved. The third one had long hair that was black and looked greasy. The last was sort of leading the pack, and he was in a vest with both his arms exposed. He was covered in tattoos, even on his face.

They look like
goons
. The kind you would hire for security because they could scare people. I looked back at Quinn. She looked nervous. They were scaring her. I thought that maybe there was a chance they weren’t actually walking towards us and were just there, like us to have a normal dinner, but no. They stopped right at our table.

I waited for them to talk first.

“Dante Rock,” the one with the tattoos said. He had
said
it, not asked it, so he knew exactly whom he was there to see and whom he was talking to.

“Can I help you, fine gentlemen?” I asked the guy.

“Get up,” the tattooed one said.

I took my glass of wine and drank some of it.

“Get
up
,” he repeated.

“Fuck you,” I said.

I felt the guy’s hand on my arm and him pulling me from the seat. One of the other guys helped him haul me up. None of them were as tall as I was, but they were thick and stocky, like pit bulls.

“You got something to say? Motherfucker?” I asked him.

“We know what you did to Grace,” he said.

Grace?

Grace.

That
Grace.

The woman I
didn't
fucking hit. How many times was I going to have to repeat it? How many different ways did people want to hear it?

“Who are you? Her goon squad?”

“We’re her brothers. You and that bitch had a lot of nerve lying on national television like that.”

I winced. The
bitch
he was referring to was Quinn. If he wanted to talk shit, he had to leave her out of it. She had nothing to do with any of it. She was just doing her job.

“Your
sister
is the liar. Not us.”

“You're the only Dante Rock
I
know,” the tattooed one said. He pushed me. Not very hard but that didn’t matter. He had touched me. He had made the first move, and whatever would come next, he had brought on himself.

“Lucky you,” I said. I felt another push, this time from the leather jacket wearing one. You push
me
,
you’re
asking for it. I pushed the guy back, making him stagger a little.

“Dante, don’t,” I heard Quinn say. She stood up. One of the goons, the one who had the bandana on, grabbed her arm and shoved her. He shoved her so hard she hit the ground. That was
it
. It was Dante Rock they had come for. Not her. They were mad at me because I had supposedly hit their sister and they were doing that? Oh no. Not on my watch.

It was four to one, and there really wasn’t any way that I was wining this one, but he had just done the thing I hated the most. He had raised his hand to a woman. My fists stopped being mine and took on a life of their own. It was the one who touched Quinn who I knocked first, one hit, right in the nose. The others tried to get on me, but I managed to take another one out before security started pulling us apart.

The second one was out cold by the time I heard the police cars pulling up.

Quinn

They had ended up just taking Dante and three of the guys who had come in and attacked him in.

All we had wanted was to have one lousy dinner. That was
it
. All this was not supposed to happen. They weren’t supposed to show up, and they weren’t supposed to taunt Dante so much that he got into a fight. The police weren’t meant to get involved either.

It was meant to be a quiet night—and now it was a mess.

I didn’t know what part made me the most upset, the part where our night was ruined, or the part where Dante was in an entire boatload of trouble.

Could this have happened at a worse time? Why were things for Dante just getting shittier and shittier?

I thought this chapter was
closed
. I thought we had ended this sad story already.

They were her
brothers
? Yeah right, and I was Hillary fucking Clinton. There wasn’t a chance in hell that they were legit. It didn’t matter now. The damage was already done. Dante was in a fucking holding cell at a police station in Houston. He was in there because he had gotten into a physical altercation with a random pack of goons who were looking for trouble.

In Dante’s defense, he had held his own pretty well against them. He was taller than all of them, but they were all pretty thick, heavyset guys. They didn’t look like a pack of brothers; they looked like hired thugs. If the fight had gone on, who knows what would have happened. Dante was strong, and he was angry. He knew how to fight, but he was outnumbered. Did it matter how good a swordfighter you were when your opponent had a gun?

This wasn’t as bad as being in a foreign country, but it was pretty bad. This kind of thing—physical altercations, or colloquially, fights—meant that you couldn’t control yourself in public and you were a menace. People and establishments became leary of you. Getting into fights was a great way to get yourself banned from places. It was bad enough that Dante raised hell in LA, where he was based, but he had to go fuck up everyone else’s quiet nights around the country.

I could see the stories now.

He was lucky that I was above outing him at a time like this. I knew a lot of people would not be so considerate. Daniel would probably
kiss
me if I gave him this scoop. He would probably be the only one with it. I wasn’t. Daniel would have to find out about this the same way that the rest of the country was going to.

Because there was going to be a police report filed, the disturbance was probably going to make the local news. It was probably going to make the
national
news because it was Dante Rock, and it was going to make the
sports
news for the same reason. The details of the case would come from the police report and whatever bum eyewitness reports people, who were there
thought
they were qualified to be giving, gave. If there were cameras in the restaurant, footage of the surveillance would make an appearance. People would start rumors and speculate until they finally forgot about it when Dante got into trouble for something else. Because that was just what Dante Rock did. That was what you could count on Dante Rock to do for you. He could give you good basketball, and he could give you good fights. That was it.

I wasn’t saying that because I wanted him to get in trouble. I was saying it because, after this, Dante’s goose was cooked. How long would it take before the league got wind of this? LA was just two hours behind and three and a half hours away by flight.

Who knew what they would do to him?

I didn’t want to think about it because looking at Dante behind bars was different than seeing him react to the other hits he had taken so far. This was legal trouble.
Real
legal trouble. He could potentially face time in jail for fighting, the restaurant might sue for damages, and the goons might sue just for the hell of it…for the sake of the payout.

Dante had asked me before he was taken away to call his lawyer back in LA. I had his phone because it would have been taken away from him anyway when he was put in holding. I had called his agent because that was the only name in his phone beside his mother and his sister that I knew. I didn’t want to call either of them because I didn’t want them to panic.

This was fine. Everything would be fine.

This was a
mess
—and things were likely going to go down the toilet, but that was no way to face a problem. I had to think positive because I was probably doing it for both Dante and myself. I had to keep calm because I was no use to him when I was panicking, or crying, or otherwise making myself useless as a partner.

I had made the calls, beginning with an introduction of who I was and the reason they were talking to me and not to Dante. I followed with profuse apologies at calling them this late in the night for this sort of reason. His agent had yelled in disbelief when I told him what was happening. He wasn’t surprised; he was just mad. He told me how to contact Dante’s lawyer, and when I asked whether he could keep the situation to himself, he said he couldn’t. He said that this didn’t just involve Dante, and it would take a
number
of people to get him out of this mess.

His lawyer, as we spoke, sounded incredibly bored. I didn’t know whether he dealt with this sort of thing often when it came to Dante, or if he just didn’t care what was going to happen, or if he had it all under control and I was the one who was frantic and overreacting.

Whatever the case was, there was still a long time to wait.

It was at least an hour after him being taken into custody before I was able to go and see him. There was black ink on his fingertips. They had booked him. He had a mugshot now.
Way to cement that bad boy image.

“Dante,” I said to him, walking over to the cell.

He stood and walked over to the bars when he saw me. This moment was literally like something out of a movie. Dante Rock in a holding cell. Where was my camera when I needed it?

If I wanted…
really
wanted I could have used my phone, but that was just shitty. That would just be using this situation for my own gain and I didn’t want to do that to Dante. He was in trouble and the buzz something like this could generate was huge, but I couldn’t do it to him. Not for a story, not for
anything
.

This was a mess.

The interview on
Inside the League
had been well received by most people, but I guess there were a lot of people who were
upset
about it, too. The story had died down a little since the team was on the road now, but there was no way we could have anticipated something like this happening.

The guys had said they were the girl's brothers and that… let's just say you get good at spotting lies when you hear them enough and
that
sounded like a lie. How did they know where to find Dante? It wasn’t a secret that he was in Houston, but since they found him, it had to mean that they were tracking him. We hadn’t been at the hotel where we were staying. That, at the very least, was public knowledge whenever teams came to visit. How was it that they knew that we were not there at the time, and more importantly, where it was that we would be? We had not left any information with guys back at the hotel or at the desk or anything. The whole thing just stank, and I couldn’t help feeling there was something else going on.

“Quinn, have you heard from anyone?” he asked.

“I made the calls, and all they told me was your lawyer would be coming.”

“How long will I have to wait?”

“They didn’t say, but if they are flying in from LA, it might take a while.”

He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated.

“What’s going to happen?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. I have no idea.”

“Do you think anyone from the restaurant was filming?” he asked.

“Almost certain. You know how people are when fights are about to start. They can’t wait to film it and put it on
World Star Hip Hop
.”

“How
bad
to you think this is for my career?” he asked.

“Honestly?”

He nodded.

“I think… I think if there are videos of the fight on the Internet, they will get plenty of traffic because of your name. I think that people who were at the restaurant, or even
not
at the restaurant will be fighting each other for a chance to give their eyewitness report to every blog out there. Those things, however, I think would be the least of your worries.”

“Tell it to me straight. If you were the manager, what would you do?”

I sighed. “If I was part of the Yellow Jackets’ management, I would be struggling to find a reason why I shouldn’t suspend you for the rest of the season or worse.”

“What is worse?” he asked.

“Kick you off the team.”

“You really think they would?”

“You wouldn’t understand if that was what they felt they had to do?”

Surely he had to. This was not an isolated incident. It had happened as a result of a scandal that we thought we had tackled. Even if it was not the result of a crazy woman, who was apparently so obsessed with Dante she was sending people to kill him, there was no way that the team’s managers could look at this as if it was its own incident. They had to consider the brawls during games, the attacks on fans, the salacious lifestyle, and the suspensions.

“I would get it, but that doesn’t mean I have to
like
it.”

“This is really bad, Dante. We both know that you already had strikes against you. If they did send you off the team, the trouble you are in would just follow you, and who knows what team would take you knowing you were a controversial player.”

“What about the woman then, if the guys who came after me
were
her brothers?”

“I haven’t heard a thing from her since she blew the Internet up with her false accusations,” I said.

“What are you thinking? We need damage control.”

“No… no, I don’t think this is what it seems like. I
don’t
believe those guys.”

“Why not?”

“The woman was lying. Why would this be true? She's already shown that she has no shame. She doesn’t care what she says about you, true or false. In fact, she probably
wants
there to be speculation about your character. It would just make the case for her stronger.”

“You think this is all a con?”

“I don’t have any proof, but yeah,” I said, trying to put the pieces together in my head and make sense of them. “I think someone is trying really hard to pull one over on you Dante.”

“So what now?”

I shrugged.

“We have to wait.”

It felt like ages before Dante’s lawyer showed up. There was not just one man, the one I had talked to on the phone, but four. Four times the people we were expecting was a bad and a good thing. On one hand, that was a
lot
of legal power, on the other, the number of lawyers seemed to be directly proportionate to the amount of trouble Dante was in.

I couldn’t be there while they were talking to him. I could only imagine how much trouble he was in. I felt so sorry for him. He didn’t deserve all this. He had been partly defending me. I shouldn’t have stood up and said anything. I didn’t think the guy would actually put a hand on me, but I had been on the ground before I even knew what the hell had happened.