11DamonI only agreed to represent my brother as his agent when he got drafted into the NFL because I saw the vultures coming for him. All it took was a little research to see how common it was. A young athlete starts earning money, and everyone with even the most remote connection to them comes out of the woodwork to “help.” Uncles, aunts, mothers, and fathers. It was always the same story. Someone with the supposed best interest of the athlete would step in with the goal of extracting as much of their hard-earned money as possible.
Did I profit from my brother’s success? Yes. Greatly. But I made sure nothing I did ever jeopardized his future as an athlete. In fact, one of my biggest overriding goals for Chris was to create a brand for him that would continue to provide him with wealth long after he took his last snap in the NFL. It had been the drive behind my Olympic Games idea five years ago. That had fallen through, but I was still breaking boundaries with my representation of Chris.
When I branched out and started representing more athletes, I initially focused just on the ones I could tell were being preyed on by family members. Maybe you could call it a passion or a cause. Frankly, I didn’t give a shit what you’d call it because I never spoke about it to a living soul. As far as anyone else knew, my solitary motivation for what I did was money, and they were welcome to keep believing that.
Life was easier when people didn’t know the truth.
My company had grown, and I had to make decisions purely for profit more often than not. But I still picked up the occasional stray athlete that baffled my employees. They believed I was operating on some secret knowledge or potential. In reality, I wanted to save them. I saw little pieces of my brother in all of them, and I wanted to help protect them.
The more my business grew and the more financial resources we have, the better I could do that.
It was my secret because it had to be. If word got out that I took on charity cases, I’d never know who really needed help anymore. I’d be flooded by sob stories and pathetic young kids with tears in their eyes.
Even Chris didn’t really know what drove me, and that was the way I wanted it to stay.
Chris slung his phone down on the couch in my office, groaning. “Fuck. I lost myself the playoffs in fantasy. That fumble in the third quarter last night was the deciding factor.”
“You draft yourself on your own fantasy teams? Of course you do.” I set down the stack of papers I was reviewing. It was yet another late night in my office. I had fires to put out, like usual.
I’d grown faster than I could keep up with, which meant hiring employees after my early days with Chris and the first few clients. Then it meant a building. Then an office downtown. Somewhere along the line, it turned into this. I sat at the top of a high rise building fixing problems caused by people who worked for me that I barely knew.
“I ate at this sushi place last night. They served squid that moved around when they poured sauce on it. You ever heard of that? I could swear I felt it moving in my stomach all night.”
I grimaced. “Is there a reason you’re in my office? I have actual work to do.”
The door opened. It had to nearly be midnight, but Chelsea was still here, apparently. She stomped into my office with a stack of papers in her hand and flopped them down on my desk. “There. Everything you asked for.”
“It took you that long?”
She looked like she was barely containing the urge to reach across the desk and throttle me. Her normally messy hair was wild, even by her standards. She’d clearly reached the point of running her hands through her hair in frustration at some point today and never looked back. Her blouse was half untucked from her skirt, and I was immediately met with the memory of how I’d been the one to ruffle her up five years ago.
Not helpful. Definitely not helpful to think about how I like the way she looks when she’s messy. How it makes me think of sex, and how I can remember the way her skin smelled when I kissed her neck while I was buried in her pussy.
“I have never used excel,” Chelsea said, clearly annoyed. “I had to watch a bunch of tutorial videos. And the only printer I had access to was in the lobby. And it was out of ink, so I had to run across town to find the right kind, but apparently your printer in the lobby is ancient, so I had to go to a second-hand used tech shop. And then—”