Page 41 of Playing for Keeps

“You wanted me for my skills,” I pointed out. “Beyond the fact that Frankie is my cousin and she trusts me implicitly, or the fact that I have unfettered access to her office computer anytime I want, I didn’t even have to step foot inside her building to find what I’m presenting to you today.”

I motioned to the computer. “But none of this should come as a surprise, Lee. In the past year, Daginger has demanded you provide new men at his will. He overworks them, forces them to do the job of many, then gets upset when they can’t. You’ve personally had to fly out no less than ten times on a moment’s notice to try to appease him, sometimes taking over for weeks when he deems your extremely capable men inept.”

Letting that sink in, I lifted my drink to my lips. “How do you expect to grow the company when you’re dedicating all of your resources to this one man?”

Lee sat back in his chair, a tinge of red tinting his face. Though he still held his back straight, sat up like the perfect little military man, the sag in his posture cried out his defeat. Still, he asked, “What am I supposed to do? Without Daginger, there’s not enough money coming in.”

“Without Daginger, you have the time and energy to do all the things you can’t right now. Instead of dealing with that,” I said, gesturing to his buzzing phone, then over his shoulder at the closed office door, “you’d be out there, wining and dining, getting in front of potential clients that would replace the income you’d be losing from Daginger.”

“That’s all well and good, but what do I do in the meantime? Ain’t easy to just let him go. My men, they have families to feed. They need the work.”

“Isn’t that why you have an investor?” I asked. “Don’t you think Frankie would be willing to invest a little more in the company if it had the ability to pay off big?”

“How big?” he asked, that slump working its way out of his shoulders.

With a calculated pause, I grabbed my laptop and shut the lid, sliding it into the backpack on the floor. “In just over an hour, there will be twenty men in a room upstairs, waiting to meet the owner of the new security company they’ve been told about the past month. In ten minutes, in a different room, there will be seven recruits waiting to meet their potential new boss.

“But these men,” I said, rapping my fist against the table between us, “they’re only there if you let Daginger go.”

That emerald gaze swept over me, swept over the stack of papers I’d brought out of my backpack and laid at my side. Lee’s jaw set, his lips pressed together. With his phone going off beside him, he leaned forward and asked, “Where do I sign?”

Pushing the stack of papers toward him, I handed him a pen.

“Fuckin’ NDA?” Lee muttered under his breath as he looked up at me with a furrowed brow.

“A requirement of my services, and something I should have made you sign months ago. Everything you see here tonight is confidential. From my team watching on the overhead cameras to the men in each of the rooms upstairs. Not a single word can be uttered about any of them, and I’ve already collected one of these from each one of them as well.”

“Fair enough,” Lee said before making his mark on the bottom of the page.

I walked him through the rest of the papers. The contracts, independent contractor agreements, and all the other legal documents I’d had my lawyers draw up. When we were done, the papers stashed away and a tight handshake executed between us, I led him upstairs to the legitimate side of my father’s company, to the room with Lee’s new recruits.

With light introductions, I stood back and watched the man take control. He grilled each one of them, questioning them and laughing with them, turning the mundane interviews into something akin to a team building exercise. After the hour was up and the men were ushered from the building by a woman who was, for all intents and purposes, Carina in a business suit, I escorted Lee into a large conference room and instructed him to introduce himself.

And he did what I knew he could, if given the chance. If the phone tucked in his pocket was quiet from the Dagingers of the world, but was instead ringing and buzzing with the sounds of new business. I’d seen the support Lee gave his men when he was saving my sister, and I knew they’d give him the same support in return.

More than one of the new potential clients I’d invited tonight came over to shake my hand and offer their words of hope of partnership and the need for exactly what Lee intended to offer.

The changes I wanted to implement were a marathon, not a sprint, and I made sure to explain it to them the way I had to Lee before we came up.

I’d make this company great.

I’d turn it into the good investment Frankie had hoped it would always be.

I’d make it happen, no matter what, because I’d had enough failure in my life, and I refused to let there be more.

10

Jen

A round of cheers erupted from our table at the club, the four of us chanting together, encouraging Melissa to drain her shot. She whipped her head back, shot glass held to her lips, and nearly sputtered the drink all over us as it hit her throat. We cheered again as her face turned red, her laughter prompting us on.

“Alright, your turn Jordan,” Melissa muttered through a raw throat, pushing a full shot glass toward the Little Red Riding Hood dressed as a vampire.

“Okay, get this.” Jordan greedily grabbed the shot with one hand as she slipped her fake fangs out of her mouth with the other. “I got one the other day. Not sure it’s quite as crazy as that one,” she said, waving her finger toward Melissa, “but it should do. This woman had just finalized her divorce. She’d been on a sales team for about three months, and her team leader decided he didn’t want her anymore. I send her the last commission check, and the woman calls me up, bawling, then tries to fight with me about commission splits like I can do anything about it. I start to feel bad for her, I do, but then she just jumps straight to the deep end.”

Jordan lifts the shot glass off the table as if giving a toast. “‘It’s the man!’” she said, her glass waving in the air. “‘Everyone’s just trying to keep me down. Damn the man!’”

“Damn the man!” Kelly yelled.