Grumbling, I lowered my hands from her body and took a step back.
“I need to pick up something from my main office and then we can leave.”
“Make it fast.”
Reluctantly, I watched as Syd exited the storage closet, leaving me to trail behind her. Again, watching that ass in the skirt that would be on my bedroom floor not soon enough.
Entering Syd’s office behind her, I watched as she turned on the light over her glass desk, moving behind it, looking through some files that were stacked on top. I entered further, giving the entire office a look around. It was a decent size.
Not too small, but not a corner office. There were a few photos that faced away from me. One by one, I picked them up. The first photo was of Syd at her college graduation with a woman who she resembled enough for me to discern it was her mother. The smiling man on the left, I assumed to be her stepfather.
The second photo was of her and another woman who I didn’t recognize, both wore graduation caps and gowns.
“This is Tanisha?” I angled the photo so she could see it.
She smiled. “That’s her. You’ll get to meet her at the Rodriguez fight. She bought a front row ticket. She’s not one for fighting but she said she needed to come out and support me training my first champion.”
“You? I’m the star of the show.”
Syd rolled her eyes as I sat the frame back down. But when I went to lift the next frame, Syd slapped her hand over mine, stopping me.
“You don’t need to see that one,” she said.
“If it doesn’t need to be seen, why’s it on your desk?”
I flipped the photo over and froze, staring at the image in front of me. The photo looked to be at least twenty years old, probably closer to twenty-five. There was a man in his late twenties or early thirties, smiling as he pushed a young girl on the swing. The girl had tawny brown skin, and huge curly pigtails laughed open-mouthed, baby teeth on display.
I wrinkled my forehead as I shifted my gaze back to the man in the photo.
“Banks?” It was him. The image was at least two decades old, but I’d recognize my mentor and the man who was more like a father to me than my own fucking father, anywhere.
“Why do you have a picture of my dead trainer on your desk?” I asked out loud but didn’t look up at Syd for the answer.
Instead, I shifted my gaze to the little girl in the picture. She had to be around three or four, fuck if I knew.
I shook my head in disbelief. Slowly, I trailed my eyes up and over to Syd, who stood silently, watching me. Those pupils that revealed a hundred different things at once spoke volumes.
“What the hell are you doing with a picture of you and Banks on your desk?” I asked again, staring her in the eyes this time.
A part of me hoped there was some sort of logical explanation. Maybe, her parents had taken her to a fight as a kid and they happened to capture this picture of Banks showing off. But as soon as the thought formed in my head, I knew it was bullshit. Banks didn’t even like kids. In the years we’d worked together, he never once took a photo or even smiled at a kid.
“It’s an old picture.” She attempted to reach for the picture, but I snatched my hand back causing her to catch air instead.
“Why are you in this picture with Banks?”
Yeah, the image was old, and the girl was young. But the eyes and the mole on the right side of her mouth. They were all the same. The same eyes that stared back at me from across Syd’s desk.
“He’s my father,” she finally admitted after a long stare off.
That admission took the breath from my lungs. I glared at the photo again, trying to put two and two together.
“Your father.”
Syd didn’t respond immediately. Not until I peered up from the photo, glaring at her, silently demanding an explanation.
“I told you, my mom left my real father when I was too young to even remember him. I never saw him after she left. She refused to tell me much about him and she’s always been sketchy on the details. Something about not wanting to live being the wife of a fighter or trainer.”
“Sketchy? As in lying to your face for months, sketchy?”
