The asshole had purposefully answered questions the interviewer brought up about Lena. He could’ve easily avoided them. Instead of doing that, he did the opposite. He’d leaned into his answers, often insinuating that Lena was mentally unstable and that he’d been dealing with it for years behind the scenes.
The douchebag had brought up everything he supposedly did for Lena and her career. Somehow, he’d conveniently left out the part where he made millions off of her while he worked her like a damn racehorse.
And on top of all of that, he lied, cheated, and manipulated her so she wouldn’t think she was good enough without him.
Thinking about it made me see red. The entire flight to Los Angeles, that interview played on a loop in my mind. Even when Preston and I went over our meetings for the day, I continued to replay that cocksucker’s voice in my mind.
“You look distracted,” Preston finally said about an hour before we landed.
I turned to look at him but didn’t say anything.
He leaned in. “Is this about business?”
With a shake of my head, I said, “Nah, this is personal.”
Preston eyed me, his face tightening.
I braced myself, ready to curse him out if he said any nonsense about Lena. He hadn’t said anything more about our relationship, but I believed he still had doubts about her.
“You know whatever it is, I’ve got your back.” He leveled a look at me. “You know you’ve got three brothers, right? Not just two.”
“It involves Lena,” I said.
He nodded. “I figured.” There was a slight cynicism in his voice, but he didn’t argue or try to talk me out of what I was thinking of doing.
“You’ve got one and a half. Just so you know.”
He pulled back, giving me a confused look.
I chuckled. “Brothers. You’ve got one and a half.”
He grunted, hating to be reminded of Leon. Their rift was years in the making, but for all intents and purposes, Preston was as much my brother as Micah and Ace were.
“We need to make a stop before our first meeting,” I told Preston as soon as the plane landed.
“What’s the location?”
I nodded, grateful that despite his misgivings on relationships and love and all of that shit in general, Preston didn’t hesitate to have my back. He might push back when doubts arose, but when it came down to it, I didn’t have to ask for him to have my back. It was a given.
* * *
By the timewe made it to our hotel to drop off our luggage, I had received a message telling me where I could find Nate. I’d put in a call to a former employee of Micah’s, who now worked in Los Angeles.
He was able to find out that on that particular afternoon, Nate was working in a music studio not too far from our hotel.
“You’re not going to kill him or anything, are you?” Preston asked as he followed me down the hall toward the lobby where our driver waited.
“Too many witnesses for anything like that,” I quipped over my shoulder. Though, truthfully, the thought had crossed my mind. Nate didn’t deserve anything less, but I wasn’t a killer unless I had to be. There were other ways to convey a message.
“Good, because I didn’t wear the right suit for all of that,” Preston said as we got in the car. “Oh, and we need to be back within the hour. We’ve got a meeting.”
I nodded. This meeting was with the management of another prominent fighter in the NFA. We’d already negotiated for Eli to have his first professional fight in the league. Now, we needed to work out the logistics of a fight for one of our other athletes.
The ride over to the studio should’ve been quick, but fucking LA and its traffic made it twice as long as it needed to be. By the time we arrived at the studio building, I was ready to come face-to-face with Lena’s ex.
“I know you’ve got shit to handle about your woman with this guy, but I don’t feel like going to jail either,” Preston said as the security guard waved us through the turnstile that separated the lobby from the elevator bank.
I pressed the button for the third floor before turning to Preston. “Then you better make sure no one gets on their phone to call the police.”
