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“But I’m already thinking, like, six moves ahead,” he said. “A book deal, definitely. Maybe a talk show. Maybe a reality series about you and the high school kids. Even if you lose, you win, because you’re going to be more famous than ever.”

“Just without my pro football team.”

“Who knows? Maybe you’ll be better off in the long run.”

I told him to take a long walk off the Santa Monica Pier and ended the call.

I walked up to Nate ’n Al’s, ordered a coffee to go, and sipped it as I started wandering aimlessly around Beverly Hills.

Maybe I never had a chance.

Maybe Bobby is right, and I will be better off.

But I knew that was a lie—a big fat lie—because I had found out something about myself by now: I was good at this. Damn good.I wanted this.

I didn’t know if there was anything I could have done differently with all the sharks circling me in the water—the water, I thought, where everything really started—but I couldn’t come up with a thing I could have done to change the outcome. Other than perhaps not punching my brother Jack’s lights out.

There was no appeals court for me after the decision I fully expected was coming. The vote would be final. Theverdictwould be final.

Money on the table.

I always thought Thomas was referring to a let-it-ride bid in poker. But today this felt more like throwing dice to me.

One roll for everything.

When I was back in my room, still an hour to go before the vote, the phone rang.

It was A. J. Frost, the Patriots owner.

“I’m in the penthouse suite,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d come up here as soon as you can.”

Seventy-Six

A FEW MINUTES LATERI was sitting in the penthouse suite of the Beverly Wilshire with a group of men I thought of by then as the Hard-liners, like they were a rock band—one even older than the Beach Boys.

A. J. Frost. Carl Paulson, the eighty-two-year-old owner of the Chicago Bears. Rex Cardwell of the Texans. Ed McGrath of the Tennessee Titans. Amos Lester of the Colts.

I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to beg them for their votes, especially since they’d all made it abundantly clear that they’d pretty much made up their minds about me before I’d even left San Francisco.

The living room of the suite made mine downstairs look like a closet in comparison. When I’d taken my seat in one of the antique chairs, A. J. Frost said, “Thank you for coming.”

They had placed my chair so I could face all of them.

I smiled now.

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

“You don’t take any shit, do you, young lady?” Rex Cardwell said in his booming cowboy voice.

“Not that you’d ever notice.”

“Neither did her father,” Amos Lester said.

“Before we head downstairs to vote,” Frost said, “we need to make clear to you where we’re all coming from, especially in light of all the history we had with your father. And, I might add, in light of where we’re going.”

I kept my smile fixed firmly in place. Not only wasn’t I going to beg to keep my team, I also wasn’t going to lose my temper.

“With all due respect, for all of you to be any more clear, you’d have had to hire a skywriter.”