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Ryan said, “He concluded by telling me that if he was willing to put his money where that particular body part was, then I should be, too.” Ryan grinned. “And damned if he wasn’t right.”

We all drank to that.

It was a good night to end a good football weekend. I felt as relaxed and happy as I’d been since the reading of the will. This was, I thought, the way I’d hoped things would be before my older brothers had started throwing bombs at me.

Nearly midnight by now.

Thomas’s phone was in front of him on the table and pinged with an incoming message. He picked it up and frowned as he stared at the screen, for much too long a time.

“Sonofabitch,” he said.

Still staring at the phone in his hand.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

There wasn’t anything about the look on his face, and his sudden lack of color, that I liked.

“Tell me you’re not looking at theTribunewebsite.”

“Worse than that,” he said.

“What can be worse than what they’ve been doing to us?”

“TMZ,”Thomas said.

Forty-Eight

TMZHAD TIME-STAMPEDvideo footage of Ryan Morrissey showing up at my house at 11:08 the night Danny had threatened him with those sworn statements.

And it had time-stamped video, every hour on the hour, of Ryan’s car staying right where it was until he walked out my front door the next morning while I waved to him from the front porch, as if I were sending a hubby off to work.

Or a boyfriend.

See you in the next news cycle,Danny had said.

Death by news cycle.

Of course I wasn’t spared by theSan Francisco Tribune’s front-page headline.

COACHES WITH BENEFITS

Underneath was the photograph, courtesy ofTMZ,of Ryan and me.

“I’m telling you—this isn’t that big a deal,” I said to Thomas in my office the next morning.

The satellite trucks had been back in front of my house. There was more media waiting for me when I got to Wolves Stadium. I’d shut off my phone by then, and when I got upstairs I told my assistant, Andy Chen, to hold my calls until the end of days.

I was at my desk. Thomas was behind me, staring down at the field.

“It’s a big deal,” Thomas said wearily.

“Wait a second,” I said. “Jeanie Buss was engaged to Phil Jackson when he was winning championships coaching the Lakers. Even I know that, and I don’t follow pro basketball all that closely.”

“She wasn’t running the team then,” Thomas said.

“What difference does that make? Her family stillownedthe damn team.”

“But she wasn’t the big boss lady,” Thomas said. “And she didn’t fire one coach so she could hire her boyfriend.”