Free The Protégé by Stephen Frey Page B

understand why she’d want the NFL opportunity for the fund she was investing in—there was so much upside—but he had to be fair to all his investors. The best way to do that was to invest sequentially—use all of Seven, then go to Eight. Of course, he didn’t know Allison well, and she might turn out to be emotional. She might pull the Wallace Family investment if she thought he was jerking her around so soon after committing five billion.
    He took a deep breath. Conflict, always conflict in this world.
    “I have a breakfast,” Allison answered. “How about dinner? I could stay another night.”
    Gillette couldn’t remember if he already had a dinner scheduled, but if he did and he couldn’t remember, then it couldn’t be important. “Okay.”
    “Great,” she said, her voice turning pleasant again. “Come get me around seven at the Parker.”
    As he slid the phone back in his pocket, there was a knock on the hallway door. “Yes?”
    “Open up!”
    Gillette’s gaze snapped toward the door. He knew that voice: Quentin Stiles. He hurried over and yanked on the knob. Suddenly, Stiles was standing before him.
    Quentin Stiles was African American: handsome, lighter skinned, six four, and normally a rock-hard 240 pounds. He was from Harlem, a self-made man who’d never been to college but now owned a fast-growing security firm with fifty agents.
    Gillette embraced him immediately, unable to remember the last time he’d been so glad to see someone.
    “Hey,” Stiles said, stepping back. “What are you doing?”
    “I’m . . . I’m welcoming you back.”
    “Don’t get so emotional.”
    “I just . . . well, I just—”
    Stiles broke into a loud, good-natured laugh and wrapped his arms around Gillette. “Hey, brother, I’m just playing. It’s good to be back.”
    “You look great,” Gillette said. “A lot better than you did in the hospital bed last time I visited.”
    “I don’t look great,” Stiles answered irritably, “I look terrible. I’m down thirty pounds from my normal weight. I probably can’t even bench-press three hundred at this point. Christ, none of my clothes fit. Look at me,” he said, holding out his arms. The black blazer hung loosely from his frame.
    “We’ll fatten you up fast.” Gillette moved toward two comfortable chairs in front of a plasma television screen hanging from the wall. “Sit down,” he said, pointing at one of the chairs as he sat in the other, “and tell me what the hell you’re doing out of the hospital. Saturday, the nurses told me it was going to be at least another two weeks before you’d be released.” He watched Stiles wince as he lowered himself slowly into the chair.
    “If I’d stayed in the hospital another two weeks, I’d have gone crazy,” he answered. “Hell, if I’d stayed there another
ten minutes,
I’d have gone crazy. The mattress was like cement, the nurses were even harder, I hate the way hospitals smell, and the food was awful. Let me tell you something, what I need is a big fat juicy steak. How about Monday lunch?”
    “I can’t, I—” Gillette interrupted himself. Lunch with the commissioner was at noon and would go no later than one-thirty. Landry’s executive assistant had told Debbie that he had to catch a four o’clock flight to the West Coast and couldn’t stay longer than that. “Can we do it later on? Say, one forty-five? Can you hold out till then?”
    “Sure.”
    “How’d you know I was here?” Gillette asked, relaxing.
    “I called the main number about an hour ago and Faraday picked up. He said you were going to be here for a while. He let me know where to find you,” Stiles explained, looking around. “Hey, this is quite a place.”
    Gillette had built the pool room last spring—it had originally been O’Brien’s office, but Gillette had kicked him out to get the space. Stiles had already been in the hospital several months at that point and hadn’t seen it. “Thanks.”
    “You lost a match