I just stared blankly at the white wall before me. It seemed too good to be true.
“Now, the Giants have made one request, and that is that we save the announcement for the day before opening day, so that means we wouldn’t officially sign this until a little over week from now. Obviously, we can push back and just say do it now, but I think it’ll be an attention-grabbing—”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” I said. “I know they’re good for it. It won’t make any difference when the contract kicks in, does it?”
“Nope. You’ll play this year out on your current deal, and then starting next year, a cool thirty million before taxes every single year.”
I didn’t even want to compute how much more money than the Ferrari Wines business that brought in. I didn’t actually know the amount, but I knew it was a fuckton more. And, more importantly, I knew it meant everyone around me would be secure for generations to come.
“Then let’s wait,” I said. “Thanks, Scott, thanks for planning this out.”
“No problem, sorry it took us a few days to get the news to you.”
Yeah, something tells me that’s not a big deal.
I hung up with Scott, went into the kitchen where Izzy was, and wrapped my arms around her. When she winced in pain, I pulled back, apologizing profusely, my excitement and eagerness to share the news having made me forget about the condition she was in.
“You’re fine, no worries,” she said when she saw the sorrowful look on my face. “I heard some big numbers in there. Is that—”
“An extension to set me up for life.”
Izzy beamed wide, dropped the dishes into the sink she was working on, and threw her arms around me for a big kiss. I was very careful to put my hands on her gingerly, but my kiss came at full force—it was a kiss to celebrate what this meant for…
Yes.
For us. Not just me.
Crazy? Probably. But well worth the euphoria. I could always change my mind later, but something told me that I wouldn’t.
“Congratulations!” she said as she kissed me again. “We’re going to have to celebrate.”
“Voltaire’s, perhaps?” I said. “But only on one condition. You ride with me this time. I don’t want you to have to walk back to your car and make me give you an awkward kiss on the cheek like before.”
“Oh, stop, you know I wouldn’t do that,” she said. “I’d just get valet and make you walk.”
Oh, this woman was something else.
I looked into her eyes for a long, long time, feeling an incredible urge to say what I had almost thought earlier. The rational part of me was telling me I was insane for thinking this way about a woman I had slept with once and only gone on a couple of dates with, but the emotional side of me…
“You know, Izzy…”
I gulped.
“I—”
And then my fucking phone buzzed!
“You sure you want to allow me to answer this damn thing?” I said. “I’m more than happy to chuck this piece of shit out so we can…well, um, kiss?”
“You’re ridiculous. Go answer the phone. If it’s a telemarketer, say something before you hang up so I can laugh.”
“OK, OK, you win,” I said, stepping back to pull my phone out.
It was Uncle Nick.
That…
Was good news actually good news in this spot? Did I want to know what the call was about?
“One second,” I said, stepping back into an empty room. “Hello?”
“Nick?” my uncle said.
“Yeah?”
“I got your order on Amazon. It’s all taken care of.”
I didn’t even need a second to know he was speaking in code. And I knew…
Well, actually, I didn’t know. I didn’t know exactly what the details were. And that was what made it so fucking scary. I had an idea of what was going to happen to Izzy’s ex, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know more details.
“OK, thanks, Uncle Nick.”
“No problem.”
With that, he hung up a few seconds later. I dropped my phone and stared at it. It was too late to turn the clock back now, too late to change anything.
I still felt I had made the right choice, but the fact my fucking uncle was speaking in fucking code told me I might not have understood the full weight of what I had done. If this somehow resulted in catastrophe…if this somehow tied back to the Ferrari name, to me…even if I was exonerated in court, even if my uncle didn’t say anything about me, the media would have a field day about how Izzy’s ex had gotten hurt on the orders of the Ferrari family. It was a conspiracy that would actually be fucking true.
I suddenly felt very sick, like I’d opened the Pandora’s Box of Pandora’s Boxes. I’d thought I was righting a wrong, but I had a sick feeling I’d only produced a thousand more wrongs to cover up that one in particular. Maybe it was justified, maybe it wasn’t, but I had probably vastly underestimated the extent to which things were about to be fucked up.
Or, maybe, I was just a completely paranoid idiot and this kind of shit would either never catch up to me or it would be so far out into the future that it wouldn’t matter.
I walked back out to Izzy, who had resumed washing dishes.
“Everything OK?” she said.
I smiled politely, but I couldn’t muster a sincere response.
“It will be,” I said. “I’ll stay here for a bit and make sure it will be.”
“But your games, your practice—”
“I won’t skip it. But for tonight and for the next few days…you wouldn’t mind having me around, would you?”
The grin on
