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Rescued again. Antonio squelched the gratefulness flooding his chest, because how long could Caitlyn’s savior superpowers actually last? It was a fluke anyway. There was no way she’d picked up on his distress. They barely knew each other and besides, her ability to read his mind had to be flawed; he didn’t even know what was in his head most of the time.
“Of course.” The receptionist—Mandy—smiled at Caitlyn and picked up the phone on the desk to murmur into it, then glanced up again. “Thomas will be here momentarily to show you around. Glad you’re...um...here, Mr. Cavallari.”
Here, meaning not dead. That was definitely a plus and cheered him slightly. “Thanks, Mandy. I plan to be around for a long time.”
A man with a graying crew cut wearing an expensive, tailored suit bustled into the reception area. Thomas.
A memory of the two of them standing in nearly this same spot popped into Antonio’s head, from Thomas’s first day on the job. Relief stung the back of Antonio’s throat. His memories were in there somewhere. It just took the right combination of criteria for them to battle to the forefront.
Thomas Warren was flanked by a couple of younger men in sweatpants and hoodies. Fighters. They wore almost identical expressions with a slight menacing edge, and they both leaned into the room, fists lightly curled as if preparing to start swinging.
Antonio recognized the stance instantly—he’d entered thousands of rooms that way. Still did, even now. Or perhaps he’d only picked it up again recently. Had he lost that ready-to-fly edge in the past few years, only to regain it after awakening to a blank world where simply entering a room brought on a barrage of questions and few answers?
These were the pieces of Antonio Cavallari he hoped to recover inside this building.
“Thomas.” Antonio held out his hand to the older man, who shook Antonio’s hand with a critical once-over.
“It’s true.” The interim CEO of Falco Fight Club narrowed his gaze, mouth slightly open as he fixated on Antonio’s face. “I guess you can call me a doubting Thomas because I really didn’t believe it until I saw you for myself. Come, let me show you the improvements we’ve made in your...ah, absence.”
Seemed as if everyone was going to stumble over the proper verbiage to explain they’d assumed Antonio had died in the plane crash. He didn’t blame them; he didn’t have any clue what you were supposed to say, either.
“Let’s put pretense aside,” Antonio said before he’d fully determined what he planned to say. “You thought I was dead and spent the past year accordingly. I may disagree with some, or even all, of your decisions, but I fail to see how I could find fault with them. You did what you thought was right and I have no intention of walking in here to undo everything you’ve done.”
Thomas’s eyebrows rose. “Fair enough. It is an unprecedented situation and I appreciate that we might both need to maintain flexibility.”
Thomas inclined his head and indicated Antonio should follow him into the interior of the building.
The two fighters fell in behind as well, and Antonio had the distinct sense the men were either intended as intimidation or accessory. It didn’t matter which; either one was as laughable as it was baffling.
The short tour generated little in the way of jogging his memories, but the visit to Falco itself had already yielded a valuable harvest. Antonio had the unique opportunity to appreciate what he’d built using his own fortitude and business savvy as he surveyed it for what was, for all intents and purposes, the first time.
The vast influence of Falco unrolled before him as he learned of his vision for bringing glory back to the sport of mixed martial arts with a promotional powerhouse that had no ties to a media conglomerate. Untainted by corporate politics or the need for a healthy bottom line, Antonio had pushed boundaries, opening MMA to unconventional fighting disciplines, training some of the most elite fighters in the world and gaining entry to off-the-beaten-path venues. Most important, he’d insisted all his fighters be allowed to compete for titles based on their records, not handshake promotional deals.
And he’d been wildly successful, beyond anything he’d envisioned when Caitlyn mentioned Falco was where he’d made all his money. When he’d asked Thomas to show him the books, his eye had shot straight to the profit line, as if he’d last glanced at a balance sheet yesterday. The number of decimal places couldn’t be right, and Antonio had nearly chalked it up to a clerical error until he glanced at the rest of the line items.
