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Warrick’s sigh was impatient. “Jamal, Serge, Anthony, Vincent, and me.”
“Barron went clubbing the night before a game? Why didn’t anyone call me?”
Warrick’s voice tightened. “This isn’t about Barron now. It’s about Mary.”
Troy hit the space bar to wake his computer. “Sorry.”
“That blogger must have been there. He wrote a column about us going to the club where we found Bling. He made it seem as though we were there to get laid.”
Troy felt a surge of anger. He stared at his monitor. “Did anyone approach you?”
“Of course people approached us.” The shooting guard was rapidly losing his patience. “Men and women. Some wanted autographs or pictures. Others wanted to talk about the game. But no one who seemed as though they were going to do a piss piece about us.”
Troy kept his tone balanced. “Give me a second to call up the website.”
“Why?” There was a snap in Warrick’s tone.
“I want to read what the blogger wrote.”
“You can do that later. What are you going to do to make this right?”
The website loaded on Troy’s computer screen. He scanned the copy. The post made it seem as though the Monarchs were sex-starved adolescents gone wild at
a legal brothel. The blogger went on to make the shooting guard’s wife the target of his latest electronic assault. The post was an affront to fairness and propriety.
Doctor Marilyn Devry-Evans wasn’t resting on her husband’s NBA laurels. She had an established career as an obstetrician/gynecologist. She also happened to be a beautiful woman, although the blogger disagreed. According to him, Marilyn wasn’t worthy to be seen on the arm of a professional athlete. What made it even worse was that, at a glance, there were hundreds of comments to the site and most agreed with the blogger.
Later today, the Monarchs would face the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Quicken Loans Arena in their first game of the best-of-seven-games series. This column couldn’t have come at a worse time. But then, that was probably Gerald’s intent. The team—Warrick—didn’t need this distraction, especially not now.
Troy wanted to punch the gossip. He could only imagine how Warrick felt. “How did you find this post?”
“One of Mary’s friend’s sent her the link this morning.” Warrick sounded tense and tired. “Mary sent it to me.”
Troy clenched his teeth. Marilyn had read the column before he’d even seen it. The situation was going from bad to worse to horrific. “I’m sorry. I should have stayed on top of this.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Warrick asked the question with controlled fury.
Facing a furious husband was harder than trying to diffuse his boss’s anger. “I’ll threaten the paper with a lawsuit if they don’t stop libeling our players and our staff. I’ll also demand they take the post down.”
“That’s it?” Warrick’s tone was incredulous.
Troy frowned. What did Warrick mean? “I’ll force them to take the post off the Internet.”
“This is bullshit. What good is getting rid of the post now? Mary’s gone. I want her back. What are you going to do about that?”
What could he do? “Rick, right now Mary’s angry and embarrassed. Once this blows over, she’ll come back.” In the silence, Troy felt the waves of Warrick’s tension crashing down the phone line.
“When will this ‘blow over’?”
Troy kneaded the back of his neck where the tension tightened his muscles. “I don’t know.” Everyone was losing patience with the blog—Jaclyn, Warrick, most of all him. He had to end it.
“I want that blogger fired.” Warrick bit the words. “Then I want the publisher to apologize to my wife. Publicly.”
“Rick, I’ll do—”
“She cried.” Those two small words revealed the athlete’s torment.
Troy couldn’t feel any worse. “I’m sorry.”
