The Debt 12 (Club Alpha) Read Online Free PDF Page A

He walked away from the
door, looking bent over, as if he’d aged a decade in the last ten minutes.   He made his way to the couch and sat
down.
    Faith put her bag down and stood where
she was, her arms folded.   “I’m
listening.”
    He sighed deeply and ran a hand through
his hair, revealing the gash on his hairline once more.   It was swollen and some of the blood
crusted around it looked fresh.
    “I did go to Coach and tell him what
happened with Velcro and Monique,” Chase said.  
    “You did?”
    He nodded.   “You seem surprised.”
    “I’m not surprised.   I just didn’t know, because you never
told me.”   She met his gaze,
refusing to back down.
    He smiled ruefully and nodded his
head.   “Point taken.”   He sighed again.   “I met with Coach and then he made a
call to the head office and it must’ve made them nervous.   Because within minutes, Joe Stallsworth
himself showed up to meet with me.”
    Joe Stallsworth was the owner of the
entire team—notoriously hands off and reclusive.   He wasn’t well liked by fans, media, or
players.
    “That is serious,” Faith admitted.   “What
did they tell you?   Are they going
to do anything about Velcro?”
    “Well, that depends on your definition of
doing something.   If covering up the
problem and sweeping it under the rug is doing something, then yes—they
are.”
    “They’re covering it up?” she said, her
stomach twisting.   “They told you
that?”
    “Not in so many words,” Chase said,
smiling bitterly.   “But they brought
in some big-shot lawyer and the three of them basically made a case that people
in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.   And the team knows that I live in the biggest glass house in the entire
state.”
    “You didn’t beat a woman and knock her
unconscious,” Faith said, her blood boiling.
    “I’ve done plenty of bad things,
though.   Things that the public
doesn’t have a clue about.”  
    Faith walked a little closer to where he
was sitting.   “What’s so bad,
Chase?   Tell me.”
    “That’s not the point,” he muttered.   “Even if I tell you every
sin—every person I robbed, every guy I smacked around for a few bucks,
every time I helped Boogie move drugs—that’s not going to change anything.”
    “I never said it would,” she replied,
softly, realizing he had just told her…some of it, anyhow.
    “The owner of my team and Coach made it
clear to me that if I go tell anyone—the cops, media, even confess to my
priest—they’ll come after me.   They’ll let loose all the dirt they have on me, and I’ll be a bigger
story than Velcro by the time they finish with me.   So in the end, they’ve got me by the
balls and they know it.”
    “They’re just trying to intimidate you,”
she said, but in her heart—she knew that it was likely more than just
intimidation.   They wouldn’t let
Chase Winters get away with airing their dirty laundry in public.
    “They kept talking about how we don’t
want to give the league a black eye, that we need to keep it private, let the
team handle it internally.   Coach
kept telling me that they would get Velcro help, counseling—all
bullshit.”
    “Oh Chase,” she said, feeling sorry now,
despite herself.   He looked so
broken-down and fragile.   His large,
muscular body seemed to be not enough to protect him against the ravages of
this cold, hard world he lived in.
    “It’s finished,” he said.   “So I let it go.”
    “What about the video tape from the hotel
elevator and the hallway?   What
about hotel security and what they saw?” Faith asked, feeling like there must
be some way to make it better, to prove to Chase that he hadn’t lost the battle
so soon.
    But he just laughed hopelessly.   “I mentioned all of that, and Mr.
Stallsworth told me that they’d checked with the hotel and the cameras had
malfunctioned somehow during that timeframe.   He told me there’d been some glitch and
they hadn’t recorded