Page 107 of The Suit

“Sunday,” Murray replied.

“No, then,” he groaned. “This happened two days ago.”

“And what isthisexactly?” I waved my hand around.

His face took on a pained expression, and I wasn’t sure if it was from whatever he was about to say or if he was in actual pain. Probably the latter seeing as I was in pain just looking at him.

“I went to see Grandpa, after he summoned me…”

“Wait,” Murray interrupted. “He summoned you Wednesday. You took two days?”

Penn nodded.

Mine and Murray’s eyes both opened wide and in sync, neither of us imagining there had ever, in the history of time, been an occasion when Lucian Shepherd was kept waiting.

“Nancy the snake was in his office too,” he snarled.

It seemed Nancy wasn’t getting off Penn’s shit list any time soon, and usually once you were a member, it required an act of God to remove you.

“The pair of them dared to ask me to sit down and explain that they’d made the decision I wouldn’t be taking over the company and that the role was going to Nancy, like I hadn’t just fucking called them out on it in the first fucking place. And then…” He squeezed his eyes tight shut, his fingers pressing so hard into the sockets a small tear leaked out and ran down the side of each cheek, “then, FUCKING THEN, Gramps apologized and announced that instead of wanting me to run the company like I’d been raised to do since I was a kid, he had bought me a present. Something for me to really test my business acumen on, he said.”

I frowned. The lack of oxygen from holing myself up in the office for the last five days had clearly caused me to lose some braincells because I was not following this story at all, or what it had to do with Penn’s current state.

“You know what my present was? My FUCKING PRESENT?”

I tried to guess but I couldn’t figure out where to start and it seemed like more of a rhetorical question anyway.

“The New York Fucking Lions.”

Murray spluttered a cough next to me, while I was still trying to understand what he was saying. Penn merely took our stunned silence as a license to continue.

“Yep. That’s right, folks. You are looking at the new owner of the New York Lions. The worst team in baseball. The youngest club owner in MLB history.”

Murray and I stood there, neither of us yet capable of computing what he was telling us.

The New York Lions was widely regarded as the worst team in baseball, except in 2012 when they were second worst. The only thing the New York Lions managed to keep with any consistency was its position at the bottom of the league tables. As such, it was a team mostly seen as the one aging baseball players finished at before they retired. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was one of the New York teams, and the rivalry between the Yankees, the Mets and the Lions had been chiseled in granite over the decades, to the point where Penn considered any form of positive referencing to either the Mets or the Lions as blasphemy. It may as well have been written into Lady Liberty’s tablet for how seriously New Yorkers took it.

Penn’s shoulders sagged. “How can I own a club I hate? Not to mention a rival to the Yankees. How am I supposed to support a different team? Turn my back on the team I’ve loved since I was a kid? My team.”

He could have been having a conversation with himself for all the use Murray and I were right now.

“So like I said, my life is over.” He fell back on the pillow with a groan.

I snapped out of it first. “Holy shit.”

“I know. This is my fucking punishment.”

“Punishment?” asked Murray.

“Yes. Gramps is teaching me a lesson, one I haven’t figured out yet, but more than likely to do with the fact I haven’t been the kiss ass Nancy is, and I haven’t been enthusiastic enough about taking over the company.”

Murray disappeared into the Penn’s bathroom, returning with a towel, which he placed on Penn’s lap. “You need to get in the shower so we can go downstairs and figure this out. Lucien Shepherd isn’t going to buy anything that he doesn’t believe in. He’s not going to waste a couple of bil just to teach you a lesson. It doesn’t make financial sense.”

Penn huffed but was too busy griding his jaw to reply.

“Pennington, get in the shower and let’s talk this all through downstairs. You need to eat.”

Penn didn’t argue, just got up silently and headed into the bathroom dragging the towel along the floor, his ass on full display.

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