Page 21 of Recruited By the Billionaire

“No,” said Robert.

“One of the coaches then?”

“No, sir, I’m the owner.”

The grandfather stared at Robert as if he could not have heard him right. “The owner of what?” he asked him.

“I own the Pensacola Admirals.”

“What you say!” said the grandfather. “Now this ain’t making no sense at all. I’m like my wife now. Why you here?”

“I understand you and your wife raised Bevis.”

The grandmother nodded her head and answered before the grandfather could. “He was our daughter’s oldest child. Same as them two right over there.” She was motioning toward the two young boys at the table. “Our daughter, she was a good person. Took good care of her kids too. And she was married to their daddy. But he got shot in some drive-by over in Portland. And then she met this man who got her hooked on them drugs, and just when she was ready to get clean and get her kids back, she overdosed.”

“Oh no,” Frankie found herself saying when she heard that news. But she said it so loud that everybody heard her. Robert glanced over at her. So did his assistants, who looked at her with contempt on their faces. And she knew it wasn’t just a race thing. The so-calledsisterin the group looked just as contemptuous of her as they did. But Robert’s look was more affirming than displeasing.

He looked back at Grandma Dent. “What kind of man was Bevis?” he asked her.

She smiled. “Oh he was a little prankster,” she said and his brothers nodded their heads. “Always trying to play a joke on somebody. I thought he was playing a joke when they told me the news.”

The room went somber again.

She shook her head. “He had such faith, Mister, that you wouldn’t believe. Everybody at that college was telling him not to get his hopes up, that the chances of him getting picked was real slim. But our Bevis didn’t care what they said. He said no matter what they saying, God’s got it all in control. He said he was gonna take care of us and buy us a beautiful house like them houses in Portland. I said boy hush with them crazy dreams. But he believed what he was saying. He said every paycheck he got in the NLF.”

“NFL, baby,” Grandpa Dent corrected her.

“He said all the money he made in the NFL was coming straight to us. He was just getting enough to get by on because he was gonna retire right back here in Grapeville in our beautiful big house.” She smiled and shook her head again. “He was a good man. That’s what kind of man he was. He was so faithful.”

“Had I drafted him,” Robert said, “he would have made very good money.”

“More money that I could ever make,” said the grandfather, “with the little work we can get around here.”

“Did you know Aaron Thomas?” Robert asked them.

Grandpa Dent shook his head. “Nothing but what I heard on the TV. I know they were both at that Combine together in Cleveland, where they were trying to impress the recruiters, when they got in that accident. But we don’t know nothing personal about Aaron Thomas.”

“I visited his family last night and did the same thing for them.”

“Did what for them?” asked the grandfather.

“I created a trust fund for them so that they would get Aaron’s paycheck every time he would have gotten paid. So that I could fulfill his contract.”

Frankie glanced at Jerry. Was Mr. Marris serious? But Jerry and the assistants looked as if they already knew what Robert had done.

“But Draft day not even here yet,” said Grandpa Dent. “How you giving them a contract that boy hadn’t even signed yet?”

“I’m giving you and your wife the same thing,” Robert said.

That news shocked everybody, including Jerry.

“What do you mean?” asked the grandfather.

“What you saying?” asked the grandmother.

“I’m saying I have set up a trust fund for you and for Bevis’s siblings. It will first purchase you and your family the house of your dreams, and then it will pay out an allowance to each of you two grandparents five thousand dollars per month for the remainder of your lives.”

The grandfather and grandmother looked as if they were going to stroke out. “What you say!” said the grandfather. Frankie, so shocked, she grabbed hold of Jerry’s arm.

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