Chapter Thirty-Nine
Brooklyn
“Two meetings in one day?” Liam asked, crossing his arms over his sweat-soaked T-shirt. He’d pushed Shane hard, which meant he’d pushed himself hard, and in an effort to show that I could be an asset, despite “distracting” one of the fighters, I’d worked right on through lunch.
My mind spun over what I’d found, and while I wanted Liam to tell me he knew exactly where to find the missing money and that there was a lot of it, he wouldn’t be so stressed if the outlook wasn’t dire.
He shook the hair out of his eyes. “I swear, if you complain that I pushed your boyfriend too hard, I’m going to—”
“We’re going bankrupt,” I said, and the unfinished threat died on his tongue. “I’m finally up to date with our finances, and it’s not pretty. We were already circling the drain, but from the looks of it, the last lady who worked for us embezzled money—at least twenty grand, if not thirty.” Her numbers didn’t add up, and since she’d covered her tracks fairly well until right up to the end, it took me a while to figure it out.
I wanted to ask how he and Dad could let it happen, and why they hadn’t been checking up on her closer, but it wouldn’t do any good. “We could try to press charges, but it’s been months and she’s seemed to drop off the planet. I’m not even sure if the proof I have is solid enough, and hiring a lawyer would be more expensive, and…”
“And we’re going bankrupt,” Liam finished, and I nodded. “The truth is, we’ve been behind on the gym’s mortgage for months, along with several of the other bills.”
“Yeah, I didn’t get to them until I reached bottom of the pile, but we’ve received a couple of those red letters that threaten to cut off electricity and water.”
“I’ve been making partial payments here and there, giving them just enough to keep the bill collectors at bay and the utilities on, hoping that the next month’s intake would allow us to catch up.” Liam lowered himself onto the sofa and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was afraid it was going to be bad.”
“It’s past bad. We might lose everything.”
He looked up at me, every raw emotion he’d tried to keep hidden fully visible on his features now.
“Does Dad know?” I asked. “Or has he been too focused on training and whatever he does here in the office?”
“He’s never been good at the business side. He thought the money would never run out. He knows it’s getting tight, and his plan is to make up everything he can with Knox’s fight. It’s supposed to get us over the rough patch.” Liam’s eyes met mine. “That’s why we need him to win so badly. We need the money and the publicity so that more fighters will sign up with us. We need every penny we can get.”
I sank onto the couch next to him. “Even then, it’s going to take us a while to climb out of the red.”
“I’ve thought about taking out loans. Dad’s mentioned taking out a second mortgage.”
My lungs tightened. “Those are all dangerous things to bet on.”
Liam shrugged. “What choice do we have? Sell the gym? File for Chapter Eleven Bankruptcy, which is expensive, time-consuming, and risky? That’s if we could even talk Dad and his pride into it, which is a big if. The other option is to cut our losses and give up everything, but that’s not really an option, either. I know you and Dad don’t get along very well, but this is his dream and he built it from the ground up.”
“I know.” Maybe it was a weird thought, but it’d be worse if he’d skipped out on so many important events in my life to keep the gym running, only to have nothing to show for it. “How come you didn’t tell me how bad it was?”
Liam sighed. “I hoped I was wrong. Of course I knew the bank accounts were too low and that we were behind on paying the bills, but I also knew there should be more money somewhere and I was hoping you’d find where it went, like maybe we’d overpaid someone or we were owed money from fights, or…something. I tried to convince myself I was worrying over nothing. How far in the hole are we?”
“About thirty grand. Dad runs this place on the edge of what he takes in, so we haven’t made much of a profit over the past four years.” Basically since I left. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my fault—that I had to go, and I couldn’t have stayed here without more resentment building or losing myself completely—but it felt like my fault. “If the stubborn ass would’ve listened to me about the classes. Hell, if he’d listen to me now. Is he really going to let his pride overrule making enough money to keep his gym? His legacy?”
Liam ran a hand over his jaw. “We just need to get through Knox’s fight. If it goes well, more people will sign up to train. And I’ll talk to him about the classes—at this point, I’ll tell him it’s not an option. Did you see anywhere we could cut corners?”
“Sure, but we’re talking a couple hundred here and there. Two to three thousand over a year, at most.”
“Better than nothing.”
Considering we were dealing in negative numbers, nothing was a good word for it, and I didn’t know if it was better.
I glanced out over the gym, the place I’d grown up in. My chest ached at the thought of it not being ours. What would Dad, Liam, and Finn do if we lost it? Sure, my brothers could train somewhere else, but that’d come with its own set of expenses, and they’d funneled most of their time, money, and effort into Team Domination.
“I can call around and see if we can pick up some extra sponsorships. For us and Shane.” The reality of our high stakes situation crashed into me, taking a big old bite out of hope.
Now, more than ever, we needed a win.
I told myself over and over again that I wouldn’t be a distraction to Shane. The question was, was I willing to put not only Shane’s career, but also my brothers’ and my dad’s on the line?