It had taken us doing everything short of begging to get Dante on Inside the League. It had taken straight begging to get the host to let me conduct the interview with Dante instead of him. The host, Joseph ‘Jock’ Winters was like, our Larry King. He was a total veteran and legendary in the business. He’d had his time as a professional player, and when he retired, he had been a pundit for a while then began his long-time reign as host of Inside the League. He didn’t have an investigative journalism background, but that was what the hired journalists were for. He had the charisma and presence to host a show like that and hold his own with the larger than life personalities a lot of the athletes he interviewed had.
He was not impressed when we came to him, basically groveling. He didn’t think that a young girl, he used the word ‘girl’ was the person America wanted to hear interviewing Dante Rock. What he meant was probably “Who is this bitch and why isn’t she getting me coffee?” Sports journalism and reporting, just like the sports that were being played, were very much a boys’ club.
I didn’t appreciate his baseless accusations, but it was the wrong time to let my pride get in the way of clearing Dante’s name. That was who this was about. Dante Rock and the future he either would or wouldn’t have based on what was said during that interview.
“Mr. Winters,” I had implored, “I’m doing a story series on Dante Rock. I was there when the woman showed up at the locker room and made her accusations. I have been having interviews with him regularly for the last month or so. I have been closer to Dante than any other reporter.”
“So,” he had said. “This is Inside the League. There’s a reason why I do the reporting. Just give me some of your stories, your reports, and I’ll handle it.”
“I think he’d be more pliant if he was talking to me. We have an understanding, and I could use this as part of my series. One of the many things that stand in the way of Dante finally getting his championship.”
“He’ll eat you alive, kid. This is Dante Rock we’re talking about. He doesn't respect anybody but the people who sign his paychecks.”
“Mr. Winters, think about it. I’m a woman. Don’t you think that talking to a woman—especially at a time like this when he is being accused of violence against a woman—ups the ante? Think about how it would look if we found out he was lying and it was me he tried to lie to.”
“He would be more comfortable lying to a man than to a woman,” Daniel had said, trying to help me out.
Jock Winters wasn’t so much convinced as he was probably interested in how it would all turn out. He would still be part of the episode, he would just introduce the interview, but I would do it. It was a rushed production. There was almost no time to run the appropriate advertising before the interview to get viewers ready to tune in, but time was not our friend in this situation.
Biding your time meant you were likely trying to put a defense together. You were trying to get a cover story in place, and basically, it made you look suspicious. Ideally, if you were telling the truth and you really had nothing to hide, you should be ready for an interview no matter what time it was. The woman had lied about Dante being her attacker and she had gone as far as telling the press. Who was to say that she wasn’t putting together an exposé with someone as well? Who to say that she didn’t have pictures or video? It would have been fake, of course, but just its presence would be a huge blow to Dante’s defense. If they were faked well enough, enough people would believe her and Dante Rock would be history. The message had to get out to as many people as possible because, in this case, Dante truly was innocent.
It was right to believe victims, but this victim wasn’t a victim. Not a victim of Dante’s in any case. Whatever had happened to her was terrible, but she had the wrong guy. Was there someone, some tall guy who looked like Dante, pretending to be him to get girls?
Something wasn’t coming out clear. There was something or somebody who was playing games, and I had to find out who it was because that would be the next question. If it wasn’t Dante, who was it?
Inside the League had a late night show format but without the studio audience. It wasn’t a talk show. There were no comedy bits or The Roots giving us live musical interludes. It was like Deadline, or On the Case, but about sports.
Dante had shown up to the studio on time, and he had brought a woman with him. She was older, but the resemblance was uncanny. That was his mother. I saw in her the honey-colored hair and green eyes, which he had inherited. His height must have come from the other side of his family. The side that had abandoned him.
The thought suddenly occurred to me that I had to find a way to talk about the woman and how he didn’t do anything wrong without compromising the story that I was putting together. How the hell was I supposed to do that? I had been thinking about what to ask him. I didn't think that he would really want to go into all the details about what had happened to his mother when he was a kid on national television like that. Did she even know that he had told me?
I felt like I needed to do something, like walk over and introduce myself or something. Did she even know about me? I held my breath, watching Dante and his mother shaking hands with Jock Winters. They turned and started walking up to me. He was dressed nicely. He had on slacks and a button-down shirt with a jacket over top of it. His mom’s hand was rested in the crook of his arm.
She was a beautiful woman. I didn’t know how old she was when she had Dante, but I knew he was her oldest child. She looked like she was still in her forties. That would have meant that she had him when she was a teenager, and I was not about to start asking her those kinds of questions, whether they were true or not.
“Quinn,” Dante said, as he and his mother walked towards me. Holy shit. This was so stressful. Why did I feel like I was meeting his mother? Not meeting his mother, because I was, but like, meeting his mother. The sort of meeting with loads of stress and subtext. I immediately straightened my back a little and cleared my throat. I looked presentable, didn’t I?
“Dante, how are you?” I said in a way that I hoped was easy.
“I’m great. This is Pamela Rock. My mother. Mom, this is Quinn Blaze. She’s the reporter who’s going to do the interview today.”
“Pleased to meet you, Quinn,” she said smiling. If she was stressed out about what was about to happen or in any doubt about her son’s innocence, she wasn’t showing it. She was surprisingly still and collected.
“The pleasure is all mine. I’m sure the crew can provide somewhere for you to sit and watch the interview, Mrs. Rock. We should be starting in about fifteen or so minutes. Dante, are you ready?”
“I’ll be right there,” he said. I watched him walk his mother around the set, introducing her. This changed a few things. Having his mom there would win him some brownie points, but how much did she want to be involved. He didn’t think to warn me that his mother was going to show up? Where was he taking her? We needed to get in front of the cameras and make sure everything looked right.
I spent the minutes that we had left before going on, panicking. I panicked as I looked over the cue cards I had scrawled with the sorts of questions I wanted to ask, and I panicked as the makeup artist tried to put false eyelashes on me. Dante was way too relaxed. He knew that this was his career, didn’t he? Why wasn’t he more worried. He finally joined me as Jock Winters did his introduction.
What if… was there still a chance? Was he playing me for a fool and I just didn’t know it? I believed him about his mom, but about this woman? He would be the guy who beat some lady up, but I would be the reporter who publicly defended him.
“Dante?”
“What?”
“Don’t forget,” I told him.
“Don’t forget what?”
“It isn’t just me and you now. There're millions of people watching. If you are going to choose a time to lie, this isn’t it.”
He looked at me like he was tired.
“Quinn, what's it going to take with you? Do you th
ink we could have possibly gotten this far if I was not telling you the truth?”
The regret was immediate. Why was I still unsure of him? He had been so honest with almost no coercion on my part.
“I’m rooting for you, Dante. I want to believe you, and if you want everyone else to believe you, you have to tell the truth.”
“I know. I know.”
“This is not the time to start playing games. Don’t make jokes or pull punches. Don’t even pretend like you could have done it. This could make or break you, Dante.”
“Quinn, just do your job and I will do mine. Okay? I have nothing to feel guilty about—and you know that.”
I was quiet. Did I? I did. I thought I did. I wanted to believe that I did. I couldn’t keep going from one extreme to the next with this guy. I couldn’t go from believing him and admiring his honesty to threatening to ruin his career if he was lying to me. I wanted to apologize for not believing him, but I also wanted him to show me. I wanted him to give me a reason to continue having the trust in him that I did. I also sort of wanted to kiss him, but that was an unrelated urge entirely.
“You know I have nothing to be guilty about, don’t you?” he said. I didn’t answer him. I didn’t know who I was talking to. Was it the Dante he was when we were alone, or was it the Dante he was when he was on the court, strutting his stuff? Who would I get in the interview? I wanted to talk to the guy who was honest with me and told me things that were hard for him to admit. Would he be that man when the camera was on and the whole country was watching?
“Just… just tell the truth. Everyone is going to be watching you.”
“No. I don’t care about everyone else. Do you believe me?”
His green eyes seemed to be able to see through me. I felt naked. He was asking me to trust him, and I would when I had a reason to. When he gave me a reason to. Hadn't he given me enough? How much was enough? It didn’t matter right then. We were about to go on.
“I believe you. Make them believe you.”
We took our seats and waited for our cue to start. I began my introduction, talking slowly so that I didn’t look crazy or like I was having a panic attack. Production cameras shot in extremely high quality and we were live. I hoped like hell that they weren't shooting us close enough to catch my hands shaking. The set up was really informal. We were just sat across from each other at slight angles so we weren’t facing away from the camera, the way we would be if we were sat at a table eating or something, just without the table.
“Dante,” I said to him, starting my questions. “I think everyone here can tell us what they were doing when they heard the news that Dante Rock was being accused of assault by a mystery woman. Was this news to you, too?”
“It was. I was asleep just before I found out. My sister called me, yelling at me like I had really done something. I had no idea what she was talking about.”
“The woman, your accuser, is named Grace Whitley. She had quite a bit to say about you in the various articles that were printed. Did you read any of them?”
“Nope. None. I couldn’t get past the headlines on most. They were just different versions of the same lie.”
“What lie is that?”
“The lie that I assaulted Grace Whitley. I didn’t.”
“Do you know her?”
“No.”
“The articles say that she and you had an altercation at a Charlotte Yellow Jackets game. Is that a lie, too?”
“Altercation? She came back to the locker room to find me and yell at me. Does that count as an altercation? She wasn’t supposed to be back there, and security had to escort her out, but that was the only time that I have ever seen her. I couldn’t even pick her out of a lineup for you.”
“The most important question is, did you do it?”
“No. I didn’t. This interview is over now, right? That was all you needed to know?”
I heard a couple crew members laugh a little at that.
“These are very serious accusations, Dante.”
“They are. I am sorry that the woman, Grace, is in the situation that she is in, but I have nothing to do with it.”
“Are you calling her a liar?”
“No. She has the bruises. I saw it myself. I do believe that she has been abused by somebody. I don’t know who that person is, and I cannot own up to something that I didn’t do.”
“This isn’t the first time that an athlete has been accused of beating a woman.”
“I know. I never really got it. I got into sports to channel my aggression. These guys who take it out on their wives and girlfriends… I just don’t get it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean look at me,” he said. He was sitting back in his seat. “I’m almost seven feet tall and over two hundred pounds. If violence and menace could take a human form, this would be it.” There were a couple more laughs from the crew. “I just think it’s the worst way to assert yourself, you know. Maybe you’re mad, or you feel someone is trying to emasculate you, but beating a woman… that’s just low. It doesn’t prove you are a boss, or an alpha or anything. It just proves you’re a bully.”
“There are rumors that Grace Whitley may press charges,” I said.
He shrugged.
“If she does, then she does. I’ve said what I have to say, and if I have to, I’ll say it in front of a judge. too. I didn’t know that Grace Whitley was called that before you told me that here today. Besides, after the game, we have never met. It makes me sad that something happened to her, and I can understand why people would want to accuse me, or even want to believe it's me, whether or not they have proof, but frankly, Quinn, can I call you Quinn? Frankly, I think it's unacceptable to make those kinds of accusations unless they are true.”
“Are you saying we should not believe the victim in this case?” I challenged. I had gone completely off the script.
“You should always believe the victim… you just need to ask yourself in every situation, who the victim really is.”
I paused for a second. Wow. Even I had felt that one. Did he have someone help him with his defense, or was he an undercover wordsmith and I was just now finding out?
“One accusation is all it takes. How are you going to come back from this?”
“I don’t have to come back from anything. I’m guilty of many things, but this isn’t one of them. I’ve never hit a woman—and I never will. That is the truth, and I will repeat it as many times as I have to.”
“You know the public is your strongest critic. They are the ones who come to your games, support your team, and buy your jerseys.”
“They are. All I can give them is the truth.”
“What if that isn’t enough? There’s still a woman who was assaulted.”
He paused and sighed.
“I don’t know Grace Whitley, but I have known women in my life who have suffered abuse from men who were supposed to love them and protect them. It’s a societal problem and we have to create an environment where men don’t think it's okay to do that and women who are victims can receive support. That is why… I am going to donate a million dollars to the LA Mission Women’s Shelter. I think the one thing we can take from this—generally—is that there are people in crisis and there are assholes who attack women. We all need to be aware of that and do what we can to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.”
I was halfway expecting there to be an applause or something at that. The interview was done. That was all he had to say or needed to say. It was definitely one million dollars more than he needed to donate. I hadn’t been expecting that.
I was relieved that it was over and pleased. The man I had gotten to talk to, the Dante that I had interviewed had been like, probably the nearest thing to the true Dante that there was. The hoop-shooting Neanderthal was a part of him and the sensitive guy with a past was part of him too. Today in front of the camera, live and defending himself against the worst kind of slander, was
like the two of those people combined. He had been a little bit cocky, but he had been serious and sensitive, too.
He had been generous on top of that. One million dollars. I didn’t know whether the public would think he was just trying to buy them off or be impressed. If nothing else, I hoped they would be impressed with how politely he had managed to tackle the allegations, defending himself without defaming Grace, even though it was likely something was really wrong somewhere.
There was a lot of hand shaking and pats on the back all around by the time the camera went off. I was still buzzing on the adrenalin when Pamela, Dante’s mom, came up to me.
“Quinn?” she said.
“Uh, yeah, that’s me.”
“Thank you so much for helping Dante speak his peace,” she said.
Second Chance: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 54
