No Limits (Stacked Deck #5) - Emilia Finn Page 0,28

the girl from the tracks gone? Where is the girl who was seven bottles deep on Friday night? “I would probably cry, to be honest.”

He chuckles. “How can we help you, Madilyn?”

“Um…” I stumble forward a couple steps until I’m no longer on concrete, but on rubber mats. I juggle my folders, snag out the cover letter – I spent all day yesterday working on it – and offer it to the least scary person here. The irony isn’t lost on me that the biggest is the most approachable. “I work in the public relations and marketing department of Monaco Auto.”

“Okay…” He lets his eyes scan my letter. “I don’t need a new car, so…”

“Uh, no…” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth. “I was actually thinking along a different line. My company enjoys sponsoring sporting events. We would negotiate pricing, and in exchange, you offer us a promo package and a plug when you stream your tournament each year.”

Evie’s lip curls back much the same as mine did when I walked in. “You wanna buy ad space at our tournament?”

I swallow and take a step back when the other chick, Lucy, joins the couple, and brings her fighter boyfriend with her. They could kill me. Literally. With their fists. “In a nutshell, yes. We would buy ad space. You sell millions of streaming subscriptions a year for folks wanting to watch your fights. We would buy a twenty-second ad during that live feed, plus have a sign or two displayed on the outside of the octagon.”

Evie’s eyes narrow. “So… we built this tournament ourselves, we backed it with our own money, we busted our asses to create a successful event, and now that we’ve done that…” She leans a little closer. “You’d like to put your name on it. Am I hearing you right?”

“Well… uh…” I nod. “Yes.”

She bursts out laughing. “Get the fuck outta here, Corporate Barbie. We built it!” She points to the three other members of her exclusive little club. “We did! We busted our fucking asses to make it happen. We bled for it, cried for it, trained so fucking hard and ensured it would all work out. We took all the risks, and even when we win our own divisions, we don’t get to keep our prize money, because that shit goes straight back into the bank to make sure we can continue paying bills.” She shakes her head, not to say no, but as though to shake around a little sense. “Why the fuck would I let you piggyback on that?”

“Smalls…” Again, Bobby does that low timbre of his. He lifts a brow, and takes a step closer, as though to cut me out of the conversation. “Back in my day, this was called an endorsement deal. We worked our asses off, we created our own brand and empire, but in our spare time, we pretended to drink the most fashionable sports drink and wear the sexiest sneakers. That’s how endorsements work. In exchange, those brands give you money.”

Evie looks to me. “How much money?”

I grin. “It’s my understanding you pay your current winners five hundred thousand dollars at the end of a tournament. Six divisions, six winners.”

“We pay them seven-fifty now. We can afford to do that, because we continue to build our empire.” She tilts her head to the side, and doesn’t stop until her neck cracks. “We continue to build, we continue to kick ass.”

“What if Monaco doubled it?”

Her eyes bulge, and because I didn’t expect I’d win her over so easily, I smile and open my folder. “Monaco will pay four-point-five million dollars a year, in exchange for a little ad space and maybe a fast clip of you saying you drive using our tires or something.”

“I do drive with Monaco tires,” she whispers. “That’s actually true.”

I laugh. “Then this will be easy. You get to sweeten the prize money, thus drawing more fighters in, more ticket sales, more subscription packages, and because your empire continues to grow, the audience that gets to hear about you and our tires grows. It’s mutually beneficial. And like you said, you already drive with Monaco.”

I extend a hand, and wait for her to take it; blood and all. “Give me an hour of your time, let’s nail down the details, and then we can celebrate a lucrative partnership.”

It takes thirty minutes, two phone calls, two new additions to our meeting – Kit Kincaid, who just so happens to be Bobby’s wife