Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LUKE
The hotel suite is quiet by ten.
Brandon stayed for two hours. We ordered room service and had a family debrief, the culmination of a conversation for people who have been running hard for months and are learning to slow down without stopping completely.
He ate half a steak and all the bread. He said he was in the second row for the entire fight, and the judges’ split decision was closer than it needed to be, which is his version of saying you did well.
I told him the documentation goes to Bill Monday morning, and he said he knew.
It was already done. He’d finished it in the hotel business center yesterday afternoon before the fight.
That’s Brandon. Despite his cracked ribs, injured jaw, and broken nose, he spent the afternoon before the biggest fight of my career finishing a financial analysis so it would be ready the moment it was needed.
He hugged Andi on the way out. Not the careful half-embrace of someone managing their injuries—a real one. She held on for a moment, and he let her, which told me more about where he is than anything he’d said all evening.
Now it’s just us.
Andi is across the room at the window, looking at the Vegas skyline.
She changed out of the clothes she wore to the fight into something comfortable, her hair down, the relaxed version of herself that only exists when the day is finally over.
I’m on the couch with my legs stretched out and ice on my left eye, which swelled more than I’d like.
My hands are wrapped loosely, as Reyes insisted before he left.
She turns from the window.
“How do you feel?” she asks.
“Everything,” I say. “I feel everything.”
She smiles. Comes to the couch and sits beside me, legs folded under her, leaning into my side.
“Tell me about round twelve,” she says.
“What do you want to know?”
“What it felt like from inside it.”
I think about it—the precision of the last three minutes—every shot with a reason, every movement with a purpose, the accumulated twelve weeks of work all arriving in the same place at the same time.
“Like I knew exactly where I was,” I say. “No guessing. No reacting. Just knowing.”
She’s quiet for a moment.
“Reyes is going to be insufferable,” she says.
“He already is.”
“Good.” She puts her head on my shoulder. “He earned it.”
The room service cart is still in the corner—the remnants of dinner, three different things we ordered because we couldn’t decide, the small extravagance of a night that feels like it deserves it.
I reach over and steal the last piece of bread from the basket because it was the best part, and I haven’t had enough of anything I actually wanted to eat in twelve weeks.
Andi watches me eat the bread.
“That’s your third piece,” she says.
“I’m aware.”
“Reyes is going to have opinions.”
“Reyes is in his own room,” I say. “He doesn’t get opinions tonight.”
She laughs. It’s the full version—the one that arrives when she’s tired enough to stop managing it, the laugh that’s been one of my favorite sounds since the first time I heard it. I feel something loosen in my chest that I didn’t realize had been tight since January.
“Andi,” I say.
“Mm.”
“We’re going to win.”
She looks up at me. She knows I don’t mean the fight.
“Yes,” she says. “We are.”
“The story breaks Monday. The documentation is complete. The FBI has the case now. The man who died at Grady had his fingerprints linked to deaths in four other states. Everything we’ve been building toward is in motion, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.”
“She’ll try,” Andi says.
“She’ll try,” I agree. “And it won’t matter.”
She’s quiet for a moment, looking at my face. The swollen eye, the cut on my chin from a jab I didn’t slip fast enough in round six. The twelve weeks of effort are visible in what it cost me.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “But I don’t care. It’s worth it.”
She reaches up and puts her hand against the side of my face that doesn’t hurt. Just holds it there.
“I watched you in round twelve,” she says, “and I kept thinking—that’s who he’s been becoming. The entire camp. I could see it happening, and tonight it was just—there. Complete.”
“Reyes,” I say.
“You,” she says. “Reyes pointed at it. But what I watched tonight was you trusting the work you’ve already done.”
She meets my eyes.
“The win tonight is just the confirmation. The real win happened long before you stepped into the ring.”
I turn my face into her hand.
“Beach,” I say. “After this is over. You promised.”
“I promised,” she says. “Sun. Salt. Sand. Unlimited umbrella drinks. No governance councils within a hundred miles.”
“I’m holding you to it.”
“I know you are.” She leans up and kisses me—carefully, on account of the chin—and then less carefully, because it’s been twelve weeks of careful and tonight is not that.
The second kiss lands deeper, unquestioning.
It’s heat and relief and recognition all at once, the kind that doesn’t rush because it doesn’t have to.
Her hands come up to my jaw and then hesitate—adjusting automatically, instinctively—before resting there anyway.
She knows where I hurt. She chooses to touch me anyway, which only makes me crave her more.
I make a quiet sound I don’t bother to stop.
She pulls back just enough to look at my face, her thumb brushing the unbruised side, her eyes searching like she’s confirming something is still real now that the noise is over. The arena. The lights. The months of holding back.
“You did it,” she says without hiding the pride in her voice or her eyes. Not loud. Not triumphant. Certain.
“Because I had you in my corner,” I say.
Her mouth curves—not exactly a smile. Something steadier. “I know.”
The space between us closes again, slower this time. Foreheads together. Breathing syncing. Her hand slides to the back of my neck, grounding, familiar. This isn’t urgency. It’s arrival.
For the first time in weeks, there’s nothing pulling us in different directions. No difficult schedules. No listening devices. No hired thugs. No camp timeline. No vigilance humming under the skin.
Just us.
Still.
Together.
And for tonight, she’s all mine, I’m all hers, and we will enjoy every possible meaning it holds. And for tonight, that’s enough.
Later, we order dessert from room service because we can, eat it at the window looking at the Vegas skyline, and don’t talk about the investigation, the licensing complaints, or what Monday brings.
Tonight, we’re just this. A couple who loves each other more than life itself and is willing to live it, breathe it, and show it—not just say it.
ANDI
At two in the morning, I’m awake.
Not from worry—just the leftover vigilance of a body that’s been on alert for a long time and hasn’t fully understood yet that tonight is different. I lie in the dark, listen to Luke breathe beside me, and let my mind move where it needs to go.
The story runs at six a.m. Monday morning.
Forty-eight hours from now, the investigative piece goes live—the financial network, the institutional suppression operation, and the witness-elimination pattern documented over eighteen months.
Daniel’s documentation provides the foundation.
Three journalists are coordinating the release so no single outlet can be pressured into pulling it.
And underneath it—something Evelyn doesn’t know about yet.
Bill told me last Thursday. The man who died at Grady—no ID, false name at intake, stolen phone—his fingerprints came back on a federal wanted watchlist. The FBI took the case from the Atlanta PD immediately.
They’ve linked him to deaths in four other states, all initially ruled accidents but with extenuating, suspicious circumstances.
All are now under review. An active federal investigation, already open, already staffed, already building before Monday morning arrives.
That means everything we hand them on Monday—the documentation, the financial network, and Daniel’s files—goes directly into a case that already has subpoena power. Evelyn can’t reposition herself within her usual institutional channels because those channels are now part of the investigation.
She thinks she’s been managing the situation.
She has no idea what’s already in motion.
I gaze at the ceiling of the Vegas hotel room, contemplating what lies ahead. It’s not with dread or the alertness of someone in survival mode, but with a fragile feeling, perhaps anticipation. It’s the calm readiness of someone who has prepared for a long time and now senses it’s within reach.
Luke shifts beside me. His hand finds mine in the dark without either of us speaking—the habit of two people who’ve learned each other’s rhythms.
I hold his hand.
I close my eyes.
Monday is coming.
We’re ready.
brANDON
I’m in my hotel room down the hall by ten-fifteen.
I sit on the edge of the bed, and I look at the Vegas skyline through the window, and I think about Marin in the hospital waiting room. The gray cardigan. The performance of presence.
She texted me yesterday.
Heard about the fight. Congratulations to Luke.
Nothing about us. Nothing about the week. The careful calibration of a message designed to keep a line open without revealing anything.
I didn’t respond.
I’m ending it Monday. Carefully, as promised—incompatibility, distance, the natural conclusion of something that ran its course. Nothing that tips anything. I’ve drafted the conversation in my head enough times that I could deliver it in my sleep.
I look at my wrapped hand. My broken nose, mostly set now. My jaw that had to be reset, thankfully without surgery. The ribs that make deep breathing a considered choice. She knew what was coming when I walked out of her apartment. She made a call. Someone was waiting.
I think about Kelly at the kitchen table in our parents’ house, arguing with me about her history paper source. The way she looked when Luke confirmed it was connected to Jackson. I’m not a child. I’ve been waiting for someone to say it out loud.
She’s been waiting two years.
The adoption is going to happen. Bill is handling it directly now, and Bill doesn’t lose.
He decides to win. Kelly is going to have our last name, a bedroom that’s permanently hers, two parents who chose her, a brother who showed up damaged and didn’t make it about himself, and another brother who would fight anyone anywhere to protect her.
She said okay when I told her I wanted to be in the room.
I’m going to be in the room.
I lie back on the hotel bed, stare at the ceiling, and think about what Monday brings and what comes after it, and about the settled, certain knowledge that whatever it costs, it was worth doing.
The story runs in eight hours.
We did the work.
I close my eyes.