Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Cost of Victory
Shane
Present
I’d been here before.
I could remember the sensation — lungs aching, throat closing in, brain shutting down.
It’d happened to me once before. I was eight years old, grieving my parents, grieving the life I’d lived before, grieving what could have been.
I jumped into an icy cold lake in the dead of winter just to feel something.
Shock came first. It always does. No matter how prepared you think you are, you’re never ready for the way cold slices straight through you, how it steals your breath and your thoughts all at once.
I was lucky it wasn’t cold enough to make me inhale water, lucky I remembered to hold my breath.
But I didn’t last long. I surfaced, gasping, crying out, clawing my way toward shore while my body screamed at me for being so goddamn stupid.
And then — clarity.
That was the part people never talked about — the moment after panic burns itself out, when fear stops being useful and your brain snaps into something sharper. It’s like survival flipping a switch.
And that’s how I felt now, watching Nathan steer Ariana away, his hand around her waist, fingers digging into her hip bone.
She looked over her shoulder, and the panic in her eyes did me all the way in.
It was imploding.
Our perfectly laid plan was blowing up right in front of our faces.
“Fuck, man, I tried. I tried to get him to—” Carter zipped his lips shut before saying more than that, his fingers dragging back through his hair as he shook his head and watched Ariana go.
“I’m sorry, man. I really thought I had him, and then he just looked at me and chuckled and walked away. He knew. He read right through me.”
“What’s going on?” Georgie asked. He followed my gaze to his sister, and when he turned back to me, his brows were bent. “Is Ariana in trouble?”
Carter and I exchanged glances. How the fuck was I supposed to answer that?
I took the deepest breath I could manage and decided to start with the truth.
“No,” I said, squeezing Georgie’s shoulder. “No, I don’t think she is. But she will be. I need you to trust me, okay? I promise I’ll tell you everything, but right now, I need you to just believe me when I tell you I have it under control.”
Georgie didn’t like that. I knew by the way his jaw tightened. He clocked his sister again and then turned back to me with a curt nod that I knew he didn’t want to give me.
I felt honored that he did.
I squeezed his shoulder again, releasing it with a sigh as I tried to figure out what the fuck to do next. Carter was watching me like he wasn’t sure what I’d just said to Georgie was fair anymore — not now that our plan was going up in flames.
But I had to believe.
Some people run when things fall apart.
Some freeze.
Some fight blindly and make it worse.
But there’s another response — the one you earn when you’ve already lost everything once before, when panic has taught you its limits.
I knew this feeling.
The water was cold.
The shoreline was far.
And panic wouldn’t get me there.
And so, I found stillness.
I calmed the fuck down.
And I started figuring a way out.
Nathan kept Ariana close after that, his hand never leaving her, and he paraded her around like a show pony.
They posed for pictures. They grabbed the microphone from the band to thank everyone for attending.
Nathan made a grand speech about his beautiful wife turning forty, and then we all watched her stand behind a lit cake as we sang happy birthday and she blew out the candles.
Her eyes met mine when the flames were out, a million questions burning through the rising smoke.
I checked my phone for the hundredth time, but my disappointment didn’t waver.
Michael Reeves had ghosted me.
Part of me wondered if I was stupid for being surprised. Nathan had half our staff under his thumb and who knew how many players — what would make a league rep any different?
Money talked, and if Nathan was rigging bets in Vegas, my bet was he had a lot more money than any of us realized.
I was on high alert, looking for something, anything, when a familiar man walked in like a walking red flag.
I didn’t recognize him the way you do a friend or colleague. I only vaguely knew that I had met him before, that I’d seen him around, that he’d been with the team at some point for something. But the moment I watched him approach Nathan, all my warning sirens sounded.
He’s not supposed to be here.
My instincts flared.
Recognition stirred at the edges of my mind, vague and unsettling, like a name I couldn’t quite place. This wasn’t a donor. Not press. Not staff.
Who was he?
Nathan looked at the man with a forced smile, one I recognized now that I could see through his fake charm.
He greeted him cheerily, but I saw the way his hand was hard on the man’s shoulder as he peeled away from Ariana at last, steering his friend to the back of the ballroom and out the nearest door.
I rushed to her in an instant, and Georgie was right on my heels.
Ariana let out a long whoosh of a breath when I reached her, her blue eyes wide and afraid as she clung to me. I didn’t dare take her into my arms, not yet, but I held her steady, forcing a calm breath that I hoped would bleed into her.
“Are you all right?” I asked, bending to meet her gaze.
She blinked, shaking her head. “I… I don’t know. He knows everything, Shane. He saw through Carter’s trap. He has Ben back under his control. He—” She choked, shaking her head as panic started to slither in again. “He said Reeves is his friend.”
That explained his absence.
I resisted the urge to curse and kick and scream and throw shit.
Ice cold water. Distant shore.
Find a way out.
“It doesn’t matter. We will figure this out.
Look at me.” I waited until she did, and I squeezed her hand before dropping it reluctantly and forcing a big smile.
The last thing we needed was to draw concern from anyone around us.
“You’re not going home with him tonight. This all ends here. Okay? Trust me.”
She nodded, trying to mirror my smile, though hers trembled at the edges.
“This time tomorrow, you and I will be drinking the best smoothies in town and book shopping. Yeah?”
That earned me a little choke of a laugh, and she nodded again, surer this time.
I smoothed a hand over my suit, turning my attention to Georgie. “I need to check something. Can you stay with her? Don’t let her out of your sight.”
He didn’t hesitate. “I’ve got her.”
I squeezed Ariana’s hand one more time — brief but deliberate, a reminder that she wasn’t alone — and then I turned away.
I did my best not to hurry, to make it seem casual as I followed the path Nathan and his friend had carved through the crowd. When I slipped out of the ballroom, the noise from the band quieted, but the party raged on outside as I carefully moved along the perimeter, listening.
Nathan’s voice reached me before I reached him.
“I will handle it.”
I followed the sound, catching just a glimpse of the man who’d raised my hackles before I backed away and out of sight. I slowed my pace, angling myself behind a cluster of heaters and greenery, edging close enough to hear without being seen.
“He was supposed to sit,” the man said, and though his words were accusatory, his voice was croaky with uncertainty, like he wasn’t sure he could stand up to Nathan.
“I understand that was the original call, but sometimes things change.”
“We had the under, Nathan,” the man snapped. The edge in his voice was unmistakable now — panic sharpening into anger. “You told me you had control of him.”
“I said I’d handle it, Ron,” Nathan said smoothly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“What exactly is there to fucking handle at this point?” Ron shot back, and through the plants I was hiding behind, I saw him snatch Nathan by the arm.
It earned him a death glare, and Nathan shook him off even as he continued seething.
“You said he wouldn’t play. He scores twice and now I’ve got people breathing down my neck.
People who don’t like being fucked with. ”
Ron’s croaky voice was louder than he realized, louder than Nathan liked — and loud enough to draw attention. I tried to sink back farther, to be unnoticed, but there was a couple at a cocktail table who had gone silent, both of them turning to see what the commotion was.
“Things got complicated,” Nathan murmured. “Now quiet the fuck down.”
“You don’t get to be sloppy,” Ron hissed. “Not with my money.”
Nathan lowered his voice, but now another table had angled toward them. “I’ll make it right,” he said, smiling and shaking Ron’s hand as he grabbed his shoulder and acted like they were old pals. “Now, let’s get you a drink. Hmm?”
“Are you working with another bookie? Is that what this is?”
Ron’s words echoed over the party, and anyone within twenty feet turned their head.
There was no mistaking the word bookie.
Before Nathan had the chance to charm his way out of it, commotion stirred from inside the ballroom, the clattering of glassware and the abrupt screech of the band ceasing spilling out onto the lawn.
And then, a loud, angry voice.
“Where is he?”
The words cut through the air, raw and broken.
Heads turned. Conversations faltered.
“Where the fuck is he!?” Ben shouted.
I knew it was Ben even before I saw him, before he rushed through the open doors with half the team on his tail warning him to calm down.
He came through the crowd like a man unraveling at the seams, eyes wild, face slick with sweat, grief pouring off him in waves. I moved instinctively, stepping into his path.
“Ben—”
He shoved me hard enough that I stumbled back a step.
“My dad is dead!” he screamed. “My dad is fucking dead!”
Everyone froze, the party so silent we could hear the wind blow over the bay.
And my heart broke.
I knew the pain in this kid’s eyes. I understood the acute ache of it, the piercing weight.