23. Chapter 23 — Ty
Practice runs until noon.
Ruiz keeps us late — third straight day of it, playoff prep locked in tight, no shortcuts, no early exits. I run every route clean. Hit every mark.
My body knows what to do. I let it do it while the rest of my brain stays on the text thread I haven't been able to open since eleven this morning.
Wren texted me at ten-thirty-two. Four words: Stern piece is handled.
I was already on the field. I read it between drills, put my phone away, and ran the next route.
Did not think about what handled means or how fast she moved. Did not think about what Ava's face looked like when she walked out of Declan's office into whatever Shore had waiting for her.
I thought about my routes.
I'm very good at thinking about my routes.
After the last whistle, after film, after Ruiz dismisses the room — I check my phone again. One new message from the unknown number, timestamped eleven-eighteen.
Shore filed against her capstone while she was still upstairs with Declan. He knew she was in the building.
He overplayed. There's more you need to know. Move today.
I stand in the corridor with my pads still on and forty guys moving around me.
Dante passes. Clocks my face. Doesn't ask.
I'm showered and out of the building in eleven minutes.
***
Wren's office is on the fourteenth floor of a building in Midtown that smells like cold brew and very controlled ambition. She opened Calloway Strategic last month. The space looks like her — clean lines, no clutter, everything placed like it was thought about first.
She opens the door before I finish knocking.
"I already know about Stern," she says. "That's not why you're here."
"No," I say. "It's not."
She steps back. I come in.
"Start from the beginning," she says. "Everything you haven't told me yet."
I sit down. And I tell her — all of it, the version I've been carrying since the parking structure.
The consulting firm, traced from plates Reed ran for me three weeks ago. The surveillance photos — the blurry hotel corridor image that hit the sports ticker and the team group chat on the same morning.
The unknown number. Someone clearly inside Shore's operation, feeding me information in real time, watching it come apart from the inside.
Wren sits with her hands folded in her lap.
She doesn't interrupt once.
About thirty seconds in she goes very still. Not crossed-arms still. Not waiting still.
The specific stillness of a woman who has already stopped listening and started planning.
I keep going.
When I finish, the room is quiet for four seconds.
"The person feeding you information is inside Shore's operation," she says. "Which means they knew about the Stern complaint before Shore filed it."
"Before he filed it," I say. "They texted me after."
"So they're playing both sides."
"Or they flipped."
She looks at me. "Either way, they're useful until they're not."
She picks up her phone. Makes the first call. Speaks in two sentences, listens for thirty seconds, and hangs up.
Makes the second call. Shorter. Three words and a name I don't recognize.
I sit across from her desk and wait. The office is quiet enough that I can hear the city through the glass. Fourteen floors down, muffled, someone else's problem entirely.
"Declan's legal team has already flagged the complaint as retaliatory," she says. She puts the phone face-down on the desk. "It'll be dismissed by Friday."
She looks at me directly.
"Ava is fine. Shore is not."
I exhale.
It comes out longer than I expected. Something I've been bracing against since ten-thirty this morning has a specific shape. I didn't know it until just now.
Wren watches me with the expression she gets when she's trying not to find something endearing.
"You've been holding that in for a while," she says.
"Three days," I confirm.
"Did you sleep?"
"Some."
"Did you eat?"
I think about it. Actually think about it. "Define eat."
She pulls open the top drawer of her desk without looking up from her phone and sets a granola bar on the edge closest to me. I take it. Eat the whole thing in four bites. She still doesn't look up.
This is exactly what having an older sister must feel like.
I lean forward. Elbows on my knees. "There's someone above Shore."
She looks up now.
"Someone who was already inside the franchise before Shore took the GM job. The source mentioned a name. I didn't recognize it."
"What name?"
“Harlan Beck”
Her expression does something I've never seen on her face before. Not surprise — she doesn't do surprise, or at least she doesn't show it. Something older.
Something that's been filed and not looked at in a while.
Recognition.
"Say it again," she says.
“Harlan Beck”
Wren sets her phone down. Both hands flat on the desk. She looks at the window for a moment — just a moment — before she looks back at me.
"I know that name." Her voice is quieter than usual. Not shaken. Careful. "From the old board. Declan's father's era. He was still technically active when I was doing crisis work in the league — before Declan cleaned house about a year ago."
I wait.
"I always assumed he was one of the three who resigned quietly when Declan restructured." She picks her phone back up. "Apparently not."
Her thumb is already moving across the screen.
"I need to make one more call."