26. Chapter 26 — Ava
My father calls at eight-seventeen on a Saturday morning.
Not unusual. He always calls on Saturdays. But the usual call starts with how are you eating and ends with something about the upcoming game.
This one doesn't start that way.
"I heard about Shore," he says.
No preamble. No warm-up. Just that.
"I was involved," I say. "In building the case."
Silence.
I know his silences the way I know his tells in a film room. The length says everything. This one means he's weighing something he already knew against something he's now confirmed.
"You protected the franchise," he says.
"I protected you." I keep my voice even. "The franchise was secondary."
Another silence. Longer. The kind that has weight to it.
When he speaks again, his voice is the same as always. Level. Unhurried. The calm he's spent thirty years building.
"The former exec, Harlan Beck," he says. "Wren Calloway told Declan his name. I know who he is."
I don't say anything. I wait.
"He was on the board under Declan's father. Has been inside this franchise almost as long as I have." A pause. "When Declan found the bad actors a year ago — when three board members resigned — I assumed he was one of them."
"He wasn't."
"No." My father exhales. Just barely. "He was more careful than the others."
"Beck didn't leave," I say. "He just moved further back. Built Shore as his inside man and operated through him. And they've been using Voss as an intermediary."
The silence this time is different. It's the silence of a man recalibrating something he thought he understood.
My father has been coaching for thirty years. He doesn't get caught off guard often. When he does, he goes very quiet.
"Be careful, Ava." His voice hasn't changed. Still level. Still unhurried. "Shore was the mechanism. Beck has been inside this franchise for a decade. He knows how it works." A beat. "He knows how I work."
"I know."
"That makes him something different entirely."
I'm standing at my kitchen window. The city is doing its Saturday thing below — deliveries, coffee runs, someone's dog pulling hard toward the park. Normal. Indifferent.
I think about the 3 a.m. email that landed on my phone in a Cincinnati hotel room. The Empires game schedule on my kitchen counter with three away games circled in red. The blurry photo on the sports ticker I saw from the sidewalk on a Tuesday afternoon.
The pressure didn't start with Shore. It started the moment I got too close to the truth.
"Dad."
"Mm."
"I need to tell you something." I close my eyes. "About the season. About why I know as much as I do."
He doesn't ask what I mean. He doesn't push.
"I know," he says. His voice doesn't change at all. Not one note. "Come to dinner. Wednesday. Bring whatever you need to say."
The line goes quiet for a moment. Then: "I love you, Ava."
"I love you too, Dad."
He hangs up first. He always hangs up first.
***
I stand in my kitchen for a long time after.
He knows. Not what, not how much — but he knows there's something. He said so himself in the parking lot at Consuelo's two weeks ago. He's always known my face when I'm carrying something.
I didn't expect Wednesday. Not the calm of it. Not the bring whatever you need to say.
I move to the couch. Sit down. Pull my knees up.
The apartment is quiet. My laptop is open on the coffee table — capstone notes, Shore documentation, the final report structure I've been building since Monday. Everything organized, cross-referenced, backed up in three encrypted folders.
Wednesday dinner.
He already knows something. Maybe everything.
I look at the chair across the room.
Ty's Indiana sweatshirt is draped over the back of it. He left it after Philadelphia. Grey, worn at the cuffs, the kind of soft that comes from years of use.
He never asked for it back. I never offered to return it. It's been on that chair for three weeks.
I think about Wednesday. About sitting across from my father at the restaurant we've been going to since I was twelve and telling him the truth about all of it.
The gala. The coffee he researched. Room 814 in Cincinnati. The way Ty showed up at my door at nine-forty-five in Philadelphia in sweats and bare feet because he needed me to know the truth.
Every late-night text. Every hotel room. Every moment I told myself I had complete control of the situation and believed it a little less each time.
I've been running this play since December. I know how to stay composed under pressure. My father taught me that without meaning to.
But this is different.
This isn't a press conference. It's Consuelo's on a Wednesday night and he's going to look at me across the table. I genuinely do not know what his face will do.
You are both expendable. He said that to Dante. He meant it.
He also reinstated Dante after everything that happened this season and said two words about it. He writes letters for rookie programs. He has a long memory and a sense of what things actually cost people.
I don't know which version walks into Consuelo's on Wednesday.
Both of them are my father.
***
My phone buzzes on the coffee table.
I reach for it before I've decided to.
Ty: Conference championship is tomorrow. Whatever your dad knows — let me know what you need going into the game. I'm here.
I read it twice.
He doesn't know about the phone call. He doesn't know about Wednesday. He just woke up on the morning before the biggest game of his season and texted me to check in.
No ask. No agenda. Just: I'm here.
I think about what Wren said two weeks ago in the coffee shop. You already know what to do. You've been waiting until you can protect everyone at once.
She wasn't wrong.
I've been building a case. Mapping the threads. Running every scenario. I've been so focused on protecting people that I haven't thought much about what it's going to feel like when the structure finally comes down.
Wednesday is going to feel like something.
I pick the phone up and type: Win the game. I'll handle the rest.
Three dots appear. I watch them.
We'll handle the rest. There's a difference.
I stare at the screen.
He's twenty-two years old. He has a conference championship tomorrow. Shore just resigned, a former exec is building something for Super Bowl week, and my father called this morning asking me to dinner on Wednesday.
And his first move this morning was to check on me.
The sweatshirt on the back of the chair has been sitting there for three weeks.
I set the phone face-down on the cushion beside me. Look at the ceiling. Let the weight of all of it settle.
Then I pick the phone back up.
There's a difference, he said.
I know. That's the problem.
I type: Go focus. You have a game.
Three dots. Then: Already am.
The corner of my mouth moves. I pull it back.
I pull my knees up tighter and make myself think about Wednesday. About what I'm going to say. About sitting across from the most constant thing in my life and telling him I broke the one rule he never had to say out loud.
He already knows something.
He's known my face my whole life.
I open the laptop. Pull up the Shore documentation. Start organizing what I'll need to bring to Wednesday dinner, because I'm Ava Ruiz and when something is coming for me, I work.
An hour passes. The city keeps moving outside the window.
The sweatshirt stays on the chair.