28. The Last Fight
THE LAST FIGHT
LUCA
Mercer's message arrived twelve minutes after Riley said we should tell the truth first.
Marlowe Hotel. Penthouse suite. Come alone. We settle this before midnight, or the first file goes live.
Maddie was settled in the guest room across from Ava's, laptop open and the baby monitor beside her. Donny was ten minutes away if she needed backup. I still checked the security feed twice before leaving the house.
The investigator traced the number while Riley and I drove toward Collins Avenue: Vale Promotions. Mercer Vale himself, finally stepping out from behind the leaks.
Riley wanted ten more minutes to finish assembling the evidence. I was supposed to enter alone, keep Mercer talking, and confirm the threat while she waited downstairs.
That had been the plan.
Then Mercer opened the door with a drink in one hand and photographs of Ava spread across the bar behind him.
The suite door had barely clicked shut before I drove my palm into his chest and forced him backward across the marble. Not hard enough to hurt him. Hard enough to wipe the smile off his face.
It returned anyway.
"Careful, Santoro." Mercer straightened his cream suit. "The cameras downstairs would love a fresh demonstration."
Floor-to-ceiling windows framed Miami in gold and glass. A half-finished drink sweated on the bar. Beside it sat a leather portfolio and a digital clock counting down to midnight.
One hour, fifty-seven minutes.
"You threatened my daughter's privacy." My voice stayed low, the kind of quiet that had always made men listen. "Start talking."
Mercer lifted his drink. "I offered you an opportunity."
"You sent photographs of Ava to a blackmailer."
"I hired professionals to acquire leverage. Blackmail is such an emotional word."
The fighter in me surged forward so fast my vision sharpened. Distance to target. Weight distribution. Soft throat above an expensive collar.
I curled my fingers against my palms instead.
"Who took the beach photos?"
He studied me over the rim of his glass. "Freelancers—paparazzi, mostly. I bought access, fed them schedules, suggested angles. The nanny story tested beautifully."
Riley's face flashed beneath that headline. Ava crouched on the asphalt, hands clamped over her headphones while shutters snapped around her.
My jaw locked until pain traveled into my temple.
"All this to force me back into a cage."
"To remind you what you're worth." Mercer tapped the portfolio with one manicured finger. "Your investors were already nervous. The torn contract made you toxic. A scandal destabilized the resort. Pressure created urgency. Urgency brought you here."
"You engineered the leaks."
"I manufactured demand. It's what promoters do."
The smugness in his voice scraped against every promise I had made: to breathe, to stay present, to make sure Ava never learned to fear my hands.
I stepped closer. Mercer's pupils flickered despite his smile.
"You used a child."
"I used public interest." He leaned toward me, cologne sharp beneath the whiskey. "Spare me the morality, Luca. Blood built your fortune."
My phone vibrated in my pocket. Riley, probably. I ignored it.
Mercer opened the portfolio.
Inside lay contact sheets from the beach, the grocery store, our balcony. Red grease-pencil circles marked Riley's face, Ava's headphones, my hand at the small of Riley's back.
Proof of selection. Proof of intent.
Mercer turned the top photograph toward me.
"You came for the blackmailer," he said. "But you should be thanking the man who made you relevant again."
I stared at my daughter's frightened face and understood how easily Mercer could make me prove him right before midnight.
Mercer slid a contract from the portfolio and set it over Ava's photograph.
"Headline the pay-per-view in six weeks," he said. "One fight. Five rounds. Your comeback, my production. In return, every negative disappears."
I looked at the pages without touching them. My name sat at the top in block letters, already paired with Jax's beneath it.
"You don't own him."
"I don't need to. I own the story." Mercer nudged a pen toward me. "Sign, and the photos stay buried. The resort gets a liquidity announcement by morning. Riley stops trending as your latest mistake. Everyone wins."
The tendons in my hands pulled tight.
He noticed. Of course he did.
"There he is," Mercer murmured. "That's the man people paid to see."
I lifted my gaze. "You think this is negotiation?"
"I think you came alone because some part of you misses being dangerous."
The words landed too close to bone.
For years, danger had been the only language I trusted. Anger came clean. A target made sense. Hit first. End it. Walk away before anyone saw what it cost.
Mercer moved around the bar, slow and confident now, mistaking restraint for surrender.
"You've spent months pretending fatherhood made you harmless," he said. "But all I had to do was touch the right nerve."
My eyes dropped to his throat again.
One step. A left hook to break his balance. Forearm across the windpipe. The marble edge behind him would do the rest.
My body mapped it without permission.
I planted both hands on the bar instead. Cold stone bit into my palms. Somewhere below us, traffic pulsed along Biscayne Boulevard, distant and indifferent.
"Say Ava's name again."
His smile thinned. "Your daughter is precisely why you should sign. Children need stability. Resorts need capital. Women like Riley need protection from headlines they can't survive."
The bar creaked beneath my grip.
Mercer pushed the pen closer. "Fight, and I erase the negatives, the raw files, the metadata, every scheduled leak. Refuse, and midnight gets ugly."
"What happens at midnight?"
"Photographs. Audio. Stories about your drinking, your temper, Riley's convenient employment arrangement." He shrugged. "Once people believe the premise, truth becomes optional."
I straightened slowly, forcing my fingers to uncurl one at a time. The contract waited between us, crisp and white and filthy.
"You built this whole campaign because you thought I'd choose violence."
"No." Mercer's eyes glittered. "I built it because I knew you'd choose fear."
A keycard chirped behind me. The suite door opened, and Mercer's expression changed before I turned. Riley stepped inside with her laptop tucked beneath one arm and a slim manila envelope in her hand.
"Then you don't know him at all."
She was early. Ten minutes early, walking into the room with the man who had put a target on her back before I had done a damn thing to make it safe.
"What are you doing?"
"Finishing what we started." She crossed the suite before I could stop her, set the laptop on the bar, and dropped the envelope beside Mercer's contract. "The investigator completed the account trace."
Mercer's smile returned, but it sat wrong now. Too tight at the corners.
Riley opened her laptop and turned the screen toward us. Rows of transfers filled the display, each one routed through shell companies with names designed to vanish into paperwork.
"Three media firms," she said. "Two freelance photographers. One reputation-management agency. All paid through Vale Promotions subsidiaries."
Mercer barely glanced down. "That proves marketing expenditures."
Riley raised an eyebrow. "Is that what we're calling stalking now?" She tapped the screen. "Because your accountants were remarkably specific. These are invoices tied to the leaks. Dates, amounts, assignment notes. Beach access. Surveillance. Balcony shots."
My stomach went cold. She laid another page on top.
"And this," she said, "is where it gets interesting."
The company name meant nothing to me at first. Then I saw the authorized signature beneath it.
Victor's chief financial officer.
The same man whose name appeared on the resort's investment documents whenever Victor wanted distance from a deal.
Mercer's eyes sharpened. The room seemed to shrink around the page, all that polished glass and marble suddenly unable to hide what he had done.
Riley tapped the paper. "Your campaign wasn't funded by ticket presales. It was underwritten through Victor's investment network."
I looked at Mercer. "He paid you."
"He invested in an outcome."
"The resort failing."
Mercer gave a small shrug, but sweat had gathered at his temple. "Markets punish weakness."
Riley moved closer to me, shoulder brushing my arm. The contact steadied something inside me that I had been holding too hard.
"The timing matches every pressure point," she said. "The lender panic. The contractor pullback. The smear stories. They wanted Luca desperate enough to fight and the resort unstable enough to buy cheap."
Mercer picked up his drink, then seemed to reconsider and set it down untouched.
"You have fragments," he said. "Circumstantial noise."
Riley's expression never changed. "We have metadata, bank records, contracts, and two recorded calls."
Silence expanded through the suite. Mercer looked from her to me, recalculating.
I covered Riley's hand with mine on the bar. He noticed that too. Good. Because for the first time since I walked through the door, Mercer Vale looked afraid.
Mercer's fear lasted all of three seconds. Then his attention settled on Riley.
The calculation in his expression was worse than any smile.
"You really think evidence matters once the story breaks?" he asked. "By midnight, you're not a whistleblower. You're the nanny who slept her way into a retired fighter's bed and helped sabotage his comeback."
Riley went still beside me. Not weak. Not shaken enough to step back.
Still, I felt the change in her hand beneath mine, the slight cooling of her fingers against my skin.
Mercer saw it, too.
"Gold-digger," he said lightly. "Home-wrecker. Opportunist. Pick your poison. The audience already knows the shape of the woman they want you to be."
My lungs stopped halfway through a breath. The room narrowed to Mercer's mouth. I saw every way to shut it.
One punch. Clean and fast. His teeth against the marble. Blood on that cream suit. The kind of silence I had once trusted more than reason.