6. Chapter 6
Darius
Three seconds shouldn't feel this long.
But when Claire Wells asks whether Camille has contacted me and I don't answer right away, the silence stretches across her office like a pulled hamstring.
Claire doesn't rush to fill it. Of course she doesn't. Most people start talking when a conversation stalls. They get nervous. They explain things that don't need explaining. They give you an exit.
Claire just waits.
She sits behind her desk with her pen resting against her notebook, watching me with those sharp blue eyes that somehow make lying feel like more work than telling the truth.
The longer I stay quiet, the worse this gets.
"Yeah," I finally say. "She did."
Claire's expression doesn't change.
"When?"
"Right after the clinic. Atlanta number I didn't have saved."
I pull out my phone and unlock it and slide it across the desk. She picks it up, reads it, sets it face-down between us.
"Have you heard from her since?"
"No."
Claire opens her laptop and pulls up an email. She turns the screen toward me and I see Camille's name in the sender field before I can look away.
"She reached out to the Stallions communications office on Friday," Claire says. "Copied the AFC media liaison."
She walks me through it the way she'd break down game film — the warm tone, the league copy, the phrase given the ongoing situation. She points to that last part.
"Situation," she says. "Not incident. Not allegation. Situation."
I don't follow.
"It's a frame," she says. "She's positioning herself as the measured, professional party before she's even made her actual ask."
"So what do we do with it?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out."
Claire leans back. "She's not sending emails and texts for no reason. She wants something. We just don't know what yet."
"So I text her back."
"Not without a plan."
Claire shakes her head. "You text her back on impulse, she reads your tone, she figures out how rattled you are, and she adjusts. Right now she doesn't know what she's dealing with. That's the only advantage we have."
"So we do nothing?"
Claire is quiet for a moment. Thinking, not stalling.
"We draw her out," she says. "You text her back — something short, something warm, something that gives her nothing. If my hunch is right, what she says next tells me everything. Then I'll know how to handle the rest."
She looks at me. "But first I need you to tell me everything about Atlanta. Every detail. Not what Evan coached you to say. All of it."
"Okay. What do I send?"
Claire pulls my phone across the desk. Opens the thread. Types for about twenty seconds, then turns the screen toward me.
Hey. Got your message. Things have been busy but I'm open to talking. What did you have in mind?
I read it twice. "That's it?"
"That's it. You don't add anything. You don't soften it. You send exactly this."
She keeps the phone in her hand until I nod. I take it. Hit send. She sets the phone down. Picks up her pen.
And then she looks at me — really looks — in a way that tells me the text was the easy part.
"Now," she says. "Atlanta. All of it."
***
I clear my throat. This is already more than I've told anyone.
"Camille came to me first," I say. "That's the part that never made it onto ESPN."
Claire's pen is ready. She doesn't look up.
"She was the Director of Communications for the Kings.
Forty-three years old, polished, knew everybody worth knowing in the league.
" I pause. "She'd been around since my first year with Atlanta.
Evan actually brokered that first meeting — he knew her from the league circuit, said she was the best in the business.
She helped me land my first two major brand deals, coached me through my first press availability when I said something stupid about a defensive coordinator and it almost blew up.
I trusted her. She was good at her job and she looked out for me and I was grateful for that. "
I look at my hands. "I never saw her that way. Not once. Not until her marriage started falling apart."
"She'd come down to practice sometimes — media stuff, credential checks.
She always found me after. Told me I had a good session, that I looked sharp on this route or that one.
" I pause. "At first I thought she was just being Camille.
But every time she came back, the neckline was a little lower.
The skirt was a little shorter. Then one day she showed up in this red dress. "
I shake my head. "That wasn't about credentials."
I clear my throat again. "I knew what it was. I'm not stupid. I just told myself it was harmless."
I look at my hands. "Little comments. The way she'd stand close. One time she fixed my collar before a press availability."
I exhale. "Then one night she pulled me aside after a team event. Said her marriage was over. Said her husband hadn't looked at her in years. That she felt invisible in her own house." I pause. "Then she said I looked at her the way he never did. That I made her feel seen."
I lean back. "So who was I to deprive her?"
I flash the grin. I can't help it.
Claire looks up from her notebook and rolls her eyes so slow and deliberate it's almost impressive.
I feel the heat crawl up the back of my neck. I drop the grin.
"Right," I say. "That part doesn't matter."
I straighten in the chair. "It was a road trip. Cincinnati. A few of us went out after the game. Camille was there for the media circuit. We ended up at the hotel bar after everyone else called it a night." I pause. "And then we weren't at the bar anymore."
Claire doesn't fill the silence. She just waits.
"It happened once," I say. "I told myself it was done. She said the same thing." I look at the floor. "It wasn't done. Three, maybe four weeks. Then her husband found out. Showed up at the facility, got in my face in the hallway."
I shift in the chair. "He was furious, but the thing that got me — he wasn't just angry at me.
He kept saying he didn't know what she saw in me.
That he'd spent ten years building that franchise, running the board, closing deals, and she throws away her marriage for a wide receiver who wasn't even thinking twice about her. "
I stop. "He wasn't wrong about that. I was easy. I didn't ask questions. I didn't think about who got hurt."
I look at the floor. "He said everything loud enough for half the building to hear. Someone filmed it. The whole thing hit Twitter before I even got to my car."
Claire finishes writing. She sets her pen down and looks at me for a long moment.
"That was a bad situation to be in," she says finally. "And honestly? I can see how it happened. Doesn't make it right. But I understand it."
I blink. That was not what I expected from her.
"You're not going to lecture me?"
"Would it change anything?"
"No."
"Then what's the point."
She tilts her head slightly. "Do you regret it?"
I don't hesitate. "Every day. I never should have let it go that far. Didn't matter who started it."
She holds that for a second. Something shifts in her expression — small, almost invisible. Like she's recalibrating.
"Okay," she says quietly.
Then she opens her laptop. "She didn't reach out for no reason. Something changed for her recently."
She turns the screen toward me. "Let's find out what."
She types Camille Pierce into the search bar. I lean forward.
The results load and Claire scrolls. Most of it's old news — the Atlanta scandal, the viral video, the statements the Kings released afterward. Then she stops.
"Here."
She turns the screen toward me. It's a gossip item from three weeks ago about a communications executive being placed on leave after an investigation into inappropriate conduct involving a player.
The article doesn't name Camille, but it mentions the Kings and references the Atlanta scandal.
There aren't exactly a lot of candidates.
Below it is a court filing. Victor Pierce. Petition for divorce. Filed two weeks ago.
I sit back. "Oh, shit."
Claire is already searching Victor's name. She turns the screen toward me again.
Victor Pierce. Sixty-one years old. Former majority shareholder of the Atlanta Kings. Net worth estimated at $340 million.
"She married money," Claire says. "Old money. The kind that comes with lawyers and prenups and very specific clauses about infidelity."
She closes the laptop. "If she's the one who strayed and he can prove it, she walks away with nothing. No settlement, no alimony, no status. Just a scandal and a job that's already on thin ice."
She looks at me. "She doesn't want to destroy you, Darius. She wants to use you. If she can control how the Atlanta story gets told — make herself look like the victim, make you look like the aggressor — she protects herself in court and keeps whatever leverage she has left."
It clicks.
"So she needs me to be the bad guy."
"Or at least stay quiet while she becomes the victim."
Claire picks up her pen. "Which is why we need to be very careful about what you say when she responds to that text."
She studies me for a moment. Then she reaches for the piece of cinnamon gum sitting on top of her notebook — the same one I left there last week — and slides it across the desk.
"We're in this together."
I stare at it.
It's a ridiculous thing to notice. The fact that she kept it. The fact that she remembered.
I pocket the gum, push to my feet, and head for the door.
***
Suddenly her phone buzzes.
I glance back just in time to see the screen light up.
Samuel Wells.
Claire grabs the phone so quickly I almost miss it. Almost.
"Hey, Dad."
Something in her voice makes me turn around. Not panic. Not exactly. But close.
Claire Wells is the calmest person I've ever met. I've watched her walk into disasters that would have most people hiding under their desks. Nothing rattles her.
This call does.
She turns toward the window before I can ask what's wrong. I let myself out and pull the door shut behind me.
Halfway down the hall, I realize I'm not thinking about Camille anymore.
I'm thinking about Claire.
And why a phone call from her father looked like bad news.