CHAPTER 4 #3
“I heard a train.”
“So?”
“And bells.”
I replayed the background noise in my mind.
Metal.
A distant chime.
“South Station?” I asked.
“No. Too loud.”
“Maybe a crossing.”
“Derek has a cabin north of the city.”
“Near tracks?”
“Yes.”
I reached for my coat.
“You are staying here.”
“No.”
“Aaliyah.”
“I heard the call too.”
“You are not coming.”
“I may be the last person he tried to reach.”
“He called my number.”
“He said they knew about me.”
“Which is why you are staying.”
I stepped in front of the elevator.
“You can waste time arguing, or you can accept that I’m going.”
His jaw tightened.
I held his gaze.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then the elevator chimed.
The doors opened.
Naomi stood inside with a suitcase in one hand and irritation written across her face.
She looked from me to Lars.
Then at our coats.
“Mhm.”
Lars closed his eyes.
“What now?” Naomi asked.
“Derek called,” I said.
Her expression sharpened instantly.
“Is he alive?”
“We think so.”
“And you two are about to run off without a plan.”
“We have a location,” Lars said.
“You have a guess.”
Naomi stepped out of the elevator.
She looked at Lars.
“And since my sister apparently still loses all common sense around six-foot-four Scandinavian problems, I’m coming too.”
“No,” we said together.
Naomi rolled her eyes.
“Cute. The marriage is healing.”
Lars looked at me.
I looked at him.
For one second, despite the fear and anger, something familiar passed between us.
A shared frustration.
A shared instinct.
A marriage still alive beneath the wreckage.
Then Lars’s phone buzzed.
A news alert appeared across the screen.
NORSEMEN SUSPEND LARS HALVORSEN INDEFINITELY FOLLOWING REFUSAL TO PLAY
Beneath it came another.
THE ATHLETIC LEDGER TERMINATES AALIYAH GRANT FOLLOWING ETHICS REVIEW
My breath stopped.
“They fired you?” Naomi asked.
The article had been published three minutes earlier.
No call.
No meeting.
No opportunity to respond.
Just a statement claiming my hidden marriage had irreparably compromised the publication’s trust in my reporting.
Lars read it over my shoulder.
His face went cold.
“I’m going to kill them.”
“No,” Naomi said. “You’re going to let me sue them.”
I stared at the screen.
Years of work.
Late nights.
Missed holidays.
Every source who had trusted me.
Every room where I had fought to be heard.
Reduced to a public-relations sacrifice.
My eyes burned.
I refused to cry.
Not in front of Lars.
Not now.
He reached for me.
I stepped away.
“Aaliyah.”
“I’m fine.”
Naomi’s face softened.
“No, you’re not.”
“I said I’m fine.”
My phone buzzed again.
An email had arrived from an anonymous address.
There was one attachment.
A video.
I opened it.
Derek Cole sat in a dark room, his face bruised, one eye swollen shut.
He looked directly into the camera.
“If you’re watching this, they found me.”
My stomach turned.
Derek coughed, then continued.
“Lars tried to help. I told him not to. I was scared. That’s what they count on.”
The camera shook.
Derek glanced toward something outside the frame.
“The original medical files are stored on a private server beneath the Norsemen training facility. West keeps the access code in his office. If anything happens to me, publish everything.”
The video ended.
For several seconds, none of us spoke.
Then another message appeared beneath the attachment.
You wanted the truth. Now decide whether your husband’s career matters more than it.
I looked at Lars.
He had spent years building a case that could destroy the Norsemen.
He had also signed the statement that helped them survive.
If I published now, I could expose the medical fraud.
I could also make Lars look complicit before he had a chance to explain.
His suspension could become permanent.
His endorsements would disappear.
His reputation would collapse.
Perhaps it should.
Perhaps loving him had nothing to do with whether the public deserved the truth.
“Do you believe me?” he asked quietly.
I looked into the deep blue eyes of the man I had married.
The man who had lied to protect me.
The man who had allowed other men to suffer while he gathered evidence.
The man who had burned down his career the moment the league came for mine.
“I believe you tried to help,” I said.
His expression tightened.
“That is not what I asked.”
“No.”
He absorbed the answer without flinching.
Then he nodded once.
“Fair.”
I picked up the encrypted drive.
“We find Derek.”
Lars’s eyes lowered to the drive in my hand.
“And after?”
“I publish the truth.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“Including my signature.”
“Yes.”
His jaw flexed.
Naomi watched him carefully.
“You understand that could end your career,” she said.
Lars looked at me.
“I understood that before she did.”
I slipped the drive into my coat pocket.
For once, he did not try to take it from me.
He stepped into the elevator and held the doors open.
I joined him.
Naomi followed.
As the doors closed, Lars reached for my hand.
I looked down at it.
At the bruised knuckles.
The faint tremor.
The wedding ring.
This time, I did not let him take mine.
Not yet.