Chapter 8
My father called after the verdict.
I had not heard his voice in seven years.
Not since he left a voicemail asking for money from rehab, then disappeared when I said I would pay the facility directly but not him.
He sounded older.
“Caleb.”
I stood in the hallway outside Mia’s dorm room, one hand pressed against the wall.
“How did you get this number?”
“Your sister.”
Of course.
Mia had a soft heart and terrible boundaries when it came to ghosts.
“What do you want?”
“I saw the news.”
“Congratulations.”
“You fight like me.”
My jaw tightened.
“No. I fight because of you.”
Silence.
Then a breath.
“I deserved that.”
That surprised me.
My father, Tommy Reed, had been a boxer once.
Good enough to almost make it.
Bad enough at life to lose everything else.
He taught me footwork in our kitchen.
Then used those same hands to punch holes in walls.
Never us.
But near enough that fear learned our address.
After Mom got sick, he vanished into debt and addiction.
I became the man of the house at sixteen.
Mia became quiet.
Mom became tired.
Now he wanted to sound proud.
I hated him for it.
“I’m not doing reunion interviews,” I said.
“I’m not calling for that.”
“Then what?”
“I know Vincent.”
The hallway seemed to tilt.
“What?”
“I fought in his rooms years ago. Before he owned clubs. Before Hale got involved.”
My grip tightened on the phone.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because there’s a ledger they haven’t found.”
I closed my eyes.
“Dad.”
“Listen to me. Vincent kept a paper ledger for people too important to put on phones.”
“Where?”
“He used to hide things in the wall behind the old gym showers.”
“That building is gone.”
“No,” he said. “Front half is. Back wall’s still there behind the pawn shop.”
I almost hung up.
Then he said, “Your mother knew.”
My chest tightened.
“Don’t.”
“She knew I kept fighting because I owed men like Vincent. She made me promise if anything happened, I’d tell the truth one day.”
“She died waiting for a lot of promises.”
“I know.”
His voice cracked.
“I’m trying to keep one late.”
I took the information to Rachel and Morales.
Morales did not trust it.
Neither did I.
But federal agents checked.
Behind the old tile wall of a pawn shop storage room, they found a metal box.
Inside was the paper ledger.
Names.
Amounts.
Dates.
Judges.
Promoters.
Officers.
Businessmen.
And one name that made Rachel go very still.
Senator Allen Pryce.
The man who had recently stood on television praising Chief Hale as a “fallen but dedicated public servant.”
The fight was not over.
It had just moved upstairs.
My father agreed to testify about the ledger’s origin.
He came to Vegas two weeks later.
We met at a diner off the strip.
He looked thinner.
Sober, maybe.
Maybe just trying to look sober.
Mia hugged him.
I did not.
He accepted that.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Two words.
Too small for the damage.
Still, they were the first honest ones he had given me in years.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I said.
“You don’t have to do anything.”
Good.
He was learning.
Maybe.
The new investigation went federal in a way that made everyone nervous.
Senator Pryce denied everything.
Then the ledger matched bank records.
Then Vincent confirmed payoffs.
Then Hale testified from custody.
May you like
Power began eating itself.
And this time, I watched from the outside.
