Trent shifted uneasily near the doorway. He had brought the photograph, but he still looked like a man expecting a trap to close around his neck. “Malcolm told me Keene had retired overseas. He said the doctor could prove you’d been taking painkillers before the fight. He wanted something he could use if you started talking.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I wanted to.” Trent swallowed. “It was easier than admitting I’d been helping a man who might have ruined your life.”
Agrippa’s expression remained still, but his hands curled slowly at his sides. “You helped him intimidate my son.”
“I know.”
“No. You know the words. You don’t know what it feels like to watch a child check the window every time a car slows down.”
Trent lowered his eyes. For once, he offered no excuse.
Natalie enlarged the photograph on her laptop. The hotel sign in the background was partially visible, and a reflection in the glass showed a black SUV with a distinctive cracked taillight—the same vehicle that had followed Agrippa from the lumberyard.
“This wasn’t taken six months ago,” she said. “Look at the event poster behind them. That hotel hosted the Atlantic Combat Finance Summit last month.”
“So someone altered the date,” Trent said.
“Or the photograph is newer than the person who sent it wants us to believe.”
A faint sound came from the corridor: the scrape of a shoe against concrete.
Agrippa raised one hand, silencing them. He moved to the office door and listened. Another scrape. Then a quick metallic click.
“Back exit,” he whispered.
Natalie closed the laptop and slipped it into her bag. Trent started toward the front hall, but Agrippa caught his sleeve and pulled him back just as a sharp crack split the air. A bullet punched through the office door at shoulder height, scattering splinters across the room.
Natalie gasped. Trent dropped to the floor.
Agrippa pushed them toward the rear passage. “Move. Now.”
They ran through the narrow corridor, past rusted lockers and a row of old punching bags. A second shot struck the wall behind them. Agrippa shoved open the fire exit and led them into the alley, where cold rain slicked the pavement.
A dark figure stood at the far end beside the SUV.
Agrippa didn’t charge. He pulled Natalie behind a stack of pallets and watched the figure’s hands. The person lifted a phone, took a picture, then climbed into the vehicle. The engine roared. The SUV reversed hard and vanished around the corner.
Trent stared after it, shaking. “They could have killed us.”
“They wanted us frightened,” Natalie said, breathing hard. “Dead people don’t need to be frightened.”
Agrippa looked back at the gym door. The shot had not been a warning to Trent. It had been a message to him: someone knew they had opened the archive, and someone was willing to spill blood to keep the truth buried.
He turned to the others. “We stop hiding. We get copies of everything to people Malcolm can’t buy.”
“And Keene?” Natalie asked.
Agrippa’s gaze hardened. “We find the doctor before Malcolm does.”
Larry Fisher sat at the kitchen table with his backpack zipped and his phone face down beside a bowl of cereal. He had barely touched the food. When Agrippa came through the door, the boy’s eyes went immediately to his father’s hands, checking for blood.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.” Agrippa crouched beside him. “I’m all right.”
“You always say that.”
The accusation was quiet, which made it land harder.
Agrippa pulled out the chair opposite him. Outside, rain tapped the windows. The house felt smaller than it had a week ago, as if every threat had taken up physical space.
“I can’t promise that nothing bad will happen,” Agrippa said. “I won’t lie to you just to make this conversation easier. But I can promise you won’t have to face it alone.”
Larry stared at the table. “Those guys at the park—they knew who you were. They knew things about you. And now people are following us because of something that happened before I was even born.”
“That’s true.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
Agrippa had spent years keeping the past folded away, believing silence was a kind of protection. He had told Larry that fighting was an old job, that the championship was history, that some things were better left behind. But the past had found them anyway, and his silence had allowed other people to fill the gaps with lies.
He told Larry about the injured knee, the changed medical report, and the money that had disappeared. He explained that he had won the championship when people expected him to lose—and that his victory may have destroyed a plan worth millions.
Larry listened without interrupting.
“Did you know they were cheating you?” he asked at last.
“Not then.”
“Would you have fought if you’d known?”