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What if I made itseemlike one of the favored fighters wasn’t at one hundred percent?

Injured. Off his game. Whatever. Something. Anything really.

People talk online, and they believe what they read. All I’d have to do is make it plausible enough.

A photo. A vague caption. A few ‘did you hear?’ comments in the right threads. I could make a killing. All I’d need is access to a few burner accounts. Or bots.

And I knew exactly who can help me with that.

I pulled up my thread with Ghost and typed:

Me: Hey. I have a question that may or may not be legal.

Ghost: That’s my favorite kind. Hit me.

Me: If I wanted to spread a rumor online that someone got injured—not huge, just enough to shake betting confidence—could you help?

Ghost: You want fake accounts, manipulated engagement, and maybe a doctored photo?

Me: Yeah. But make it subtle. Strategic. Not like ‘troll farm,’ more like ‘gossip with teeth.’

Ghost: Done it before. Can do it again. Who’s the target?

Me: I’ll send you a name soon. Just wanted to see if I could pull the trigger.

Ghost: You already did. You just haven’t admitted it yet.

I smirked.

He wasn’t wrong.

By the time my rideshare pulled up to my house, the plan was already half-formed in my head. I climbed back up the trellis, slid inside my window, and collapsed onto my bed in the dark.

I didn’t sleep that night.

I couldn’t.

Not with the image of him burning behind my eyes.

The way he moved. The way the room shifted when he stepped into it. Like gravity recalibrated around him and everyone just went along with it.

I thought about his tattoos, crawling up his arms like stories he had yet to tell. The way he never smiled, not even once. Like he didn’t need to. Heknewpeople were watching him, already afraid of what he might do.

He wasn’t a man in a ring.

He was the king of an empire made of fists and fear.

That’s when it hit me.

The way the crowd moved around him. The way people didn’t just cheer, they bowed, in their own way. The way he never looked surprised to win. Those weren’t fighter things.

They werebossthings.

Like Bratva.

The word drifted through my mind like smoke—the Russian mafia. Whispers I’d overheard at Lila’s townhouse yesterday, at charity galas in the past, gossip my father quickly shut down with a tight smile and a change of subject. I remembered hearing about it once from a cop at a fundraiser, said quietly so that no one else but the two of us could hear.

“They don’t ask twice. The Bratva make the Irish look like Boy Scouts.”