Page 107 of A Game of Deception

“It’s enough, right?” Tara asked. “To prove what he did?”

I nodded. “It’s a goddamn smoking gun.”

“So where do we go from here?” Leo asked. “Cops?”

Tara shook her head. “He owns half the department.”

“The league then,” I suggested. “MLS ethics committee?”

“Same problem,” Tara countered. “Too many connections. He’d bury us in legal bullshit for years.”

She was right. Hank didn’t get where he was playing fair.

“Then what?” I asked, frustration bubbling up. “What good is the truth if nobody will hear it?”

Leo straightened suddenly. “We go public.”

We both turned to him.

“How?” Tara asked.

“Fuck official channels. We create a media shitstorm too big to contain.”

The idea terrified and excited me. “How would that even work?”

Leo’s eyes lit up. “I know journalists who’d kill for this dirt. Give them everything and watch it explode. Once it’s out, Hank can’t control it.”

“Career suicide,” Tara said quietly.

“Not if we control the story,” Leo argued. “You’re the whistleblower who exposed daddy’s corruption. That makes you the hero.”

I looked at Tara. “Your call. Your father.”

She thought for a moment, then met my eyes. “He stopped being my father when he chose his reputation over Jimmy’s truth. Over us.” Her voice hardened. “Let’s burn him down.”

Leo grabbed his phone. “I know exactly who to call.”

The next twenty-fourhours were a blur. Leo, in full crisis-manager mode, set up a meet with a journalist named Gabriela Reyes.

“She’s the one,” he said as we drove to some quiet, upscale joint in Coral Gables. “Big-time investigative reporter. Wrote a piece a few years back questioning Hank’s business practices, and he got her blackballed from some local circles.”

Tara was sitting beside me in the back seat, her knee pressed against mine. “So she has a grudge,” she said.

“So she’ll be thorough,” Leo corrected. “She won’t run with a story this big unless it’s bulletproof. And ours is.”

Tara squeezed my hand, her touch sending a jolt of electricity straight through me. “You ready for this?” she asked, her voice low, just for me. “Once this door opens, it doesn’t close.”

I looked at her. At this woman who had been a ghost in my past, then the architect of my present, and now… now she was the only thing that felt real for the future. The only thing I wasn't willing to lose.

“For an eternity, I’ve been running from that night,” I said, my voice rough. “I’m done running.”

The restaurant was quiet. The host led us to a private room where a woman with sharp, intelligent eyes was waiting. She looked like she could smell bullshit from a mile away.

“Ms. Reyes,” Leo said.

She nodded at him, but her eyes were on us. “Dr. Swanson. Mr. McCrae. Leo says you have a story that’s going to make my year.”

We sat, and for the next two hours, we let it all spill out. The whole damn, ugly, fucked-up saga. Tara laid out the timeline, and I filled in the gaps with the raw, messy emotion of it. Gabriela just listened, her expression unreadable, occasionally cutting in with a question so sharp it could draw blood.