Page 42 of Oliver (The Golden Team #7)

Emery

California

T he call ended, and for a long moment, I just sat there, watching Olly playing with his dog.

So, Vale hadn’t just been running weapons. He’d been logging every shady transaction, every off-the-books op, every name involved. And I’d seen something I shouldn’t have. But what I didn’t know was that I held the damn key.

It wasn’t just about me anymore.

It never had been.

I stood and walked slowly to the kitchen sink, rinsing out my tea mug with shaking hands. But not from fear.

From fury.

He had tried to erase me. Reduce me to a missing person, a problem that disappeared quietly. And now that they had him in custody, he was playing games. Threatening shadow retaliation. Acting like he still held power.

He doesn’t.

Not anymore.

I grabbed my laptop, heart pounding, and opened a draft I hadn’t looked at in months: my first memoir outline. At the time, it had been a therapy exercise—scribbling down chapters in secret about my life as a swimmer, what it cost me, how I rose through it. The ghosts I faced.

Now I knew what came next.