Chapter 10
"Milo..." Gabriel’s voice was a ragged whisper. Tears of pure, sickening panic finally broke in the corners of his eyes. "No... listen to me... you don't understand how it was... they had me cornered... Vance said he would kill me..."
"And Portugal?" Milo’s lips curved into a faint, bitter smile. "The training ranch in the Algarve? The ocean breeze? No managers, no parasites, just you and me?"
Gabriel couldn't answer. He dropped his gaze, his broad shoulders curling inward as if his spine had turned to dust.
"You were going to take the private jet to Lisbon tonight," Milo said, his voice dropping to a lethal, intimate whisper. "And Kane was going to take me out of the hotel in a black van. I was going to spend the next ten years playing underground exhibition matches in Dubai and Singapore to pay off your casino markers."
"I was going to come back for you!" Gabriel sobbed, grabbing Milo’s hands, dropping to his knees on the wet bathroom tiles just like he had in the locker rooms, holding Milo’s wrists against his chest in desperate supplication. "I swear to God, Milo! I was going to buy your contract back! I just needed time! I love you! You know I love you!"
Milo looked down at the man kneeling at his feet.
The golden idol. The towering veteran. The great, protective guardian who had promised to keep the ugly world away.
"You don't love me," Milo said softly. "You love having something beautiful to trade when you lose."
A heavy, metallic thud rattled the outside of the bathroom door.
"Moreau!" Marcus Kane’s muffled, gravelly voice cut through the wood. "Open the fucking door. Now."
Gabriel flinched as if a whip had struck his spine. He scrambled to his feet, terror turning his features into a twisted, grotesque mask. He backed away from the door, his eyes darting toward the frosted glass window set high near the ceiling.
"Two minutes!" the floor manager’s voice called from further down the corridor. "Final tiebreak! Moreau, Chen, you have two minutes to report to the court!"
Gabriel spun back toward Milo. The patronizing mask was completely gone, replaced by the naked, sniveling desperation of a condemned man looking at the executioner’s lever.
Gabriel reached out, his trembling, sweaty fingers clamping down around Milo’s left wrist—right over the clean white tape, digging in so hard that the fabric bit into Milo’s bruised skin.
"Milo, please," Gabriel begged, his voice shaking with a terror so raw it turned to spittle on his lips. Above their heads, through the open ventilation grate, the heavy, rhythmic tread of Vance’s spotters paced the concrete catwalks. "You have to miss the next return. If we win this tiebreak... if I hoist that trophy... Vance will default on forty million. They will kill me before I make it through the south gate! Please, Milo! Just hit the ball into the net! Let Ortiz have it! If I win this trophy, they will kill me!"
Milo looked down at the hand crushing his wrist.
Slowly, deliberately, Milo twisted his forearm. With a single, sharp jerk of his shoulder, he tore his wrist free from Gabriel’s grip, leaving Gabriel grasping at empty air.
Milo lifted his racket. With effortless, mocking precision, he spun the black graphite frame between his fingers, catching the grip in the exact center of his palm.
He looked Gabriel dead in the eye, his lips curving into a cold, radiant, unyielding smile.
"Then you better play the match of your life, Gabriel," Milo said, his voice ringing like an iron bell against the tiles. "Because I am not letting you lose."
Milo turned, unlocked the deadbolt with a clean, metallic snap, and shoved the door wide open.
He didn't look at Marcus Kane standing in the shadows of the corridor. He didn't look at the armed spotters watching from the catwalks above.
Milo stepped out into the blazing tunnel, walking straight toward the deafening roar of twenty thousand voices, leaving Gabriel standing frozen on the tiles—balanced on the razor’s edge of his own execution.
