Chapter 7
Milo did not sign his name. He didn't need to.
He set the timed transmission trigger for 20:55 CET—five minutes before they were scheduled to walk onto the red clay beneath the floodlights.
He shut the laptop, closed the lid, and placed it back on the desk.
Then, Milo walked over to his tennis bag.
He pulled out his primary racket—a customized, matte-black frame strung to a punishing sixty pounds of tension. He ran his fingers down the synthetic strings. They were tight, rigid, capable of generating blistering topspin that could tear the fuzz off the felt.
For three years, Gabriel had coached him to play passive.
*Let them make the mistake, Milo. Keep the rally neutral. Wait for my call at the net.*
Gabriel had deliberately stunted Milo’s game, capping his aggression, preventing the world from seeing what Milo could actually do when he wasn't playing with a leash around his throat. Gabriel had kept Milo half-strangled so Gabriel could maintain the illusion of being the master, the protector, the savior.
Tomorrow night, Gabriel wanted to lose.
Gabriel had promised Vance a straight-sets surrender. Gabriel had promised to feign a shoulder injury, dump his volleys into the net, step aside, and let the Spanish team roll over them in under an hour.
A slow, vicious smile spread across Milo’s face in the dark.
*No, Gabriel,* Milo thought, his fingers tightening around the racket handle until the muscles in his forearm stood out like steel cables.
*You wanted out of your debt? You wanted to walk away clean?*
*I am not going to let you miss.*
*I am going to track down every ball you try to leave. I am going to cover every inch of clay you try to abandon. I am going to hit the lines, paint the corners, and drag your pathetic, treacherous body kicking and screaming to the top of that podium.*
Gabriel had built his entire career on the myth of his own sacrificial nobility.
So Milo was going to give him the ultimate sacrifice.
He was going to force Gabriel to win the championship. He was going to force Gabriel to hoist that silver trophy in front of twenty thousand cheering fans and forty million television viewers worldwide.
And as the confetti rained down, as the cameras flashed, Gabriel would look up into Box 14-B and see Marcus Kane’s face.
Gabriel would look at the digital scoreboard and realize that every point Milo had won was a thirty-million-euro death sentence ticking down to zero.
A punitive victory.
The most brutal execution on earth: forcing a traitor to achieve the greatest triumph of his life, knowing that triumph would destroy him.
Milo placed the racket back into his bag, zipped it shut with a quiet, decisive snap, and walked back toward the bedroom.
The room was cool and peaceful. Gabriel was still sleeping deeply, his face buried in the pillow that had replaced Milo, breathing with the slow, innocent rhythm of a child who believed the world was entirely under his control.
Milo climbed back into bed.
He didn't hesitate. He slid beneath the down comforter, pulled Gabriel’s heavy, tattooed arm back over his waist, and rested his head in the crook of Gabriel’s neck.
He inhaled the scent of wintergreen, sweat, and betrayal.
Gabriel shifted in his sleep, his subconscious registering Milo’s presence, his broad fingers tightening possessively over Milo’s hip, holding him close, holding him down.
"Got you," Gabriel mumbled softly in the dark, his voice thick with slumber. "Safe."
Milo closed his eyes, his breath evening out, his pulse steady and calm as an assassin’s heartbeat.
"Yes, Gabriel," Milo whispered into the shadows. "Sleep well. Tomorrow, we win."
The tunnel beneath Court Philippe-Chatrier smelled of damp concrete, vaporized sweat, and expensive cologne.
Above their heads, twenty thousand voices rumbled through the reinforced concrete, a deep, rhythmic bassline that vibrated straight through the soles of Milo’s court shoes. To the rest of the world, this was the peak of sporting romance: Gabriel Vance-Moreau, the dashing French veteran playing with a torn labrum, fighting for one last Grand Slam crown alongside his twenty-three-year-old protégé and lover.
Gabriel stood two paces ahead of him, adjusting the sweatband on his right forearm. He turned back, offering that familiar, heart-melting smile—the one that had adorned billboards from Tokyo to New York.
"Just like we talked about," Gabriel whispered, reaching out to give Milo’s shoulder a steadying squeeze. His fingers were warm, the pressure deliberate and calming. "Keep your returns safe. Don't press. If they pull you wide, don't blow your knees out chasing it. We give the crowd forty-five good minutes, we take our bow, and we leave through the side gates."
Milo looked into Gabriel’s amber eyes. Under the fluorescent strip lights, Gabriel looked magnificent—broad-chested, leonine, glowing with the easy grace of a man who believed every variable of his life was under his total command.
"Forty-five minutes," Milo echoed, his voice like silk.
"That's my boy," Gabriel murmured, leaning in to brush his lips against Milo’s temple, shielding the gesture from the television camera mounted on the tunnel dolly. "Stick close to me out there."
*Stick close so you can drown me with you,* Milo thought.
"Two minutes to walk-on, gentlemen," the floor manager called, his headset glowing green in the gloom.
Milo adjusted his grip on the black racket. He didn't look at Gabriel again. He looked past him, through the rectangular mouth of the tunnel where the blinding expanse of red clay lay bathed in fifty thousand watts of halogen light.
High up in the lower tier, directly behind the umpire’s high chair, Milo’s eyes found Box 14-B.
Sitting in the front row, wearing a tailored charcoal overcoat despite the mild evening air, was Marcus Kane. Beside him sat two men with thick necks and earpieces curled behind their collars, their laps covered by dark trench coats. Kane wasn't looking at the court. He was looking down into the tunnel mouth, his cold, reptilian gaze locked directly onto Gabriel’s back.
At 20:55, Milo’s phone in his locker had transmitted the decrypted files to London, Paris, and the sports desks.
The clock was already ticking.
"Mesdames et messieurs," the stadium announcer’s voice boomed through the PA system, triggering an avalanche of roars that shook the air out of Milo’s lungs. "Please welcome the finalists!"
The heat hit them first—a wall of dry, electric warmth rising off the red clay, mixed with the roar of twenty thousand fans rising to their feet. Gabriel stepped out with his head high, raising his racket to salute the tricolor flags fluttering across the upper decks. He basked in it. He bathed in the adulation, waving with that tragic, stoic nobility he wore like a second skin.
Milo walked three strides behind him, his dark eyes fixed on the Spanish pairing waiting across the net.
Carlos Navarro and Diego Ortiz. Two baseline grinders from Valencia, built like welterweights, with forehands that sounded like whip-cracks against the cool evening air. On paper, Gabriel and Milo had beaten them twice on clay. But tonight, Navarro and Ortiz had been instructed by their camp to target Gabriel’s backhand, sensing weakness.
They had no idea that weakness had already been purchased and paid for.
