Chapter 9
"What the fuck are you doing?" Gabriel snorted under his breath, his eyes darting frantically toward Box 14-B.
High up in the shadows, Marcus Kane had stood up. Kane was leaning over the velvet railing, his face dark as thunder, one hand pressed to the radio unit in his ear.
"Playing tennis, Gabe," Milo whispered as he walked past him back to the baseline. "Isn't that what we're here for?"
"Milo, stop it," Gabriel growled, his voice trembling with the first real edge of panic. He hurried back, grabbing Milo’s arm just above the taped wrist. "You're playing out of your mind. Back off. I told you, my shoulder is done. If we get into a dogfight, I can't hold my serve!"
"Then don't hold it," Milo said, his dark eyes fixing Gabriel with a gaze so cold, so terrifyingly lucid, that Gabriel actually recoiled. "I'll hold it for you."
What followed over the next thirty minutes was not a tennis match.
It was a public execution disguised as sporting genius.
Milo Chen—the quiet boy, the shadow, the dutiful junior partner who had spent three years hitting safe, obedient balls—dismantled the Spanish pair with a savagery that left the stadium breathless.
Whenever Gabriel intentionally left an alley open, Milo was there, sliding ten feet across the red clay to whip a passing shot around the net post.
Whenever Gabriel intentionally dumped a weak volley into the mid-court, Milo sprinted from the baseline, reading the Spanish counter-attack before the ball even left their strings, intercepting their winners with impossible, reflex drop-volleys that died in the dirt like falling leaves.
The crowd went completely insane.
"CH-EN! CH-EN! CH-EN!"
The chant started in the upper tiers and rolled down like an avalanche. The French spectators, sensing an iconic, mythical comeback from the underdog, stamped their feet on the wooden floorboards until the entire concrete stadium hummed.
Gabriel was suffocating.
Every time Gabriel tried to hit the net, Milo called him off, screaming *"MINE!"* with a ferocity that shook Gabriel to his core, taking the ball off Gabriel’s strings and converting it into a winner.
Gabriel looked like a ghost trapped inside a hurricane. His feet moved because the ball kept coming straight at his body; his survival reflexes took over even as his mind screamed in terror. Milo was tactically herding him, positioning his own shots so that the Spanish returns were forced directly into Gabriel’s easiest, most unavoidable reflex zones.
Gabriel couldn't miss even if he wanted to. Milo was boxing him into brilliance.
On set point, Milo hit an ace down the center T at 134 miles per hour—the fastest serve of his entire professional career.
"Game, and second set, Moreau and Chen!" the umpire bellowed. "Seven games to five!"
The arena erupted into an ear-splitting, deafening roar.
One set all.
The match was going to a decisive championship tiebreak.
Schedule C was dead.
The straight-sets loss was obliterated. Across the globe, in Gibraltar, Macau, and London, the unhedged liabilities on Vance’s books were already detonating.
Gabriel dropped his racket onto the clay.
He didn't celebrate. He didn't pump his fist. He stood on the baseline, drenched in sweat, his chest heaving as if he had just been pulled from a freezing river. His amber eyes were completely wild, staring up into Box 14-B.
Marcus Kane was no longer in the box.
The three chairs were empty.
"Ten-minute break before the deciding tiebreak," the umpire announced.
Gabriel turned and practically sprinted down the player tunnel, his shoes sliding wildly on the rubber mats. Milo walked after him, his breath steady, his pulse ticking like an atomic clock.
***
The corridor behind the player locker rooms was dim, illuminated only by red emergency exit lights.
Milo rounded the corner just in time to see the heavy steel door of the private restroom slam shut.
Before Milo could reach the handle, the door swung open violently. Gabriel leaned out, his arm shooting forward, grabbing the front of Milo’s jersey and yanking him inside the tiled room.
The lock clicked into place.
Gabriel backed Milo against the cold marble counter. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his face pale as chalk, his breath coming in ragged, suffocating gasps. The noble, beautiful veteran had vanished; in his place stood a cornered, terrified beast.
"Are you insane?" Gabriel choked out, his fingers digging into Milo’s collar until the cotton tore. "Are you out of your fucking mind, Milo? What did you just do out there?!"
Milo looked at him. The smell of wintergreen ointment on Gabriel’s neck was choked with the sour stench of pure, cold adrenaline.
"I won the set," Milo said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "We're ten points away from the Grand Slam trophy, Gabe. You should be happy."
"Happy?" Gabriel’s voice broke into a cracked, hysterical laugh. He gripped his own hair with both hands, pacing the three feet of tiled space between the sinks. "You think this is about a silver cup? You think this is a game? Kane’s people are in the tunnel, Milo! They’re standing outside the south security gate right now!"
"Are they?" Milo asked softly.
"They had fifteen million euros riding on a straight-sets sweep!" Gabriel grabbed Milo by the shoulders, shaking him violently. "Fifteen million, Milo! I promised Vance we would lose 0-2! The hedge is gone! The Cayman accounts are wiped out! If we walk back out there and win this tiebreak, the syndicate defaults on forty million in public payouts!"
Gabriel slammed his fist against the marble counter, his chest heaving.
"They won't just take my house, Milo. They will take a bone-saw to my legs. They will throw me into the Seine with fifty kilos of lead around my ribs!"
Milo didn't flinch. He leaned against the counter, his head tilted slightly, watching Gabriel fall apart.
"That sounds terrible, Gabe," Milo murmured. "Why would Vance do that to his favorite debtor? You told me you only owed him five hundred thousand from your early coaching days."
Gabriel froze.
The color drained from his lips until they looked gray. "What?"
Milo reached into his pocket and pulled out a single, folded piece of paper—a high-resolution printout of Schedule C, complete with the Crestline crest and Gabriel’s looping signature.
Milo unfolded it with slow, agonizing deliberation and held it up to Gabriel’s face.
"Macau. Wynn VIP gaming salon. €1.2 million," Milo read, his voice clear, steady, and utterly devoid of warmth. "Monte Carlo. €850,000. Total debt: €4.2 million."
Gabriel’s eyes darted across the paper. His pupils dilated until they swallowed the amber of his irises.
"Where... where did you..."
"Clause 4.2," Milo continued, his eyes locking onto Gabriel’s trembling face. "*The debtor agrees to assign, transfer, and surrender all rights, title, and managerial representation pertaining to the sporting asset identified as Milo Sebastian Chen.*"
The silence in the tiled room was absolute, broken only by the drip of a faulty chrome faucet.
*Drip.*
*Drip.*
"You didn't take the fall for me," Milo whispered, stepping forward until his chest was an inch from Gabriel’s. "You didn't endure the dirt of the underworld to keep me pure. You gambled away four million euros on baccarat tables, and when the sharks came to take your skin, you sold me to Vance like a piece of meat."
