Page 181 of The Home Game

“Uhh, yeah,” Dom said. “Sounds like fraudulent charges or something.”

“No,” Matty laughed. “I would have checked on that. These are both deposits. I don’t worry about them so much. Probably some endorsement checks I forgot about or something. I just like to stay on top of it, you know?”

He wasn’t great with money but he was trying. He had a lot more responsibilities now and he didn’t want to let Antoni and the kids down.

Matty opened his banking app and logged in. He scanned his account, confused. “Oh, hmm. I don’t see anything … Ohh wait. Must be Antoni’s account. Let me check that.”

“You have joint accounts?” Dom asked, his brows drawing together.

“Well, yeah,” Matty said, not looking up. “When we got married, we did all that. I mean, we have some separate accounts too but it made way more sense to shift everything over to my bank and put my name on his stuff and his on mine, you know?”

“Yeah, I’ll bet Antoni loved that,” Dom said snidely. “Easy access to all of your money.”

“Dom …” Dustin said, his tone warning.

“What? It’s true, right?” He looked between them.

“First of all, I was the one who suggested the joint accounts,” Matty said with a scowl. “Second, he argued with me about it. Third, he finally agreed because banks screw poor people over. I know you two have never had to worry about that shit but it’s true. They charge way more fees on accounts with low limits and he was getting totally screwed over.”

“I thought there were laws about that,” Dustin said with a frown.

“Yeah. They went into effect last year.” Dom pursed his lips. “See, Antoni’s been lying to you.”

Annoyed, but not willing to let himself be goaded into an argument, Matty rolled his eyes. “There are laws, yeah. But it’s only if you’re young, a student, a senior, or getting disability payments or whatever. Before we got married, Antoni didn’t have much money but he still didn’t qualify for any of those things.”

He wouldn’t have known that if Antoni hadn’t told him but hey, he was learning.

Dom frowned. “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“Anyway, Antoni was getting screwed over by bank fees and shit so we opened up some new accounts for him. And no, he hasn’t drained me of all of my money,” Matty scoffed before Dom could claim that had happened. “Actually, I keep telling him to spend more money on himself but he only uses it for stuff the kids need.”

“Okay, fine, so he’s playing the long game,” Dom argued. “But don’t you think it’s suspicious that he got two big deposits right when there was a ‘leak’ about the team?”

Matty blinked, staring at his friend. “Seriously? You think that it was Antoni who sold us out to JockGossip?”

“It’s kind of suspicious.”

“Yeah, okay.” Matty snorted. “I am sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for the deposits, dude, but you have fun with your paranoia.”

“Guys,” Dustin said tightly. “If we’re having this conversation, we need to do it elsewhere.”

Matty glanced up to see several guys on the team looking at them, glancing away when they realized they’d been caught staring. He became aware of several other people around too, staff at the practice facility who cooked their meals and cleaned up after them, and he felt a flicker of unease go through him.

Someone had sold their private info to JockGossip.

Matty had been thoroughly reamed out by Kate again, since apparently, he was the one who’d left the door to her office open a crack.

He felt terrible about it but he felt even worse knowing there was someone in the organization that couldn’t be trusted. Someone who hadn’t hesitated to leak private information.

Someone who had sold team gossip for money.

Looking back, they could see that it had been happening for a while now. At least since Dustin and Charlie’s wedding. Until now, it had mostly been stuff that was easy to explain away. August’s presence at the hospital where Nico had his surgery. The mid-game fight between Jonah and Felix in Buffalo.

Things that could have come from another source.

But this hit a lot closer to home.

Matty hated to think that it could be anyone on the team or one of the SAPs like Birdie, but he didn’t like to think about it being someone like Mitchell or any other person on staff.

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