Page 174 of Game Misconduct
She flips the phone over and taps a message. A voice recording starts to play, already queued up.
Two voices.
Dean’s.
And someone else I don’t recognize at first—until I do.
Joshua Leonard.
The Boston Freeze Golden Boy asshole veteran who went after the rookie Maddox saved.
The one player Dean always wanted on the team, but even my father refused to try to acquire him.
The one with no love lost between him and Maddox.
“…told you it would work,” Josh says, smug and low. “You leak the story, he spirals. Carrington’s credibility tanks. They’re both out by playoffs, guaranteed.”
Dean’s reply is colder. “It’s not just about getting rid of them. It’s about restoring order. Maddox was never going to fall in line. And Sloane…she’s dangerous when she thinks she’s untouchable.”
The room tilts.
I stare at the phone like it might bite me.
“They planned this,” I whisper. “They—Jesus, theyplannedthis.”
Tessa pauses the recording and ger voice goes sharp. “There’s more. Including how Dean’s been feeding rumors to a media contact for months. It’s all on here. Time stamps. Identifiers. Enough to bury him.”
I blink, barely absorbing the words. “Where did you get it?”
“Total fluke. He has his assistant record their meetings to dictate later. She left her phone in his office by accident andnever shut off the recording. When she heard it, she came to me for advice.”
I shake my head. “This doesn’t make sense. Why would he?—?”
But the question dies before I finish it.
Because I know why.
Power.
Control.
Legacy.
The same reason men like him always pull the strings.
And the same reason I’m sitting here now—half undone, fully exposed and with nothing left to hold onto but a broken heart and a handful of truth too late to change anything.
Tessa watches me carefully, as if she’s expecting me to explode. To rage. To scream and demand retribution.
But none of that comes.
I fold forward instead, elbows on my knees, face in my hands. My body shakes, a sob strangling in my throat like barbed wire.
It isn’t Dean’s betrayal that guts me.
It’s Maddox’s voice in my head, breaking all over again.
It’s over.
