Chapter Ten

VERA'S POV

Garrett Cole meets me at a coffee shop two blocks from the training facility at eight in the morning. He's bigger in person than on camera — broad-shouldered, quiet-eyed, the kind of man who takes up space without trying.

He orders black coffee and looks at me across the table like he's deciding something.

"Cole vouches for you," he says.

"I know."

"That means something to me. Just so you understand where I'm starting from."

"Understood."

He wraps both hands around his mug. "What do you need?"

I put my recorder on the table. He looks at it, then nods once.

"Three budget meetings," I say. "February, June, and October two years ago. Facility maintenance contracts that ran through a company called Northgate Operational Services. You signed the approval forms."

"I did."

"Did anyone explain what Northgate was?"

"Theo told me it was a preferred vendor. Pre-approved by ownership." He pauses. "I asked once why we were using an external contractor for work our facilities team could handle internally. He said ownership preferred to keep certain expenditures off the primary books for tax structuring reasons."

"And you accepted that."

"I was team captain. Not an accountant." His jaw tightens slightly. "I accepted it because Theo said it was standard and I had no reason then to think it wasn't."

"When did you start thinking it wasn't?"

"When the facilities team told me privately that Northgate had never actually done any work on the building." He looks at me steadily. "I went to Paulson. He told me to leave it."

"Why didn't you go further?"

"Because I have twelve players on this roster whose contracts are tied to the franchise value. Blowing up the organization mid-season doesn't just hurt ownership — it lands on them." He leans forward. "I need to know that what you're doing protects the players from the fallout."

"The submission targets the financial structure and the individuals who built it. The players aren't named in anything I have."

"If the franchise takes a value hit those contracts get renegotiated."

"Garrett." I meet his eyes. "The league inquiry that Lena Park triggered will do more damage to the franchise than my story. The difference is mine names the people responsible. The league process just burns the building and lets everyone inside claim they didn't know where the exits were."

He is quiet for a moment. Then he picks up his coffee.

"What do you need me to say on record."

I ask him four questions. He answers all four clearly, directly, without hedging. By the time we're done I have exactly what I need — an eyewitness account of the contract approvals from someone inside the organization with no financial motive to lie.

I stop the recorder and put it away.

"Thank you," I say.

"Don't make me regret it." He stands and pulls on his jacket. "And tell Cole to stop skating alone at eleven at night. Paulson's going to bench him for a twisted ankle before the season even starts."

He leaves. I sit with my coffee and add Garrett's account to the structure in my head.

Thursday is four days away and I have almost everything.

Almost.

---

I'm at the kitchen table with my laptop when Cole gets home that afternoon. My mother and Richard are out — some lunch that Richard arranged, the kind that lasts three hours because everything Richard does is designed to occupy the people around him for exactly as long as he needs them occupied.

Cole drops his bag by the door and comes into the kitchen and opens the fridge and stands there for a moment.

"Garrett was good?" he says.

"Better than good." I keep my eyes on my screen. "He's solid on record. Clear, specific, no room for a lawyer to pull it apart."

"And Paulson?"

"He called me an hour ago. He's in."

Cole closes the fridge and turns around. "Both of them."

"Both of them." I look up. "We have the financial chain, two on-record sources with operational knowledge, documentary evidence, and a corroborating digital trail. The submission is ready to file Thursday morning."

He leans against the counter and looks at me with something that isn't quite relief — it's the expression of someone who has been holding something heavy for a very long time and has just felt the weight shift.

"You built that in four days," he says.

"You built it in eight months. I just assembled the last pieces."

"Vera."

"Cole."

"Take the compliment."

I close my laptop. "Fine. I'm very good at my job."

"Yes," he says simply. "You are."

The kitchen is quiet. Late afternoon light coming through the window, the house empty around us, and the particular stillness of a moment that doesn't have a task in it.

He crosses the kitchen and sits down across from me at the table, which he doesn't usually do. Usually there's a counter between us or a room between us or a careful arrangement of furniture that we have both unconsciously maintained.

"After Thursday," he says.

"What about it."

"When the story runs and this house becomes the center of everything — what do you want to happen?"

I look at him directly. "I want my mother protected. I want the people who built this held accountable. I want my byline on the piece."

"That's the professional answer."

"It's the only answer I have right now."

He leans forward slightly. "Vera."

"Don't."

"I haven't said anything yet."

"You're about to say something that makes Thursday harder."

"I'm about to say something true." His eyes don't move from mine. "I've been in this house for ten days pretending I don't know exactly what it felt like to spend three hours with you at that gala. I'm tired of pretending."

My pulse does something inconvenient.

"We're four days from blowing up both our lives," I say.

"I know."

"Your father. My mother. Your career. My investigation."

"I'm aware of all of it."

"So why—"

"Because after Thursday it might be too loud to say it." He reaches across the table and turns my hand over on the tabletop — not holding it, just a single deliberate touch, his fingers against my pulse point. "And I'd rather say it in the quiet."

I don't pull away.

That alone is its own answer and we both know it.

"Thursday," I say. "We get through Thursday."

He pulls his hand back slowly. "Thursday."

He stands and picks up his bag and goes upstairs and I sit at the kitchen table with my hand still warm where he touched it and my laptop closed in front of me.

Four days.

I can hold a line for four days. I'm almost certain.