Page 96 of Hard Count
Marta looked at him for a long moment. “Say more.”
“Piper Ashton has been funded since he was twenty-one by Jayson Days. The scale of this thing is massive and there are others. This is not ‘quarterback has secret boyfriend’. This is a ‘quarterback has been purchased by a powerful tech billionaire’ story.”
Marta held still. “Are you certain? You know Jayson owns our parent company. I never authorized you to investigate him.”
“I am aware.”
“So this story is dead unless you feed it to another media outlet, but even that their legal team would kill it. Nobody is willing to go head to head with this guy.”
Caleb had already thought about this. “We have another option.”
Marta nodded. “Leak it to social media, and hope it sticks before it’s scrubbed within minutes,” Caleb said.
“Yup, but we are not going to do that, because we work for Jayson at the end of the day, and I have a mortgage.”
“But I can’t just let this story sit, Marta. It’s too big.” Caleb took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes. He had been working on this story for months and it was now a dead end.
“Caleb, leave it alone. You don’t want to end up fired, or worse. Understand?” Marta said as she turned toward the door.
“Understood,” Caleb replied, knowing full well he was not going to leave it alone. He was going to make a call to the one person who needed to know the story could blow at any moment, an old friend, Vivienne Cross.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Los Angeles
The downfall of Piper Ashton story was already everywhere. He had avoided his phone and slept through most of Monday with the blinds closed.
When he finally got the courage to open social media, the first thing he saw was a troll post,Ashton gets an F for fucking failure.
The Timesran the headline,Ashton’s golden boy era burns.He slammed his laptop. He knew he had to focus on the L.A.-Seattle game and get Atlanta out of his head. He was trying to get his head back into the thing that always mattered, football.
The L.A.-Seattle game had been flagged all season. It was the last week of the regular season. It was going to decide the division. It was going to decide who was getting the last spot in the playoffs. The networks had flexed the game to the Sunday night slot anticipating record ratings for the second meet up between Piper and Noah.
What the league had not known was that the two teams would both be 12-4, and that Piper Ashton would come into the game off a 0-28 loss to Atlanta that was all anyone was talking about right now. The conversation had switched from,ArePiper and Noah a thingtoIsPiper in free fall.
The TV spot dropped in dramatic fashion. Tank had texted Piper a link, a thoughtful gesture, because by the time Piper opened the link of the spot, it had been playing on a loop for two days everywhere.
The spot ran for thirty seconds. A shot of Piper throwing. A shot of Noah throwing. A shot of the rainstorm that was forecast for Sunday night in Seattle. And then a slow-motion shot of Piper he didn’t remember, and figured it was AI generated, theball leaving his hand in hard rain, cut against a matching shot of Noah in the pocket, same framing, same light, same hard rain.
The voiceover said: They’ve been waiting to destroy each other. Can they handle the storm?
***
Practice was not good, which seemed to be the trend in Piper’s flop era at that moment. An era that lasted one game, and fans were incapable of forgiving him for it.
Piper threw, his receivers caught, the tempo was decent, but he was not in it.
The offensive coordinator watched film with Piper in the afternoon. “Ashton, where’s your fucking head?” he said as he slammed his fist on the table.
Piper did not flinch, “I will get the job done, I promise.”
“Did you get treatment today for the rib injury?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” Piper said.
“Good.”
The film session ended.
Tank cornered him in the weight room.
