Page 165 of Filled

My office. 8 AM. Don’t be late.

I read it four times, lying in a bed that still smells like Dakota’s shampoo even though I slept alone last night. The apartment is too quiet. No Cruz snoring, no Brady’s restless shifting, no Dante’s slow breath in the dark. Just me and a phone screen glowing in the gray morning, and the specific weight of a summons written by a man who has already decided what he’s going to say.

Victor doesn’t text like that. Victor texts in full sentences with too many exclamation points about protein orders and fight cards. This is formal.

I stare at the ceiling and run through the safe explanations. Budget. Scheduling. The commission paperwork for Brady’s next bout. A problem with the plumbing in the women’s locker room.

None of it sticks. Dread sits in my stomach like a swallowed stone, and underneath all the rationalizing, a quieter voice says the thing I don’t want to hear.

He knows.

The drive takes longer than it should because I let it. Back roads. A route that adds twelve minutes and buys me nothing but more time to grip the wheel. The sky is flat and colorless, the kind of overcast that drains the world of edges. Twice I pick up my phone at a red light to text Dakota, and twice I put it down.

What would I even say?

Something might be wrong. I don’t know what’s waiting for me, and scaring her with half a warning helps no one.

The gym is nearly empty when I pull in. A couple of the early crowd working the bags, the slap of leather and the whir of a jump rope, sounds that have anchored me every morning for six months. Today they slide off me like water. Marco is at the front desk with a clipboard, and when he looks up, his expression is careful and neutral. He nods at me once and goes back to his clipboard, and that tells me everything a warning would have.

Victor’s door is closed, so I knock.

“Come in.”

He’s behind the desk with his hands folded with a manila envelope, thick, sitting square in the center of his desk. He doesn’t look angry. I’ve seen Victor angry. Angry Victor paces, fills the room, uses his hands. This Victor is still. He looks like a man sitting with a dead animal on his desk, deciding how it got there.

“Close the door. Sit down.”

I do both. My body handles the mechanics while my mind spins through possibilities.

Victor looks at the envelope for a long moment before he speaks.

“This was delivered to my house yesterday. Not here. My house.” His jaw works. “Someone wanted me to know they know where I live.”

He slides the envelope across the desk. It takes everything I have to keep my hands steady when I pick it up.

Photographs. Glossy, professional, shot from a distance with a long lens.

The night of Dante’s dinner.

The first one shows the five of us on that small-town main street. Dakota’s hand in mine. Cruz’s arm slung over Brady’s shoulders. All of us lit warm under the streetlights, and God, we look happy. We look exactly like what we are.

The second is Cruz kissing Brady under the streetlight. Both faces are clear. Unmistakable.

The third is me. My arms wrapped around Dakota from behind, her body leaned back into my chest, both of us watching Cruz and Brady with expressions I can’t pretend are anything other than what they are.

There are more. A dozen, maybe. Our whole walk is documented frame by frame like surveillance. The last one shows us splitting off to separate cars in the restaurant lot, which proves the whole evening was coordinated.

Beneath the photos, a typed note. Unsigned.

Fifty thousand dollars to an account number, or the images go to the athletic commission, every MMA outlet, and every sponsor. Seventy-two hours.

The words blur. I read the note again.

“I’m not paying for it,” Victor says. “You pay a blackmailer once, you’re paying them forever. They’ll come back at seventy-five, then a hundred, and every time I’ll be right back in this chair with a new envelope.”

“Victor—”

“I need you to answer me straight, Eli.” His voice doesn’t rise. “Are the photos real? Are you with Dakota? Are the other three part of it? Have you been lying to me since I sat you in that chair and asked you point-blank about my fighters?”