Leo realized he was out of time. With a frantic, shaking motion, he unrolled the brittle, yellowed newspaper and thrust it forward, holding it up like a shield between himself and the champion.
Marcus stopped dead in his tracks.
The harsh, bright lights of the boxing ring illuminated the front page of the paper. It wasn’t a major publication. It was the Westside Tribune, a cheap local broadsheet from the poorest district in the city. The paper was heavily creased, stained with coffee rings, and dated exactly twelve years ago.
But it wasn’t the date that made all the blood drain from Marcus Vance’s face.
It was the photograph beneath the fold.
The image was grainy, printed in cheap black-and-white ink. It showed a much younger, much thinner Marcus sitting on a wooden bench in a grimy locker room. His face was battered, his lip split. Standing over him, with a hand resting proudly on Marcus’s shoulder, was another man. A man with a thick jaw, tired eyes, and a taped-up left hand.
“Hold it!” Marcus roared.
The command tore through the ballroom with such explosive force that the security guard halfway through the ropes froze instantly. The chatter of the wealthy crowd, which had begun to rise in a crescendo of aristocratic outrage, died immediately.
Marcus didn't look at the crowd. He didn't look at his furious manager. His eyes were locked on the grainy photograph, and then, slowly, they traced upward to the boy's face.
“Where did you get this?” Marcus asked, his voice suddenly hollow, stripped of all its bravado.
Leo swallowed hard, his small arms shaking from the effort of holding the paper up. “It was in his shoebox. Under his bed.”
“Tommy,” Marcus whispered. The name seemed to catch in his throat, choking him. “You’re... you’re Tommy Carter’s boy.”
Leo nodded once. A single tear broke loose, cutting a clean trail through the grime on his cheek. “He said he trained you. He said he gave you your first gloves. And he said, when you made it to the top, you promised him one round.”
Richard Sterling reached the edge of the ring, his hands gripping the canvas. “Marcus! What are you doing? Let security do their job! This is a PR nightmare, throw the brat out!”
Marcus didn’t move. He was staring at the shape of the boy’s jaw, the set of his shoulders, the familiar defiance in his eyes. It was Tommy. It was like looking at a ghost.
“He’s my manager now,” Marcus said softly to the boy, ignoring Richard entirely. “I haven’t seen your dad in twelve years. We had a... falling out. Before I went pro.”
“He didn’t fall out with you,” Leo said, his voice dropping into a fierce, absolute certainty that shouldn’t have belonged to a child. “He saved you.”
“What?” Marcus frowned, his brow knitting together.
“He didn't run away with your contract money,” Leo said, his voice rising, echoing slightly off the high, vaulted ceiling of the ballroom. “He went to prison. Because of him.”
Leo’s small, shaking finger moved away from the newspaper, pointing directly past Marcus, straight at Richard Sterling, who was leaning over the ropes.