Leo pulled his hand out of his pocket.
He wasn’t holding another newspaper clipping. He was holding a piece of faded yellow legal paper, folded into tight, neat squares.
“I didn't go to the police,” Leo said, looking up at Marcus. “I came to you. Because my dad said you were a good man. He said you just didn't know the truth.”
“Don't look at that!” Richard screamed from the ropes. He actually tried to climb through, his polished leather shoes slipping on the canvas. “It’s a forgery! It’s a pathetic shakedown!”
Marcus turned his head just enough to glare at Richard. It was a look of such concentrated, lethal promise that Richard froze halfway through the ropes, one leg dangling awkwardly over the apron.
Marcus turned back to Leo and held out his massive, tape-wrapped hand.
Leo carefully unfolded the yellow paper. He smoothed out the creases against his chest, then placed it into the champion’s palm.
Marcus brought the paper up to the light.
It was a page torn from a ledger. At the top, in dark blue ink, was the letterhead of the local underground syndicate they had been indebted to twelve years ago. Below that was a contract of transfer.
Marcus’s eyes scanned the lines. He recognized the brutal, predatory terms. But it wasn’t his name on the debt anymore.
I, Thomas Carter, assume the full financial and physical liability of the fighter Marcus Vance. In exchange for the clearing of Marcus Vance’s ledger, I surrender my managerial rights, my percentage of his future earnings, and agree to a three-year sentence in the state penitentiary on the outstanding racketeering charges assigned to this gym.
Marcus felt the breath leave his lungs.
Tommy hadn’t run. Tommy had traded his own life, his freedom, and his future to wipe Marcus’s slate clean. He had taken the fall for the syndicate’s crimes so that a nineteen-year-old kid with a heavy right hook could have a chance at a legitimate career.
But there was something else on the paper.
At the very bottom, beneath Tommy’s jagged signature, was a second paragraph, written in a completely different hand. A sharp, elegant, sweeping cursive that Marcus had seen on every endorsement check, every fight contract, and every bank statement for the last decade.
Payment of $50,000 signing bonus received from Thomas Carter in exchange for exclusive managerial rights to Marcus Vance.
Signed, Richard Sterling.
Marcus stared at the signature. The ink was faded, aged by twelve years of being hidden in a shoebox, but there was no denying the handwriting.
“He stole it,” Leo said quietly, the words piercing the heavy silence of the room. “When my dad went to prison to save you, Mr. Sterling took the money my dad left for us. He forged the receipt to make it look like he bought your contract. And he told you my dad ran.”
The realization hit Marcus like a physical blow.