Her smile is thin and transactional.“You’d need to pay me.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“Everything works that way.”She tilts her head.“Did he tell you why he really retired?”
“That’s a matter of public record.”My heart thumps hard against my ribs.
I shouldn’t trust a word out of her mouth, but she’s just said the one thing I’ve quietly suspected since the beginning.
And somewhere between one breath and the next, I realize I don’t want to hear it from her.Whatever the real story is, I want it to come from Maddox, if he decides I’m someone he wants to tell.
“It’s bullshit.”Something lights up behind her eyes, bright and a little feverish.“I know the real story.I’ll tell you for five thousand dollars.”
“Erica.”
She leers at my use of her name.Her eyes are wild, her posture menacing, but beneath it, I catch a flicker of the little girl she used to be.The one who never learned how to feel safe.Always reaching, always steeling for a battle, always looking for something solid to hold onto.
I should be on high alert and afraid, but I’m not.The ache in my chest is heavier than fear because I can only imagine how bad she’s hurting and how helpless the people around her must feel.
She slumps onto the edge of the bed, and the moment stretches long between us.“Maddox didn’t retire.”
The air shifts, and the room closes in.I want her to stop talking, but the words are already loose in the air between us.
“He didn’t choose it.”Her voice drops, raw at the edges.“He didn’t get tired.He didn’t decide small-town life sounded cute.”She drags a hand down her face, smearing mascara in dark streaks.“They made him choose.”
My stomach flips.There’s a relief in her voice underneath the grief—the relief of someone who’s held something too long and finally,finallyfound a place to set it down.
“Fucking Marcos Madrigal and his battalion of lawyers.That asshole smiles at you while cutting your throat.”Her laugh comes out wrong.“One of the guys on his pit team ODed.It was my fault.All of it.”
Her eyes find mine, and for a beat, there’s no angle, no game—only unadulterated guilt and shame.
I vaguely recall coming across a small news item about a pit member dying.The story existed, floated out there in the world, but no one made the connection to Maddox Hartley.No one thought to look, and why would they?
“I was a disaster.”She snorts, resigned.“Still am, and Mad kept fixing it.Kept thinking he could fix me.”She paces.“Beto died, and they were going to hand me over to the cops.”
My stomach rolls.“Who?Madrigal?”
This shed a new light on Maddox’s call with Marcos all those weeks ago.
She nods.“He told Maddox to walk away from me.Clean break, no contact—or they’d burn him down, too.”Her jaw trembles.“Sponsors.Contracts.His whole future.”
Erica presses her palm to her chest like she’s trying to hold herself together.“They expected him to feed me to the sharks, but they never knew him.He begged them.He said I needed help—rehab, not jail.”
I can see it, Maddox standing there, broad shoulders squared, taking the hit like he always does.
“They gave him an ultimatum: me or racing.”Her voice breaks.“And he chose me.”
The words land one by one, each heavier than the last.
“He gave it up.”Erica swipes at her face, breathing hard.“Everything—the money, the career, the thing that saved his family.He let them spin it as a retirement so I wouldn’t go to prison.”
Silence swells, and my ears ring with the truth of it.
“He did that for a girl who couldn’t stop fucking up.”She shakes her head slowly, like she’s still turning it over after all this time.“I still can’t understand how he can stand to look at me.”For a moment, she looks undone—eyes glassy, guilt stripping her down to something raw and exposed, too aware of the damage she’s caused.
“So, yeah.”She laughs, but it’s brittle now, defensive.“That’s the truth.Congratulations.You got it for free.”
Chapter35