Chapter 5 The Last Page

Dante stood in the doorway with one hand on the light switch. He wasn't angry. That scared her more than anger would have.

"Don't come closer," Mara said. She held the folder against her chest.

"I'm not moving." He didn't. "You're going to read it anyway. So read it."

"Would you have answered if I'd asked?"

"Probably not."

"Then don't talk to me about asking."

She opened the folder on the desk.

Page one: hospital discharge papers. Her father's name, his birth date, the words traumatic brain injury, chronic.

Page two: Rourke's loan. Four hundred thousand dollars. Page twelve, the pledge, her father's signature. Nothing she had not already seen.

Page three was new.

A single sheet of thick white paper with a bold black header: APPOINTMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE.

Mara read it once. She read it again because she could not understand it. I, Frank Vance, manager of record for Mara Vance, appoint Dante Kane as her boxing adviser and authorized representative. Mara Vance may reject or revoke this appointment at any time.

At the bottom, her father's signature. The tilted V. The last letter trailed off into a thin line. She laid it beside page twelve. Same pen. Same shaking V. Under it, a nurse's name. Under that, a date and a time.

Three weeks ago. 11:52 P.M. St. Anne's Hospital.

"That's the night he died." It was not a question.

"Yes."

"I was in Reno," she said. "I was fighting. I was winning." She had checked her phone at the final bell. Three missed calls. She had missed him by thirty-eight minutes.

"I know." Dante's voice cracked on the second word, just barely. "I was in the room."

She thought of her father in that bed, small and gray under hospital blankets. And of the man she hated sitting beside it.

"He called you," she whispered. "Frank Vance called the man who ended him. To sit with him while he died."

"He called me because I was the only man who owed him anything." Dante took one step. "I held his hand, Mara. He wasn't alone."

She remembered the nurse who had called her that morning, voice soft. A gentleman stayed with him all night. Mara had assumed it was a priest. She had never asked.

"Did he say anything? About me?"

"Everything he said was about you. He said you hated losing more than you loved winning. He said that would either save you or kill you."

Her eyes filled. She crossed the office in three steps and hit him with her left hand, hard, against his chest. He didn't flinch. She hit him again. And again. "You don't... get to... be there..."

He caught her wrist. Gently. This time he didn't let go. His hand was warm and rough. His thumb rested on the inside of her wrist.

"Let go," she said, but it came out as a whisper.

He didn't. She didn't pull away either.

Then she did. She stepped back and wiped her face with her sleeve. "You've been training me for three days. You let me hate you for three days. And you never said."

"I couldn't."

"Why?"

"I made a promise."

"To who?"

"To him."

Mara laughed, a short, ugly sound. "Everyone in my life makes promises to my father. Nobody makes them to me."

"Then here's one made to you." He nodded at the open folder. "Read the last line. Mara Vance may reject or revoke this appointment at any time. Say the word, and I tear it up tonight. It's your career, Mara."

She stared at him. She had expected him to demand something. He had just given her a choice.

"And this?" She held up her phone, the headline still glowing. "The leak?"

"Rourke's lawyer." Dante pulled a folded sheet from inside his coat. An email printout, timestamped, the clinic's logo at the top. It had left Rourke's office at 9:14, twenty minutes before the story ran. "He wants the fight canceled. You forfeit, Rourke keeps three years of your purses and your father's gym. I have the proof. But if I use it now, he knows I've been watching him. And then you don't fight at all."

"Rourke doesn't know about page three, does he?"

"If he did, he would contest it before your next round."

A car door slammed outside. Headlight beams crossed the ceiling. Dante crossed the room in two strides and killed the light.

"Down," he whispered.

He pulled her behind the desk. They crouched in the dark, shoulder to shoulder, his hand over her mouth, hers fisted in his coat. Footsteps crossed the lobby. A flashlight beam slid under the door, an inch from her shoe, and slid away.

"Check the office," a man's voice said. Rourke's lawyer.

Mara held perfectly still. Dante's chest was hard against her arm. His heartbeat was faster than she expected. The knob rattled. Dante had locked it behind him.

"Nothing," the lawyer muttered. Footsteps retreated. A door shut. An engine started and faded.

In the dark, Dante's hand slid from her mouth to her shoulder and stayed there.

"He was looking for the folder," he said. "Rourke knows I kept Frank's records. He doesn't know what's in them."

"Then why would my father hand me to you, of all people?"

"He didn't hand you over." His eyes stayed on hers in the dark. "He gave me a job. Keeping you alive. There's a difference."

"Alive?" She stared at him. "From what?"

He said nothing.

"From what, Dante?"

"At the end, he told me the truth. All of it." He was speaking so quietly she had to lean in. "Then he made me swear."

His hand was still on her shoulder. Neither of them mentioned it.

"I was not to tell you one thing," he said slowly, "until you could beat me in a ring. He said you would never believe it from a man you could not beat."

"What thing?" Mara whispered.

Dante looked at the open folder on the desk, at her father's name on the tab, and then at her. He looked afraid.

"Tell me."

"The punch that ended your father's career," he said quietly, "wasn't mine."