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Brady:ok

Brady’s single word tells me he already knows it’s bad.

Dante’s apartmentis tense as we arrange ourselves around the living room. All of them watch me stand by the window like I’m about to announce a death.

“Victor pulled me into his office this morning.”

Cruz stops with a spring roll halfway to his mouth. “About what?”

“About us. Not in those words. He never said it straight out. But he listed what he’s seen.” I count it off on my fingers. “Dakota watching Brady at water breaks. Cruz and Dante arriving in lockstep every day. Me tracking Dakota across the floor while I’m coaching other people. He called it a pattern. Then he asked me point blank if anything was happening that could put licenses at risk.”

“What did you tell him?” Dakota asks.

“That the gym builds close teams. That he designed the gravity himself. True things that answered nothing, and he knew they answered nothing. He let me walk out anyway. Then he reminded me the commission is still hunting for a reason to bury Oath, and that a coach involved with a fighter is the headline that does it.”

The room goes quiet. Dante sets his fork down without eating.

“He knows,” Brady says.

I bite my lip. “He suspects. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?” Brady’s knee bounces. “Victor doesn’t say things by accident. He gave you a warning shot.”

“Then we take the warning.” I sit down on the arm of the couch. “I need everyone to understand what actually happensif this comes out. Not the vague version. The real one. The commission revokes my license first, because coach-fighter is the clearest violation. Then they look at the four of you, training partners sharing beds, and they call it compromised competition. They can pull all five licenses while they investigate, and investigations take years. Meanwhile Victor loses whatever sponsors survived the last purge. The gym gets audited. Every fighter at Oath gets a cloud over their record just for training there. Everything he built goes down with us.”

Cruz shakes his head. “Victor would understand. Come on. The man is engaged to Theo. He built this whole place so people like us could exist.”

“Understanding it and condoning it aren’t the same thing.” Dante’s voice stays level. “I’ve been out my whole career. I know exactly how much space the sport gives you. Victor can love us like family and still have to fire Eli, because if he doesn’t, the commission fires everyone. He doesn’t get to choose his feelings over the rulebook. Not with a target on his back.”

“So we’re a liability,” Dakota says. “That’s what you’re telling us. Loving each other makes us a weapon pointed at the one place that has become our home.”

Nobody answers her, because that’s exactly what I’m telling them.

She stands and walks to the window, keeping her back to us. “Then answer me this. If it comes down to it, if someone gets proof and we have to choose. The relationship or the careers. What do we pick?”

The silence stretches long enough to hurt.

Brady breaks it, quiet. “My family would disown me. Fully, this time. My dad hasn’t spoken to me since I left home, and my sister sends a text on my birthday like she’s paying a toll. If it got public that I’m bisexual, that I’m in a relationship with three men and a woman, they’d call it deviance. Perversion. Whateverthe pastor’s word of the week is.” His hands twist together in his lap. “I’d lose the last thread. And I keep telling myself the thread’s already dead, but it isn’t. Not to me.”

Dakota crosses the room and sits beside him, close but not touching, giving him the choice. He leans into her shoulder.

“I lost jobs for being out,” Dante says. “Early on. Two gyms told me flat out they didn’t want that around their fighters, and a third just stopped returning calls after I showed up to an interview with my ex. I’m established now, but established means visible, and visible means the wrong person only needs one story to tear it down. I’ve rebuilt before. I don’t want to find out if I can do it again.”

I look at the floor, because it’s my turn and this is the part I’ve never given them whole.

“I didn’t leave Apex because I was bored. That’s the version I tell. The truth is a fighter accused me of misconduct. It wasn’t true, and the review cleared me, but cleared doesn’t mean clean. The whispers follow you. Half the gyms that courted me went silent. Victor hired me anyway, on Marco’s word and his own judgment, when my name was still smoldering.” My throat feels tight. “If a second scandal lands on me, and this one’s real, I will never work in this sport again. I’m forty.”

Dakota’s eyes are on me, and there’s no judgment in them.

“I have three professional wins and a duffel bag,” she says. “Oath is the first place that ever gave me a real shot. If I get blacklisted, I’ve got twelve years of training that turn into nothing overnight and nowhere to go. So don’t any of you think I’m asking that question lightly. I know what I’d be losing either way.”

Cruz drags both hands down his face. “This is such shit. Victor gets to marry Theo in front of God and the sponsors, and we have to act like strangers or lose everything. How is that the world we’re expected to live in?”

“It’s the world we fight in,” Dante says. “Fair’s got nothing to do with it.”

“So what do we do?” Brady asks.

“Stricter rules. Nobody arrives together, nobody leaves together, ever. Staggered schedules, and I mean actually staggered, Cruz, not four minutes apart. No private conversations at the gym that anyone could watch through glass. No touching. Not a hand on a shoulder, not a fist bump that lasts too long. Dakota trains with Lisa and Reese more, spreading the pairings out. In that building we are a coach and fighters and nothing else, eight hours a day, every day.”