They sat on the hostel floor with a threadbare blanket between them like a poor man's stage, Jace with his laptop open and Maya watching the little white cursor blink like a heart, and he said, quiet, "I can't watch you fall for something I could stop by lying,"
and she answered with that stubborn breath of hers, "then don't lie, show me how sorry you can be, not with words but with the thing that scares you most".
He typed like a man amputating a limb, a slow clean removal, he wrote a short confession, the kind that would ruin headlines and probably save a life, he wrote about the bet, he wrote their names, he wrote Ethan's smirk into permanent pixels, he rehearsed the first line in his head and it sounded like a prayer.
"My name is Jace Kavanagh, I made a wager that hurt a woman I didn't mean to hurt, this is what happened"
Maya kept her hand on his arm, small pressure, no theatre, and when he looked up she said, soft, "Say my name when you do this"
and he did, because it felt true to say it in public, because names had been currency for him and now he wanted them to be something simpler, a bridge maybe, not a vault.
They kissed then, not a polished thing, messy and urgent, because the world outside might demand their blood and they wanted a private secession before the public pillory, the kiss was enough to make them both dizzy, it was enough to make him want to throw a grenade at the men who thought lives were games, it was enough to make her afraid she'd been forgiven too easily.
He hit upload, the bars climbed, the feed opened to a thousand small indifferent faces ready to chew, and his voice came out ragged as he read the words he'd practised, "I bet with men who love spectacle, we turned people into shows, I am a part of that cruelty, I will give up what they want to prove I'm not what they think," and the chat filled with questions and curses and a few cruel laughing emojis,
and for a second he thought he could see the edges of his old life collapse like a house of cards and he felt almost free
Then the screen on the wall flicked, someone in the corner had turned on the hostel's cheap TV to the local feed, and the broadcast snapped into a clip so edited it smelled like malice, a second-long shot of Maya handing over an envelope into a man's hand, the angle chosen to make it look secretive and transactional, the caption beneath it a single line, "paid accomplice revealed"
and the live feed that Jace had just opened exploded with a thousand breadcrumbs of outrage, his confession cut into static, the chat filled with calls for arrests and for explanations, Maya's hand flew to her throat like a bird seeking air and she mouthed, "I didn't"
"Of course you didn't,"
Jace said, and the world narrowed to the two syllables of denial, he stood and he wanted to tear the TV down with his bare hands, he wanted to chase Ethan and every man who filmed other people for sport, he wanted to fix things by violence and some small mercy, but his laptop pinged and a notice rose like a curtain, "Your accounts have been temporarily suspended pending investigation," the notification read, dry and final, and he felt the floor drop where his lifelines used to be
"Who did that," Maya asked,
breathless, and he didn't answer because he couldn't, because the ledger of his life had taught him that answers come with costs he wasn't certain he could pay, he grabbed his phone and the battery read fifty percent like a clock winding down and he thought,
if I go to the press room and say it again they will call me liar, if I try to speak to Ethan he'll laugh and leak more, he looked at Maya and said, "I will not let them make you a casualty for their sport,
whatever it costs me"
She laughed, a bitter bright sound, "Too late for vows, Jace, we are in the middle of the ring and every promise smells like bait," then softer, "do it anyway, show them the wiring, even if they don't believe you, even if you lose, show it" and he nodded, a small shuddering motion, he closed the laptop and tucked the confession into a thumb drive like a relic and they moved fast, backpacks slung and jackets on, they left the hostel in a rain that felt like finger nails, the city smelling of wet stone and last night's wine, and he had a plan that was more impulse than strategy, it involved a local radio station, a man who owned a microphone and hated bullies, it involved a frayed promise he kept to himself when he was a younger man who thought he could buy justice with money.
They reached the station and the receptionist took one look at him and said, half smile, "You're the billionaire, right, the live thing," and he didn't like the way the word "billionaire" hung in the air like a verdict, they managed to get on a mid-morning slot where the host liked to ruin reputations for fun and sometimes for the right reasons, and Jace sat under the mic with Maya beside him, fingers trembling, and the host leaned in with salt in his voice and said, "You've got ninety seconds and a national audience, do it justice".
He opened his mouth and the first words were iron, "I will tell you everything I did that I am ashamed of, I will name names if I can, I will show the receipts,
I stood to lose ten percent for a dare but now I stand to lose everything to make this right," the host nodded like a man hearing a confession he didn't quite trust, the clock ticked, and their voices carried into people's kitchens, into buses,
into the small private spaces where strangers eat breakfast and decide to be furious for a minute or two, and for a flickering breath the world seemed balanced, as if truth might tip the scales
Then the host's earpiece cracked with static and a voice, low and clinical,
whispered into the listener's other ear, and the host's face changed like a mask sliding, the eyes going flat, "We've just received a report," he said, "local authorities need to speak to the woman beside you," and Maya's mouth opened and closed like a fish's, "What for" she asked, and the earpiece snapped again,
"There's a complaint, an allegation of fraud and a missing witness has filed a report"
They were not given time to call a lawyer or to explain the viral clip, two grey jackets appeared at the studio doors like hospital gurneys, they moved with a polite speed that always feels like finality, the officers had papers and bad smiles and one of them said, "We have to take you in for questioning, ma'am, it's procedure,"
Maya looked at Jace like someone asking the impossible, "You can't" she said, voice breaking, and he tried to step forward and the officer put a palm up, a gentle command that cost him his breath, "Sir, please stand back"
He didn't, he lunged, he grabbed the nearest officer's sleeve and his fingers found the fabric like a claim on gravity, the studio lights caught the motion and every camera in the room turned to them, the phones started to record, and someone shouted
"keep it clean" and Jace heard it as an order to be civilized as their world burned, he heard himself shout, "You know she's innocent, you know she didn't take that money"
and the officer's face didn't move, the paper in his hand was thick, stamped, apparently legal, and behind the officer a phone buzzed and the text that came through was the kind you never want to read, it was from an unknown number and it read, in small clinical letters, "phase four initiated, secure the asset"
Maya's eyes hit his like a physical thing, she mouthed,
"No," and then a hand — not the officer's, smaller, quick, gloved — closed over her wrist and a voice, muffled and close, said, "Come with me, we have orders" and the hand dragged her toward a door that was not the studio exit, a door that smelled of metal and something like bleach, and as Jace tore toward them the lights in the room went out, sudden and total like a stage trick, cameras blinked,
phones screamed until they went dead, and in the thick black of the room he heard Maya's voice, small and raw, "Jace" and then silence, the kind that takes up space and makes you feel the shape of it, and the last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed his sight was the glint of something on the man's wrist,
a small tattoo he recognised from a photo he'd once received, the same symbol that had signed the anonymous messages, and he knew in his bones the game had just changed rules without telling them, and the cliff of night closed around him.