Chapter 6 – The Decoy

Maeve

The harsh blue glare of my laptop screen is the only light in the suffocating darkness of my hotel room. The biometric drive, a sleek silver rectangle still warm from the heat of Irena’s pocket, is plugged into the side port.

My lips are still bruised. My pulse is still hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs, an intoxicating echo of the tunnel, the shadows, the desperate way she pulled me against the concrete. The vulnerability she handed me was absolute.

And that is exactly why I am terrified.

My fingers hover over the keyboard. The decryption software is slowly gnawing its way through the heavily heavily fortified root folders, but a batch of raw, unformatted ledgers has already spilled into the cache. I stare at the columns. Dates. Medical supply requisitions. Corticosteroids. And at the bottom of the largest expense report, a digital signature authorizing the concealment of severe joint trauma.

I. Marković.

The old, venomous instinct—the one forged the day the clinic door locked my sister inside with the federation lawyers—screams in my ear. Strike first. If you wait to see the whole picture, they will erase you from it. I cannot trust the kiss. I cannot trust the surrender. The system always protects itself, and Irena is the system.

Before the software can finish decrypting the metadata and the attached addendums, I highlight the raw ledger. I drag it into an encrypted email client, pre-loaded with the addresses of fifty independent sports journalists.

I hit send. The progress bar flashes green. The data is out in the wild, irreversible and absolute. I slam the laptop shut, but the silence that follows doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like a guillotine dropping.

Irena

The silence in the Zenith Arena’s executive boardroom is surgical. It is the sterile, oxygen-starved quiet of an impending execution.

I sit at the far end of the massive mahogany table, perfectly upright, my hands folded on the polished wood. My left ankle is screaming in protest beneath the table, the chemical burn of the wintergreen rub entirely useless against the bone-deep ache. But I do not shift my weight. I do not blink.

The President of the Skating Federation stands at the opposite end of the room. He does not yell. He simply slides a tablet across the table. It stops inches from my folded hands.

"The morning feeds, Irena," he says, his voice a low, gravelly hum of manufactured disappointment. "Every major network. The sponsors are already pulling their banners from the ice. The Zenith Comeback Tour is officially suspended, pending a full criminal and ethical review."

I look down at the screen. It is a live broadcast of On The Edge Sports. A giant graphic of the medical ledger is blown up behind the host, my digital signature circled in glaring, neon red. The headline beneath it reads: ICE QUEEN’S EMPIRE OF PAIN: CHAMPION IMPLICATED IN COVER-UP.

I stare at the signature. The pixels are sharp, undeniable. I can feel the eyes of the board members dissecting me, calculating how quickly they can sever my contracts to save their own portfolios. The social dynamic of the room has violently inverted; I am no longer their prized asset. I am their containment breach.

Irena

I reach out and touch the glass of the tablet, tracing the curve of my own signature.

The pieces of the board rapidly align in my mind, forming a devastating, flawless picture. This wasn’t the federation. This was the raw, unencrypted surface layer of the drive. The drive I gave to Maeve barely twelve hours ago.

I trace the date next to the signature. Six years ago. The exact season I realized the medical staff was burying the younger skaters’ injuries. I remember sitting in a room very much like this one, surrounded by these exact men. They had demanded a scapegoat for a missing shipment of painkillers. I had signed that specific ledger—a decoy document I meticulously constructed—to pull the audit away from the junior locker rooms and onto myself, knowing my medals made me too valuable to fire. It was a shield.

But stripped of its metadata, violently ripped from its context and thrown into the blinding light of the press, the shield looks exactly like a murder weapon.

I look up at the President. He isn’t angry. He looks relieved.

The pattern locks perfectly into place. Maeve didn’t just leak the files; she handed the federation the perfect narrative. They don’t have to cover up the systemic abuse anymore. They can pin the entire shadow operation on the corrupt, ruthless champion who finally cracked.

"Your titles are stripped, effective immediately," the President says smoothly. "Security will escort you off the premises."

I do not argue. I stand up, the agony in my leg suddenly meaningless compared to the freezing void expanding in my chest. The trap I built to protect us both has just snapped shut around my own neck, and the woman I kissed in the dark was the one who pulled the lever.

Maeve

I stand in the shadows of the arena concourse, hidden behind a concrete pillar. The grand foyer is a chaotic sea of flashing cameras, screaming reporters, and the blinding glare of portable stadium lights.

The heavy glass doors of the executive suites open. A phalanx of Zenith security guards pushes through the mob. And in the center of them is Irena.

She is wearing a simple black trench coat, devoid of any federation logos. The media is practically clawing at her, shoving microphones into her face, screaming questions about the ruined careers of the junior skaters. The noise is deafening.

I watch her walk. She does not cower. She keeps her chin raised, her eyes fixed on the exit, projecting that same untouchable, icy armor. But as she reaches the bottom of the marble stairs, I see the micro-hesitation. The slight, agonizing drag of her left foot. The physical toll of the foundation completely collapsing beneath her.

My breath catches in my throat. I am a private investigator. I am trained to manipulate variables and calculate outcomes. But seeing her stripped of her kingdom, paraded through the lobby like a war criminal, the reality of my actions hits me with a sickening physical force. I wanted to dismantle the system, but I just watched the system sacrifice its most profitable gladiator to save itself. I made her a pawn.

Maeve

I sprint back to my hotel room, my lungs burning, the frantic clicking of Irena’s skates echoing like a phantom metronome in my skull.

I throw open the door and cross the dark room in three strides, dropping into the chair in front of my laptop. The decryption software has finally finished. The progress bar is a solid, mocking green. The full archive is unlocked.

My hands are shaking as I open the master directory. I click on the ledger I leaked to the press, but this time, the attached metadata and heavily encrypted addendums load alongside it.

I scroll past Irena’s signature. I scroll down to the restricted communications log attached to that specific date.

Action Item: Terminate investigation into junior tier doping. Reason: I. Marković has assumed liability for the discrepancy. The champion is insulated. The junior athletes are cleared.

My stomach plummets. The air is violently sucked from the room.

I frantically open the next folder, labeled with my sister’s initials. There is a secondary contract buried beneath the payout agreement. An appeal form, fighting the federation’s decision to drop my sister’s medical coverage.

It is signed by Irena Marković, pledging her own tour earnings to cover the surgery the federation refused to pay for.

I stare at the screen, the blue light reflecting off the sheer horror in my eyes. My survival instinct—the absolute necessity to strike first—didn’t save me. Irena wasn’t the architect of my sister’s ruin. She was the only one trying to stop it. And I just handed the federation the only piece of evidence they needed to destroy her completely.