Page 59 of Split Decision

He lets that sit for a second before answering. “Marin’s going to land in the same place,” he says.

“I know.”

“That doesn’t make me comfortable,” he adds. “It just means the logic checks out.”

That’s better than agreement. That’s him thinking.

“Does that bother you?”

I take a moment before answering. “It means she’s smart,” I say. “It doesn’t tell me whose side the smart is on.”

Luke is quiet, but not distant. Present. Processing.

“I’ll talk to Brandon,” he says finally.

“Carefully.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m not walking into that blind.”

I look out the window at the dark going gray at the edges. Morning coming. Show tonight. The machine is running somewhere in the background, patient and deliberate.

“Luke,” I say. “You know the thing that bothers me most about this?”

“What?”

“It’s good,” I say. “Whoever built that transcript—they listened to me long enough to know how I actually sound. They used my actual words. They got the cadence close.” I pause. “That’s not a stranger. That’s someone who’s been paying careful attention.”

The line is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is different. Not reactive. Focused.

“Then we start paying attention to who’s been paying attention,” he says. “Not just who had access… who had reason to listen that closely.”

It’s not a full plan. But it’s movement. It’s him stepping into it with me.

“Get some sleep,” I say.

“You too.”

“Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you. In case the next transcript they build tries to say otherwise.”

Another pause. Then, his voice comes across the line quieter than before, but steadier.

“I’m not letting anyone rewrite that.”

LUKE

I spend forty minutes after the call reading the piece three more times.

Not because I doubt her. I know what she said, and I know what she didn't say, and the distinction is clear to me. What I'm doing is something different. I'm reading it the way Mack taught me to read a fighter's footage—not looking for what I see. I’m looking for the decision behind what I see. Who threw this, and why, and what do they want me to do with it.

What they want me to do is doubt.

Not Andi. Me. They want me to doubt my own stability. They want me to read transcripts at seven in the morning instead of sleeping before a training day. They want me calling Brandon in a state, and Brandon mentioning it to Marin, and Marin producing another "containment strategy" that separates us further while appearing to protect us.

I know this.