Page 60 of Split Decision

I still feel the pull of it.

That's the thing about a well-constructed piece. It doesn't need to be believed to do its work. It just needs to introduce enough friction that the people it's aimed at are forced to spend energy pushing back against it. Energy that was supposed to go somewhere else. It’s a classic distraction ploy. Look at this hand waving in the air while the other hand is performing the real trick.

I set the phone face down on the nightstand. Then I pick it up again and call Brandon. He answers on the second ring, which means he's already seen it.

"Before you say anything," he starts.

"I'm not angry," I say. "I just want to think it through with you."

A slight pause. "Okay."

"Two of those sentences are things Andi actually said. One of them was in a board meeting. Who had access to the notes from that meeting?"

Brandon is quiet for a moment—the kind of quiet of someone running through a list. "Board members. Me." He pauses. "I shared the summary with Marin because she's been advising on the audit response."

I don't say anything.

"Luke."

"I'm not making an accusation," I say carefully. "I just want to understand the information path."

"But you think Marin sourced that transcript."

"I think someone sourced that transcript who had access to a very specific conversation in a very specific room. I'm trying to understand who that could have been."

Brandon is quiet for longer this time.

"She's been trying to help," he says. But there's something in the phrasing—been trying to—that tells me he's saying it as much to himself as to me.

"I know she has," I say. "I'm not dismissing that." I keep my voice even. Level. The voice Mack uses when he's delivering a fact rather than an emotion. "I'm just saying that help and harm can come from the same hand without the person knowing they're doing both."

A long pause.

"What are you asking me to do?" Brandon says.

"Nothing yet. Just be careful about what you share and with whom." I pause. "And pay attention to the direction things keep moving. Not any individual recommendation. The direction."

Another pause.

"Okay," Brandon says finally. It comes out quietly, like something he didn't entirely want to say.

After I hang up, I lie in the dark for a while.

Mack's voice in my head, “You're not losing skill. You're choosing chaos.”

I'm not choosing chaos. I'm choosing to see clearly, which sometimes feels the same from the outside. The difference is what you do with what you see. Chaos swings at everything. Clarity waits.

Waits for what, I'm not sure yet. More information. A clearer angle. The moment when the pattern becomes undeniable enough to move on.

I get up, put my training clothes on, and go to the gym an hour early.

I run. Not from anything. Toward the things I can control right now, which are my body, my preparation, and the fight that's coming.

The transcript is still out there. By tonight, it'll be on three more platforms. By the end of the week, it'll have been retweeted forty thousand times by people who have never met Andi and will never question whether the sentences belonged together.

I can't stop that.

What I can do is to be in the ring in thirty days and win.