Page 157 of Play Dirty

He wasn’t enraged, he wasn’t shouting. That only made it worse.

Grayson didn’t look away.

“I made a call.”

Ares stood up. He took a step forward.

“That wasn’t your call to make.”

“It was when I realized what exposing him would do.”

“What?” Ares snapped. “End his career?”

“No,” Grayson said flatly. “Destroy all of ours.”

The others looked on in disbelief.

“He wasn’t the only one who would’ve gone down,” he continued. “League investigation doesn’t stop at one player, it spreads.”

Sebastian leaned back slowly.

“You thought you were limiting the damage.”

Grayson nodded once.

“Yes.”

Ares shook his head.

“You protected him.”

“I forced him out,” Grayson replied. “I protected the team.”

“You gambled with us.”

“I calculated the risk.”

That set Ares off. He paced the room once. Twice.

Hands clenching and unclenching.

“You stood there and watched it happen!”

Grayson’s look was pained. Conflicted.

“I stood there, yes,” he admitted. “I had to make sure it didn’t take everything with it.”

The silence was heavy and real. It grew uglier with each passing second.

And in Ares’s storm-filled eyes: the anger. The logic.

The cascading realization.

“You let us think it was her!” he leveled an arm at me.

Grayson nodded solemnly.

“At one point I thought it was.”