Page 117 of Reckless

“You exceeded them, baby.”

My brows draw together. “We had independent audits. I ran everything by the book.”

“You still do.”

“We accounted for every cent.”

“Exactly.”

“We published every outcome.” I hear my own voice getting tighter with every sentence. “We—” I stop, because suddenly I know where this is going.

Ghost does too. His eyes never leave mine.

“They couldn’t move money through Unsilenced.” The room seems to tilt. “Because you would’ve found it, Sage.”

Three years.

Three years of rewriting applications.

Three years of budget meetings.

Three years of late nights trying to shave five thousand dollars here, ten thousand there because maybe we’d asked for too much.

Three years of looking families in the eye and telling them we couldn’t help because the funding hadn’t come through.

Three years of wondering what I’d done wrong.

“W-what if…” My voice cracks. “What if I’d written them differently?”

Ghost answers before the thought can grow. “It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“What if we’d—”

“It wouldn’t have mattered, Sage.”

His words are devastating because they’re so certain.

I shake my head. “No…”

“They filtered you out before they ever looked at what you’d written.”

My fingers curl so tightly around the edge of the chair that my knuckles ache. “They never intended to fund us.”

“No.” Ghost doesn’t look away.

“They intended to make sure they never had to because I was too efficient.” The rejection letters I’d carried around in my head for years suddenly feel different.

Not proof that I’d failed.

Evidence.

Evidence that the game had been fixed before I’d ever stepped onto the field.

I don’t know whether I want to cry or burn Travis Cole’s entire world to the ground.

And even if we did receive the funding, Calloway and his minion, Travis Cole, would have pocketed money on the side from the grants anyway.

Jesus Christ!