I Kissed the Quarterback Who Got My Sister Fired

Avery POV

"You emailed HR about closing an offshore sports book." I pressed my phone against my ear, staring at the glowing monitor in the platform archive room. "Three weeks before the league suspended you."

Silence stretched across the line. I heard the faint sound of traffic through her speaker.

"Avery, where did you get that?" Talia asked, her voice tight.

"I bypassed Miles and pulled your old employee file," I said, scrolling through the archived inbox. "Company policy strictly prohibited data hosts from gambling. You knew that. You asked compliance how to shut the account down, but you never submitted the final declaration."

"I opened it before I got the promotion," Talia shot back. "And before I met Roman."

"But you used it."

"Not for those three bets." The defensive edge in her tone spiked, echoing off the cinderblock walls of the archive room. "I never wagered a single dollar on Roman’s passing yards."

"Then what did you bet on?" I asked.

"It doesn't matter," she insisted. "The account was empty by the time the season started."

"It matters to the league," I argued. "You handed them a loaded gun. If I am going to prove someone framed you for the insider wagers, I have to know exactly what rules you actually broke."

"I told you everything that matters," she said.

The line went dead.

I lowered the phone. My sister wasn't a pure victim. She broke the rules first. I had to investigate a frame-up while accepting that she had done something fireable before the scandal even started.

Two days later, I sat across from Roman in a windowless media room deep inside the visiting stadium. The pre-game clock ticked down on the wall, marking forty minutes until kickoff.

"Why did you believe a residential network log proved she placed the wagers?" I asked, checking my audio levels on the monitor.

Roman adjusted his collar, his shoulders tense under his practice jersey. "Because we kept our relationship quiet. Talia spent half her week at my house, editing her segments. She used the team-sponsored tablet I kept in the guest room."

"And the league traced the bets to that specific tablet?"

"Victor did," Roman corrected. "My agent pulled the device export records. The login identifier matched the guest room hardware."

I stopped adjusting the audio dial. I looked up from the equipment. "Did you hand the physical tablet over to the league investigators?"

"No," Roman said, his gaze locking onto mine. "Victor told me his team handled the compliance handoff. We were three weeks away from a playoff run. I gave the issue to the person I paid to protect me."

"So you didn't actually know she placed the bets," I said, keeping my voice entirely flat. "You only knew Victor said the evidence pointed to her."

Roman didn't flinch. He didn't look away. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

"Right," Roman said. "And I still went to the microphone and said that sentence."

He offered no excuses. He didn't try to soften the admission.

"We're done here," I told the cameraman, cutting the feed.

By the fourth quarter, the opposing defense had sacked Roman three times. He finished the final drive, throwing a touchdown pass through double coverage, but the post-game tunnel was a madhouse.

Reporters shoved microphones toward the medical evaluation room, shouting questions at the coaching staff. The team doctor caught my eye through the crowd and shook his head once.

I lowered my camera rig, resting the heavy lens against my hip. I did not point it at the closed door.

Ten minutes later, the door swung open. Roman walked out, his left shoulder wrapped in thick ice. The press corps surged forward, but team security pushed them back. Roman spotted me standing by the equipment trunks, my lens still capped.

He walked over, his cleats scraping the concrete floor. "You missed the money shot."

"Medical evaluations aren't part of the documentary scope," I said.

"Miles would have paid you a bonus for footage of me wincing," Roman said, a cynical edge in his voice. "Afraid they'll paint you as the second ruined Quinn if you break a rule?"

I tightened my grip on the rig handle. "I don't need my sister's failure to know what a privacy violation looks like. And I don't need your approval to prove I have professional judgment."

Roman stopped wiping the sweat from his forehead. The hostility vanished from his expression, replaced by a sharp, assessing stare. He looked at the capped lens, then back at my face.

"Turn the camera on," he ordered.

I popped the lens cap off and hit record.

"Ask me about the shoulder," he said.

"Are you playing through an injury next week?" I asked, raising the microphone.

"I hate that question," Roman told the lens, his voice projecting over the locker room noise. "The media measures loyalty by how much pain a player is willing to hide. It's a toxic standard. We either lie to the medical staff and risk our careers, or we tell the truth and get called cowards on morning television."

He gave me a full three-minute answer. It was the most honest footage the production had captured all season. He didn't give me a canned PR response. He gave me a piece of his actual perspective, treating me like a journalist instead of a liability.

At midnight, I sat on the edge of my hotel bed, cross-referencing Talia's old account data with the league's integrity summary.

The money from the three anomalous bets never hit Talia's bank. The withdrawal went to a digital wallet. The transaction history showed no owner name, just a string of encrypted characters.

I scrolled to the login timestamps, tracing the timeline of the final wager.

Talia had left Roman's house at eight in the evening on the night in question. The final login—the one that initiated the massive withdrawal—happened at three in the morning.

I checked the network log for that exact minute. The guest room tablet was offline. But another device was active on Roman's Wi-Fi.

The identifier read: VS-Admin.

I grabbed my phone, snapped a picture of the laptop screen, and texted it to Talia.

Who is VS? I typed.

The typing bubble appeared immediately.

Victor Shaw.

I stared at the name. Roman's agent. The man who handled the compliance handoff. The man who told Roman the evidence was bulletproof.

I stood up, grabbing my room key to go find the ice machine. My mind raced, piecing the timeline together. Victor had access to the house. Victor controlled the narrative. Victor made sure the physical tablet never reached the league investigators.

I walked out into the quiet hallway, the carpet muffling my footsteps.

The elevator chimed at the end of the corridor.

The metal doors slid open. A man in a tailored dark gray suit stepped out. He didn't check the room numbers. He walked straight toward me, stopping two feet away.

He extended his right hand.

"Avery Quinn?" he asked, his voice smooth and practiced. "I am Victor Shaw."