The locker room in Danton's private gym reeked of expensive cologne, flop sweat, and the unmistakable tang of seven rich boys collectively shitting themselves.

Brett Castellano stood in the centre of the circle like a defendant who'd already been found guilty and was just waiting for the judge to decide between hanging or firing squad. Head bowed. Shoulders curved inward.

Looking about as threatening as a wet tissue someone had used to wipe up a particularly disappointing orgasm.

Pathetic, Danton thought. Absolutely fucking pathetic.

Three years. Three solid years Brett had been the golden enforcer of Ashford Elite's underground food chain. Three years of watching him dismantle anyone dumb enough to step up. And now here he was, reduced to a quivering puddle because he'd lost to Phei.

Phei.

The charity case. The human speed bump. The kid who flinched if you looked at him too hard.

That Phei.

"So," Danton drawled, pushing off the lockers with the lazy menace of someone who'd learned intimidation from watching his father ruin lives over avocado toast. "You want to explain what the fuck that was?"

Brett didn't look up. "I lost."

"Oh, brilliant observation, Sherlock. Cheers for that. Couldn't possibly have deduced it from the part where the entire school watched you get your arse handed to you by a bloke who looks like he'd lose a fight to a stiff breeze and a strong feeling of inadequacy."

Nervous laughter rippled through the circle. Thin. Forced. Laugh you make when the alternative is screaming.

Anderson shifted at the back, face the colour of week-old milk left in the sun.

Aiden stood with arms crossed, radiating that quiet, older-brother authority that made everyone else feel like children playing dress-up in daddy's suits. Kyle kept cracking his knuckles like he was warming up for a fight he knew he was about to lose.

The Zack Preston exchanged glances with Derek that screamed we are so fucked in twelve different fonts.

Seven boys. Seven futures dangling by a thread none of them could see but all of them could feel tightening around their necks.

"What we want to know," Danton continued, stepping closer, "is how you lost. Because I've seen you fight, Brett. We've all seen you fight. And that?" He waved a hand vaguely toward the outside world.

"That wasn't fighting. That was performance art. That was interpretive dance titled 'Please Kick My Arse Gently, Sir.' That was you doing everything short of lying down and asking Phei to draw a chalk outline around your dignity."

"I—"

"You pulled punches. Left openings a blind pensioner could've exploited. It's like you wanted to lose."

"Were you throwing the match?" Zack asked, because apparently today was the day to state the bleeding obvious.

Silence.

The bad kind. That settles in your lungs like smoke and makes you realise you're in a room full of people who'd sell their own mothers for a better parking spot.

"Answer the fucking question," Danton said, voice dropping to that quiet register that meant someone was about to bleed.

More silence.

Danton's patience—never abundant—snapped like a wishbone at Christmas dinner.

He grabbed Brett by the collar, yanked him forward, and buried his fist in Brett's gut with the kind of precision that came from practice. Knuckles sank deep, forcing out a wheeze that sounded like a punctured accordion.

Brett doubled over, retching dry, but Danton didn't let him drop. Fisted his hair, wrenched his head back up.

"I asked you a question, you useless sack of inherited privilege."

A pot calling a kettle black.

"Y-yes—" Brett gasped, trying to suck in air that wasn't there. "Yes, alright? I threw it—"

Danton's knee rose. Connected with HIS ribs. Something cracked—wet, satisfying, probably expensive to fix. Brett hit the tile hard, curling around his midsection like a foetus that had just learned about compound interest.

"I let him win," he wheezed. "Happy now? Want me to embroider it on a fucking pillow?"

Danton's designer shoe came down on Brett's hand—slow, deliberate, grinding knuckles into cold floor like he was tenderising meat.

"The only thing I want," Danton said, voice gone quiet and lethal, "is to understand how one of us could lose to him. To that pathetic little cockroach who's been living under my roof like a fucking tax write-off."

He twisted his foot. Brett made a sound that was half-scream, half-sob, all humiliation.

Anderson looked ready to faint. Kyle had gone translucent. Derek and Zack Preston were perfecting the art of staring at absolutely nothing. Only Aiden remained unmoved—arms crossed, watching like he was taking mental notes for his own future tribunal.

"Why?" Anderson whispered, voice cracking like a twelve-year-old's.

"Because I HAD to, you absolute—" Brett bit it off. Curled tighter. Breathed like it hurt. "Because he had—"

The silence stretched again.

Then Danton said the thing everyone was thinking but no one wanted to voice.

"You know he's going to find out."

The temperature plummeted.

He.

No name needed. Never a name. Just he—the shadow behind every throne in Ashford Elite, the reason even the richest boys sometimes woke up sweating.

Brett went the colour of old ash.

"Danton—"

"He always finds out. You know that. We all know that." Danton's voice had lost its edge, replaced by something far worse: genuine fear, thinly veiled. "And when he does, he's going to want to know why one of his boys threw a fight to my family's charity case."

"I can explain—"

"Can you?" Danton finally lifted his foot. "Because I'd love to hear it. Really. Can't wait for the part where you tell him you lost on purpose to Phei Maxton and somehow that makes sense and isn't going to end with all of us fertilizing some construction site in the desert."

Brett struggled to his knees, cradling ribs with one arm, crushed hand with the other.

He looked around the circle. Desperate. Searching for mercy.

Found seven faces that might as well have been carved from stone.

The circle of cowards closed tighter.

"Don't look at us," Zack said, stepping back further like Brett's failure might be contagious—like one touch and he'd wake up tomorrow with a sudden allergy to winning and a mysterious urge to get slapped by charity cases.

"I'm not making him angry because you decided to cosplay as a punching bag for the Maxton reject." Kyle's voice had gone high and thin, the pitch usually reserved for horror-movie virgins right before the killer ghost shows up.

"No chance. Not happening. I like my kneecaps where they are, thanks. They're original equipment."

"We've got our own shit to protect," Derek added, still fake-scrolling on his blank phone like it might magically summon a rescue helicopter. "Our own positions. You think any of us are going to stick our necks out after this? I'd rather French-kiss a cactus."

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