Chapter 5 - Seat 5D Talks
Mason Pike cooperated quickly.
Fear makes loyalty expensive.
He told investigators Beacon Strategies paid him $18,000.
His job:
Record.
Nothing more.
Eric Daley received $25,000.
His instructions were to irritate me until I responded physically.
No weapon.
No serious injury.
No plan to endanger the aircraft.
Just provoke.
The distinction mattered legally.
Still criminal conduct could exist.
Daley had assaulted me.
Pike had participated in planning.
Their attorneys knew it.
Who paid Beacon?
A company called Vantage Event Protection LLC.
Vantage paid $110,000.
Who funded Vantage?
MVP Brand Consulting.
Anthony Bell’s entity.
The stolen $620,000 had begun moving.
My stomach turned.
Anthony had used Marcus’s loan money to finance the sabotage.
Why?
Investigators did not know yet.
Then Pike gave them emails.
Caleb Ross wrote:
Client wants 30–60 seconds of usable footage. Physical response preferred. Race narrative optional if organic.
I stared.
Race narrative optional.
My skin became a marketing variable.
Pike said Daley invented most of the comments himself.
That somehow made it worse.
The setup did not require deep hatred.
Only willingness to exploit whatever hatred worked.
Then another email:
Fight delay activates management covenant. We need public controversy before commission medical conference Monday.
Medical conference?
I looked at Elise.
“What medical conference?”
Her face changed.
“You weren’t supposed to know yet.”
“What?”
Darnell stood.
“Know what?”
Elise exhaled.
“The New York commission requested additional documentation.”
“For what?”
“A neurological scan.”
My anger turned cold.
I had suffered a concussion two years earlier in sparring.
Properly documented.
Cleared.
No symptoms.
Why now?
Elise continued:
“Someone anonymously sent the commission old imaging and claimed your team concealed continuing symptoms.”
False.
But enough to trigger review.
If the flight video had shown me violently attacking someone the same weekend, the story could become:
Unstable champion.
Potential neurological issues.
Public assault.
Perfect reason for postponement.
The setup had two tracks.
Medical and behavioral.
Who sent the anonymous packet?
Unknown.
But Anthony Bell had access to my insurance litigation files through Carter Sports.
My brother’s lawyer again.
I turned toward Marcus.
He looked destroyed.
“This is my fault.”
“Yes.”
Darnell glanced at me.
I continued.
“But maybe not in the way you mean.”
Marcus had been reckless.
Secretive.
Proud.
He had not necessarily betrayed me intentionally.
Anthony might have.
We needed facts.
Then Elise’s phone rang.
She listened.
“Anthony Bell just boarded a flight.”
“Where?”
“Toronto.”
“Can they stop him?”
“He has not been charged.”
Of course.
He was still a citizen traveling legally.
But his timing looked terrible.
Before boarding, he sent Marcus one text:
You were never supposed to miss the covenant payment.
Marcus stared.
“We haven’t.”
Elise opened the loan schedule.
Then she found the hidden amendment.
Signed electronically six months earlier.
By Marcus Carter.
Payment due two days ago.
Marcus stared.
“I never signed that.”
My world shifted.
The same man who managed my career had now become either a liar or a fraud victim.
There was only one way to know.
Digital signatures.
Devices.
Records.
Evidence.
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We had spent our lives around boxing.
Now the most important fight required nobody throwing a punch.
