The Right Team

The call from Marcus came at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday. Darius had been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and running scenarios through his head like a general planning a military campaign. His phone buzzed on the nightstand, and when he saw Marcus's name on the screen, his stomach dropped. "Hey." "Darius." Marcus's voice was tight. Controlled. The voice of someone trying very hard not to panic. "He came." Darius sat up. "Calloway?" "Yeah. Showed up at my mom's house tonight. Suit, smile, the whole nine yards. Brought flowers for my mom and a basketball signed by Isaiah Thomas. He knew my mom is a Pistons fan, Darius. He knew that." Of course he knew. Robert Calloway's research was meticulous. He compiled dossiers on every target—family backgrounds, favorite teams, personal tragedies, financial vulnerabilities. By the time he walked through your door, he knew more about you than you knew about yourself. "What did he want?" "The same thing you said. Representation. He told me I was the best point guard he'd seen in a decade. Said he could get me a top-ten draft slot, endorsement deals, the works. And then—" Marcus's voice cracked slightly. "He offered my mom money. Not a lot. Ten thousand dollars. Said it was a 'family support stipend' to help with expenses while I focused on basketball." Darius closed his eyes. Ten thousand dollars. That was Robert's signature move—a modest amount that was just enough to feel like a gift rather than a transaction. Ten grand to a family struggling to pay rent was life-changing. It was also the first thread in a web that would eventually strangle everything. "Did you take it?" "No." Marcus's voice was firmer now. "I remembered what you said. The moment you take his money, he owns a piece of you. I told him I wasn't interested and asked him to leave." "What did he do?" "He smiled. Said he understood and that the offer would remain open. Left his card on the kitchen table. But Darius—the way he smiled. It wasn't friendly. It was like... like he knew something I didn't. Like this was just the opening move in a game he'd already won." Darius gripped the phone tighter. "Listen to me, Marcus. He's going to come back. He'll change tactics. He might send someone else—a friendlier face, maybe a woman, someone who seems less threatening. He might go through your school, your coaches, your relatives. He'll find your weak point and press on it until you give in." "My mom already called three times asking if I was sure I didn't want to reconsider. She means well, but ten thousand dollars is—" "I know what it is." Darius's voice was gentle but firm. "And I'm going to help. But right now, I need you to do two things. First, throw away his card. Don't keep it, don't save his number, don't give him any way to contact you directly. Second, talk to your mom. Tell her what I told you about how these guys operate. She's smart—she'll understand if you explain it right." "Okay." Marcus was quiet for a moment. "Darius, how do you know all this? Really. I need to know." Darius hesitated. The truth was impossible. The lie was inadequate. "Let's just say I learned from someone else's mistakes. And I refuse to watch you make the same ones." Another pause. "Okay. I trust you." "Don't trust me. Verify everything I'm telling you. Look up Premier Sports Management. Look up the name Terrence Freeman. See what you find." "Terrence Freeman? The running back who sued his agent?" "That's the one." "Jesus. Okay. I'll look it up tonight." "Do that. And Marcus—call me if he comes back. Any time. Day or night." "Will do." A beat. "Thanks, D. I mean it." The call ended, and Darius sat in the dark, processing. Robert had moved faster than expected—the Lincoln game had accelerated his timeline. The rejection from Marcus would only fuel his determination. Robert Calloway did not lose. He simply adjusted his strategy and attacked from a new angle. Darius needed to move faster too. --- The summer before college was a critical window. In his first life, Darius had spent it playing in showcase tournaments, attending camps, and letting Robert slowly infiltrate every corner of his world. This time, he used the summer to build something Robert could never touch. It started with money. Not NBA money—that was still a year away at minimum. But Darius had knowledge that was worth more than any paycheck. He knew which stocks would surge, which companies would implode, which trends would define the next decade. In his first life, he had paid zero attention to finance, trusting Robert to handle everything. Robert had "handled" it by funneling Darius's earnings into investments that conveniently benefited Robert's shell companies. This time, Darius was going to control his own financial destiny. He started small—cautiously, carefully, aware that a seventeen-year-old making prescient investment moves would raise eyebrows. He opened a custodial brokerage account with Sandra's permission (Deborah had recommended a reputable firm and walked Sandra through the paperwork) and made his first investment: two thousand dollars in a small company called Zoom Video Communications. "Video conferencing?" Sandra had raised an eyebrow. "Baby, people like meeting in person." "Trust me, Mom. In a year, everyone's going to be meeting on screens." Sandra looked at him with that knowing expression—the one that said she didn't understand his reasoning but trusted his judgment. She'd been giving him that look more and more lately, ever since the Robert Calloway situation had demonstrated that her son possessed a maturity far beyond his years. "Okay. But if we lose this two thousand dollars, you're mowing lawns to earn it back." "Deal." Darius didn't invest heavily—that would come later, when he had real money and a proper financial team. But he made enough strategic moves to build a small but growing fund that would serve as his financial foundation when the NBA money started flowing. More importantly, he used the summer to assemble his team. Deborah Walsh was the cornerstone. She would handle all legal matters—contracts, negotiations, intellectual property, and the firewall against predatory agents. Darius trusted her completely, and more importantly, she was outside Robert Calloway's sphere of influence. For financial management, Deborah recommended a firm called Meridian Wealth Advisors, run by a former NBA player named David Chen who had retired from the league at thirty with his fortune intact—a rarity in professional sports. Chen had built Meridian specifically to help athletes avoid the financial exploitation that destroyed so many careers. "I've seen what bad agents do to good people," Chen told Darius during their first meeting, held via video call from Chen's office in San Francisco. "I lost two teammates to bankruptcy because they trusted the wrong people. My firm exists to make sure that doesn't happen to you." "I've already lost everything once," Darius said without thinking. Chen paused. "You're seventeen." "Figure of speech." "Right." Chen studied him through the screen with an expression that was eerily similar to Deborah's—the look of someone who knew they were dealing with an unusual seventeen-year-old but couldn't quite figure out why. "Well, you've got good people around you. Walsh speaks highly of you. And Patterson—I played against his teams in high school. The man doesn't lie." "So we're good?" "We're good. But I have one condition. You stay involved in every financial decision. You don't sign anything you don't understand, and you don't let anyone—including me—make decisions without your explicit approval." "That's exactly what I was going to insist on." Chen smiled. "Then we're going to get along just fine." --- Marcus called again in late July. This time, his voice was calmer but carried a new edge. "He sent someone else. A woman named Tanya Robinson. Said she was a sports psychologist who worked with young athletes." Darius's blood went cold. Tanya. Not the same Tanya—not yet. The woman who would eventually destroy him from the inside was still a year away from entering his life in the original timeline. But Robert was already deploying female associates to target people in Darius's orbit, which meant the playbook was accelerating. "Describe her." "Mid-twenties. Dark hair. Real professional. She came to my school during summer workouts—said she was doing research on adolescent athletic development. Asked me a bunch of questions about my goals, my family, my stress levels. At the time, I thought she was just doing a survey." "Did she mention Calloway?" "Not directly. But I looked her up after. Her LinkedIn says she consults for Premier Sports Management." "She's a scout. Robert uses people like her to gather intelligence on targets. Everything she learned about you—your goals, your family, your stress levels—went straight into his file on Marcus Webb." "That's creepy as hell, Darius." "I know. And it's going to get worse. He's building a profile on you. Finding your pressure points. The next person he sends won't be a stranger—it'll be someone you already trust, or someone who seems to share your background, your struggles. Someone who feels safe." Marcus was quiet for a long moment. "How do you fight something like that?" "You don't fight it alone. That's why I'm telling you." Darius took a breath. "Marcus, I want to introduce you to someone. Her name is Deborah Walsh. She's my attorney, and she's agreed to consult with you—free of charge—on any agent or contract situation that comes up. She'll give you straight advice, no agenda." "You got me a lawyer?" "I got you a shield. Use it." Marcus exhaled slowly. "Yeah. Okay. Send me her info." "Already sent. Check your texts." A pause, then a short laugh. "You really did. When did you—you know what, I don't want to know. Thanks, D. Seriously." --- August arrived, and with it came the move to East Lansing. Darius packed his life into two suitcases and a gym bag—a fraction of what he'd owned in his first life, when Robert had convinced him to lease a luxury apartment and fill it with furniture he couldn't afford. This time, Darius was staying in the dorms. He was going to live like a college student, eat dining hall food, and focus on two things: basketball and education. Coach Reynolds met him at the athletic facility on his first day. He was a tall, lean man in his early fifties with silver temples and the kind of quiet intensity that made you want to run through a wall for him. His handshake was firm but not performative—he wasn't trying to establish dominance, just connection. "Darius. Welcome to Michigan State." He looked Darius over with an appraising eye. "You're bigger than I expected. The scouts said six-five, but you look closer to six-six." "Grew an inch over the summer." "Good. We'll put it to use." Reynolds gestured toward the gymnasium. "I want to show you something." They walked through the facility—state-of-the-art weight room, training center, film room—until they reached a corridor lined with photographs. Michigan State greats. Magic Johnson. Draymond Green. Mateen Cleaves. And at the end of the hall, an empty frame with a small plaque that read: "Future." "That's for you," Reynolds said quietly. "If you want it." Darius stared at the empty frame. In his first life, he would have been embarrassed by the gesture—too much pressure, too much expectation. Now, he saw it for what it was: an invitation. A promise. A coach saying, "I believe in you enough to save you a place in history." "I want it," Darius said. "Good." Reynolds clapped him on the shoulder. "Now let's talk about the season. I've seen your high school tape. All of it. And I have a question." "Shoot." "Your basketball IQ is off the charts for a freshman. The way you read defenses, anticipate rotations, find the open man—that's not taught. That's either instinct or experience. And I don't believe in instinct alone." Darius met his coach's eyes. "What are you asking?" "I'm asking how a seventeen-year-old plays like he's been in the league for ten years." Another person who saw too much. Darius was going to have to get better at hiding his edge. "I've been watching film since I was eight," Darius said carefully. "My mom used to record Pistons games on VHS. I'd watch them over and over, pausing to study positioning, spacing, timing. By the time I was twelve, I could read a pick-and-roll as well as any point guard in the league." It was a half-truth. He had watched film obsessively as a kid—but the real knowledge came from years of professional experience that, by any logical measure, he hadn't lived yet. Reynolds studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "That explains part of it. The other part—I think there's something more going on with you, Darius. Something you're not ready to talk about. And that's okay. My job isn't to pry into your personal business. My job is to make you the best basketball player and the best man you can be. In that order." "I can work with that." "Good. Practice starts tomorrow at six AM. Don't be late." "I'll be there at five." Reynolds smiled—the first real smile Darius had seen from him. "I thought you might say that." --- The Michigan State Spartans were a good team that year. Not great—not yet. Reynolds was still building the program, still installing the culture of discipline and development that would eventually make them a powerhouse. The roster was a mix of experienced upperclassmen and talented freshmen, and the pecking order was still being established when Darius arrived. Darius didn't need to establish himself. He needed to elevate everyone around him. In his first life, he had been a scorer—a brilliant, selfish scorer who put up numbers and let his teammates fill in the gaps. It had worked, in the sense that his stats were spectacular, but it had also created resentment. His college teammates had respected his talent but never warmed to him as a person. He was the prodigy who made everyone else look like supporting cast. This time, Darius made a conscious decision to be different. He passed first, shot second. He set screens—actual screens, for a six-six wing, which was practically unheard of. He crashed the boards with ferocity and swung the ball to open shooters with a generosity that confused defenses expecting him to take every shot himself. In the first practice, he threw a behind-the-back pass to a sophomore forward named Jamal Cooper that was so unexpected, so perfectly placed, that Jamal missed the layup because he wasn't ready for it. "Yo, D," Jamal said afterward, shaking his head. "I didn't know you could pass like that." "I've been working on it." "You've been working on magic, is what you've been working on. That pass was—bro, I've never seen anything like that. Not even in the NBA." Darius grinned. "Next time, be ready." Jamal was one of the players Darius remembered from his first life—a talented but inconsistent forward who had washed out of college basketball after one season due to academic ineligibility and family problems. He'd grown up in foster care, bounced between four homes before aging out of the system, and arrived at Michigan State with talent but zero support structure. In his first life, Darius hadn't noticed. He'd been too focused on his own trajectory to see the teammate who was quietly drowning. This time, Darius noticed everything. He noticed that Jamal skipped meals when the dining hall was crowded because large groups of people triggered his anxiety. He noticed that Jamal's phone was always off because he couldn't afford the data plan. He noticed that Jamal's sneakers were held together with superglue and prayers. Darius didn't make a big show of it. He simply started showing up at the dining hall with an extra meal card ("My mom sends me two, I can never use both"), mentioned to the academic advisor that Jamal might benefit from tutoring services, and left a pair of brand-new Nike basketball shoes in Jamal's locker with a note that said: "Team discount. Don't ask questions." It wasn't charity. It was strategy. Jamal Cooper had NBA talent buried under a mountain of neglect, and Darius was going to dig it out. Not because it benefited him—though it did, because a better teammate meant a better team—but because in his first life, he had walked past a drowning man and done nothing. He wasn't going to make that mistake twice. By the end of the first week, Jamal was eating regularly. By the end of the second week, he was attending every tutoring session. By the end of the first month, he was the most improved player on the team—and he was looking at Darius with an expression that was somewhere between gratitude and awe. "I don't know why you're helping me," Jamal said one evening after practice, "but thank you." "You're my teammate," Darius said simply. "That's reason enough." Jamal nodded slowly, and something shifted in his eyes—the look of someone who had been alone for so long that the concept of unconditional support felt foreign and suspicious. "I've got your back too," Jamal said. "Whatever you need. Whenever you need it." Darius clasped his shoulder. "I know you do." The team was coming together. The pieces were falling into place. And across the country, Robert Calloway was watching, waiting, and planning his next move. But this time, Darius Kane wasn't facing him alone. He had a coach who believed in him, an attorney who protected him, a financial advisor who safeguarded his future, a best friend who trusted him, and a teammate who would run through fire for him. The kingdom was built. Now it was time to defend it.