But Bryce’s student, the one who got grabbed, did not sleep well that night. His wrist was bruised for two weeks, and he never went back to the Quinn farm again.
Meanwhile, the county sent its final notice. Thirty days. Pay $24,800, or the farm goes to public auction. Three generations. Eighty acres. Andre’s father had worked that land until his hands bled. His grandfather before that. And now a piece of paper was going to erase all of it.
Andre sat on the porch that evening, staring at nothing. Deborah brought him coffee, sat beside him, said nothing for a long time. Then, “Your daddy kept this land with his back. You can keep it with what God gave you.” Andre did not answer. “I know what I made you promise,” she said. “And I know why. But that boy is not going to stop. You know that.” Andre still did not answer. But his hand, the one with the scar, tightened around the coffee mug until his knuckles went pale.
The next morning, his nephew Jaylen came home from school crying. A white kid in his class had shown the video during lunch. “Your uncle’s that scared farmer on TikTok,” the kid said. “My dad says your whole family’s nothing but dirt.” Jaylen was ten. He did not know what to do with that. He sat on Andre’s porch steps with red eyes and asked, “Uncle Andre, are we nothing?”
Andre knelt down in front of him. Took his time. “No, son. We are not nothing.”
That night, Bryce posted a new video. This time, the bet was twenty-five thousand dollars. He stood in his gym, belt over his shoulder, grinning into the lens. “Twenty-five grand. Open challenge to Andre Quinn, the coward of Colton County. And if this farm boy somehow beats me, I’ll shut down my gym. That’s how sure I am. Because let’s be real, we all know how this ends. Same way it always does with his kind.”
Twenty-five thousand. More than enough to pay the taxes, save the farm, keep his father’s name on the deed. Andre watched the video once. Then he watched Jaylen’s face, still puffy, still hurt. He got in his truck, drove twenty miles east, walked through the chrome doors of Holden Combat Academy. Every head turned. Every conversation stopped.
Bryce was sitting on a weight bench, phone in hand. He looked up and grinned. “Well, well. Look who finally—” “I’ll take it.” Three words. Quiet. Flat. No anger. No fear. Bryce blinked. Then he laughed, loud, forced, for the cameras already rolling. “You hear that, boys? The farm boy wants to play.”