VALE

Chapter 8

The court date landed on a Thursday.

Riker wore the best clothes he owned — dark trousers, a collared shirt he'd pressed the night before using the iron he'd borrowed from Torres without explanation, a jacket that fit correctly across the shoulders which was the only measurement that mattered to him. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror above the Harwick facility and made the assessment a fighter made before walking into any room — not vanity, preparation. Understanding how he would be read before he opened his mouth.

He looked like a man trying hard.

That was accurate. He hoped it was enough.

---

The family court building was downtown — gray stone, high ceilings, the particular institutional weight of a place designed to remind everyone inside it that the proceedings here had consequences. Riker arrived forty minutes early and sat in the corridor outside the courtroom on a wooden bench that matched the one in the Harwick facility and thought about that briefly.

His lawyer's name was Hendricks. Forty-something, compact, with the specific tiredness of someone who had practiced family law long enough to have seen every variation of human damage that brought people into buildings like this one. He'd reviewed Riker's situation in a single forty-minute meeting and delivered his assessment without decoration.

"You're not in a strong position," Hendricks had said. "Incarceration, limited employment history, recent release. The other side will lean on stability. That's their whole argument and it's a good one."

"What's mine?" Riker had asked.

"That you're present. That you're trying. That the child's interest is served by knowing her father." Hendricks had paused. "It's not nothing. But it requires the judge to make a decision based on potential rather than history, and judges generally prefer evidence."

"Then I'll give them evidence," Riker had said.

Hendricks had looked at him with the carefully neutral expression of a man who had heard that sentence many times and was still occasionally surprised when people meant it.

---

Sandra arrived with Marcus at nine-fifteen.

Riker saw them from the bench — Sandra in a dark blazer, her posture carrying the composed tension of someone who had prepared for this the way people prepared for things they didn't want to need. Marcus was taller than Riker had imagined. Mid-thirties, solid, wearing a tie with the slight discomfort of a man who wore ties rarely. He had the look of someone fundamentally decent trying to navigate a situation that had no clean lines.

Their eyes met briefly in the corridor. Marcus held the look without aggression and without warmth — the careful neutrality of a man who understood his position exactly and had decided to occupy it without drama.

Riker respected that involuntarily.

Sandra didn't look at him.

---

The hearing lasted ninety minutes.

Hendricks was precise and unflashy — presenting Riker's circumstances without embellishment, acknowledging the gaps, building the argument on the narrow but genuine foundation of what Riker had done in the five weeks since his release. Filed paperwork promptly. Established address. Consistent employment. First supervised visitation attended without incident. Second attended without incident. Child reported positive interaction.

Sandra's lawyer — a woman named Park who spoke with the fluent economy of someone billing by the minute — emphasized stability, consistency, and the disruption that irregular contact could produce in a child's development. She was not unkind about it. Just accurate.

The judge was a man in his sixties named Calloway who had the weathered patience of someone who had heard versions of this argument ten thousand times and continued to find each individual version worth his full attention. He asked Riker two questions directly.

"Mr. Vale. What is your current source of income?"

"Self-employed, Your Honor. Combat sports."

A pause. "And your intentions regarding stable housing beyond your current arrangement?"

"To secure a permanent residence within sixty days. I have the means to do it."

Calloway looked at him for a moment with the particular assessment of a man who had developed considerable expertise in distinguishing between people who meant what they said and people who meant to mean it.

He wrote something.

---

The ruling was not what Riker wanted.

Supervised visitation continued — weekly, one hour, same facility. No unsupervised contact pending review in ninety days. The custody arrangement remained with Sandra as primary guardian.

Hendricks walked him out to the corridor afterward and delivered the translation in quiet, practical terms. "It's not a loss. It's a timeline. Ninety days, consistent contact, stable housing, continued employment — you come back and the picture looks different. Judges respond to trajectory."

Riker stood in the corridor and looked at the high ceiling.

Trajectory.

"Okay," he said.

---

He was back at the Harwick facility by noon.

Changed. Wrapped his hands. Started on the heavy bag without speaking to anyone. Sable watched him from across the floor for thirty seconds and then walked over and stood beside the bag, steadying it without being asked, and they worked for two hours in silence that was not uncomfortable.

At the end of the afternoon session Riker sat on the wooden bench and unwrapped his hands and did the arithmetic that had become the background hum of his days. Ninety days. Stable housing — that meant a real lease, which meant a deposit, which meant money beyond the immediate retainer. The first sanctioned bout in two weeks paid three thousand. He needed to win. He needed to keep winning.

The math was survivable. Barely.

His phone buzzed. A number he didn't recognize.

He answered.

"Mr. Vale." A woman's voice. Measured, professional, carrying the particular cadence of someone accustomed to delivering information people didn't know they were waiting for. "My name is Carla. I'm the family services observer assigned to your visitation sessions."

"I know who you are," Riker said.

"I wanted to let you know—" a brief pause, something in it that wasn't quite professional distance "—that after today's session I filed a positive observation report. Iris asked me before she left today whether her father would be at next week's session."

Riker said nothing.

"I thought you should know that," Carla said. And then, quieter, departing from the professional cadence entirely for exactly one sentence: "She asked twice."

The line went dead.

Riker sat on the bench with the phone in his hands for a long time. Around him the Harwick facility settled into its evening rhythm — equipment being wiped down, men collecting their things, the low exchange of words between Sable and Torres near the door.

Outside the east-facing windows the sky was doing something with the last light that turned the industrial district briefly golden.

Iris had asked twice.

He put the phone in his pocket. Stood up. Rolled his neck.

Two weeks until the first sanctioned bout.

He went back to the heavy bag.