Daniel Shiver had survived drafts, firings, relocations, contract wars, and every storm a professional football franchise could face—but he had never imagined the greatest threat to his career would come from within his own home. For nearly three decades, he had served the Iron City Wolves with quiet loyalty, scouting talent from cold metal bleachers and dusty high school fields, always returning with players who shaped the team’s identity. But nothing could prepare him for the moment his general manager summoned him into a glass-walled conference room and delivered a sentence that felt like a blade to the chest.

“Daniel… the board expects you to publicly distance yourself from Paige. If you don’t, we can’t guarantee your future with this organization.”

At first, he couldn’t speak. The words didn’t make sense. How could the team he had bled for, sacrificed for, and stood by through losing seasons and rebuilding years, demand something so cruel? Paige had made a mistake—an emotional, complicated mistake involving Merrick Cole, the fiery and celebrated coach of the Michigan State Comets. But mistakes were human, private even. Yet in the age of viral recordings, leaked messages, and merciless commentators, nothing stayed private for long.

Paige had come home three nights earlier in tears, shaking so badly her phone slipped from her hands. The moment Daniel saw her crumple onto the couch, he knew life had shifted into a direction that no father could prepare for. She confessed through sobs—a relationship she didn’t intend to become serious, one she didn’t expect to leak, one she certainly didn’t expect to explode into a national spectacle. She wasn’t famous. She wasn’t a public figure. She was simply unlucky enough to fall into the orbit of someone who was.

From there, the headlines wrote themselves.

“COACH’S SECRET”

“THE PAIGE FILES”

“SHIVER FAMILY AT THE CENTER OF SCANDAL”

Reporters camped outside their house. Commentators dissected her character with merciless precision. Fans raged online. Overnight, Paige Shiver became the villain of stories she had no control over—and Daniel Shiver, the collateral damage.

The Wolves prided themselves on “image discipline,” a phrase Daniel had always thought was corporate fluff. But now he understood its darker meaning. The team believed that his proximity to the scandal threatened sponsorships, media deals, and season-ticket sales. They didn’t care that he was innocent. They didn’t care that he had built half their roster. They cared only that his last name now trended beside a scandal.

Paige, listening in horror as her father recounted the ultimatum, begged him to comply. She insisted she could handle the world turning its back on her, but she couldn’t bear being the reason he lost the career that gave him purpose. “Dad, please,” she whispered, her voice raw from nights of crying, “don’t lose everything because of me.”

But Daniel knew distancing himself publicly would destroy her in a different way. It would confirm the world’s worst assumptions about her. It would tell the public that she was too toxic even for her own family. And it would shatter a bond he had spent his life protecting.

For the first time, Daniel questioned the meaning of loyalty. Was it to a team that viewed him as expendable? Or to a daughter who needed him more than ever?

The pressure mounted. Media outlets reported that the Wolves were already interviewing replacement scouts. Fans speculated that Daniel’s firing was “inevitable.” Anonymous sources leaked claims that the franchise wanted a “clean break.” And yet, through the noise, one truth rang clear: Daniel would not abandon Paige for the sake of an organization that treated her like a stain instead of a human being.

When he finally stood before the board again, the room fell dead silent. Every executive expected him to fold. But instead, Daniel laid his Wolves ID on the table—not as surrender, but as defiance.

“My daughter is not a PR problem,” he said softly. “She is my family. And if that costs me this job, then this job was never worth keeping.”

He walked out without looking back. That night, as father and daughter sat together on their small porch, watching the storm of headlines shift from scandal to shocking resignation, one thing became clear: careers can be rebuilt, reputations can recover, but the love between a parent and child is not something any franchise should have the power to destroy.

And for the first time in days, Paige allowed herself to breathe.