Fraternity Row
I left my room for the first time since the AL.com alert, the hallway dim and silent except for the low hum of the fridge in the communal kitchen. I pulled the door shut behind me, every step toward the elevator feeling heavier than the last.
Halfway down the hall, I froze.
Adam’s door.
The little whiteboard was usually a reminder of his presence, with something dumb scrawled on it, such as ‘Swim fast, eat ass' or a passive-aggressive note like “Stop stealing my almond milk,’ was wiped clean. In its place was a single line written in block letters:
Resident Advisor – Temporarily N/A. Please contact Community Director – North.
Underneath was a Tuscaloosa area code and university number.
That was it.
My throat closed. Grant had lied; he took Adam down as well.
I stood there staring at it until the numbers blurred. Then I forced myself down the hall and out the door, every step echoing like I was already walking away from him forever.
The Courtyard by Marriott was the kind of place you stay when your flight gets canceled, not when you’re dealing with a life-altering crisis. I parked the Yukon, maybe for the last time, I realized with a sick lurch, at the far end of the lot and walked toward the entrance, my feet feeling like they were made of lead.
The silence in my head was a vacuum, waiting to be filled by whatever was behind door 217.
I knocked, a weak, hollow sound.
The door swung open instantly. My uncle Jeff stood there, his face a grim mask. He didn’t say a word, just stepped aside. The room was a standard two-queen suite, but it felt like a holding cell. The air smelled of stale coffee and tension.
My mother was sitting rigidly in the desk chair, her hands clasped in her lap. She wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the patterned hotel carpet as if she could burn a hole through it. In the back corner, two men in starkly pressed shirts and khakis, the kind of outfit guys from the legal department wear on a Friday, stood with crossed arms. They had tablets in their hands. They looked at me like I was a faulty airbag recall.
And then there was Dad. He was standing in the center of the room, between the two beds, still in his suit pants and a dress shirt with the top button undone, his tie missing. He looked like he’d come straight from a war room.
The door clicked shut behind me. The sound was like a starting pistol.
“You stupid son of a bitch.” Dad’s voice was low, but it crackled with a violence I’d never heard before. It wasn’t shouting. It was worse.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He took a step toward me. I flinched. “Any concept at all? This isn’t a DUI, Wyatt. This isn’t getting caught with a girl in your dorm. I have the goddamn NCAA breathing down my neck. My phone has been ringing off the hook from Detroit.”
He gestured violently toward the two lawyers. “These men aren’t here for you. They are here to protect the company from you. You have put a forty-year relationship with this university and with General Motors in jeopardy because you couldn’t control yourself.”
My mother finally looked up. There were no tears in her eyes. Just a cold, profound disappointment that felt like a physical blow. “We saw the pictures, Wyatt,” she said, her voice quiet and sharp. “On that… app. In that… outfit.” She couldn’t even say the words. “What were you thinking?”
“He wasn’t thinking, Emily,” Dad seethed, not taking his eyes off me. “That’s the whole point. He was thinking with his dick. And now we’re all paying for it. The Gibsons are already circling. I’ve spent the entire afternoon on the phone assuring people we are not a liability.”
He took another step, now close enough that I could see the sweat on his temple. “So here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to sit down with Mr. Evans and Mr. Coleson here, and you are going to tell them everything. Every single detail. Who, what, when, where. You are going to account for every second you used that donor pass. And you are not going to leave a single thing out. Do you understand me?”
I just stood there, paralyzed, the weight of their collective gaze pinning me to the hotel floor. I wasn’t their son anymore. I was a problem to be managed. A liability to be contained.
I moved to sit on the edge of the bed, the polyester spread scratchy under my palms, and started talking.
It wasn’t a choice. It was survival.
“Names,” one of the lawyers prompted, tablet poised like he was taking down a witness statement. “Start with the first time you used the pass.”
So I did.
Jordan, Luke, Miguel, Darius and his roommate I didn’t have a name for but we could probably look up. Adam’s name slipped out before I could stop it. I listed them all. Each door I’d walked through at Mal M Moore, each night I’d swiped the donor pass, each lie I’d told Caroline or the guys at DKE to cover the trail. My own voice sounded distant, like I was reading a confession someone else had written.
The lawyers didn’t blink. Their fingers and styli tapping rapidly across their screens, recording, cataloging, stripping me down to bullet points.
Every so often, one would interrupt. “Do you remember the date?” “Room number?” “A washroom?” “Did you initiate?” “Any witnesses?” Each question sank like an anchor into the pit of my stomach.
By the time I finished, the silence was worse than the interrogation.
My mother was crying. Not loud, not hysterical. Just tears sliding steadily down her face, soaking into the front of her silk blouse. She kept her hands folded tightly in her lap, knuckles white, like she couldn’t bring herself to wipe the tears away. She wouldn’t look at me.
The lawyers exchanged a glance, nodded, then turned their screens toward each other and began murmuring in hushed tones. I caught phrases: “Liability containment.” “NCAA exposure.” “Mitigation timeline.”
Dad broke first. He ripped off his belt, threw it onto the bed beside me, and stormed toward the door. “Jeff,” he barked. “We’re stepping out.”
The door slammed behind them, and suddenly their voices filled the hallway. Not muffled enough.
“I don’t care about your fucking Senate seat!” Dad roared.
Uncle Jeff’s voice came back sharp, clipped. “You think Detroit’s going to cover this up when they see the kid’s name plastered across ESPN? Wake the hell up, Henry!”
“You don’t think I’m already aware of that?” Dad’s voice cracked with fury. “I’ve spent thirty goddamn years building this company, building daddy’s name, and now the whole thing is dangling because that kid couldn’t keep a cock out of his mouth. And you….don’t you dare bring Montgomery into this. That’s not the fight tonight!”
Their shouting echoed down the sterile hotel corridor, every word a reminder that I wasn’t a son in crisis. I was leveraged. I was a liability. I was a fucking bargaining chip in their family war.
The lawyers kept typing. My mother kept crying.
By the time the lawyers closed their tablets, it was nearly midnight. My voice was hoarse, my hands cramped from clenching the bedspread through every question. They convened in their corner, trading legalese like currency.
The door swung back open. Dad and Uncle Jeff came back inside, both red-faced, shirts rumpled, Jeff’s tie hanging loose. They didn’t look at me. They went straight to the lawyers, their voices dropping into a sharp, efficient exchange I could only catch in fragments: “compliance window” … “Title IX exposure” … “media threshold.”
My mother hadn’t moved. She just sat there in the desk chair, eyes fixed on me, wet tracks on her cheeks. She hadn’t spoken since the one line about the pictures. But her silence said enough, like she was waiting for me to disappear right there in front of her.
Finally, Dad turned. He pressed his palms against his thighs, exhaled hard, and squared himself at me.
“Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen, Wyatt.”
The words dropped like iron bars sliding into place.
“Jeff is taking the Yukon and dropping you back at school tonight. You are not to speak to anyone. Not Caroline, not your frat, not even your RA. You are a ghost. You will leave your room for class only. Nothing else.”
He glanced at Mom, then back at me, his jaw tightening. “We are cutting you off financially. Everything except the bare minimum for food. You’ll have enough to survive, not a dime more. No parties. No Strip. You will not be seen.”
He stepped closer, pointing a finger so close I had to fight not to recoil. “We’re meeting with the administration first thing tomorrow morning. The lawyers believe there’s no NCAA rule you violated….” He cut a glance to Evans and Coleson, who both nodded. “They’ll investigate, and they’ll find nothing.”
Dad’s lip curled, his voice lowering with disgust. “You screwed up by offering that shirt, but you’re lucky Miguel didn’t take it. So long as none of the athletes come forward, the… sexual element is unsubstantiated. They have as much to lose as you do. The university will treat this as a violation of the booster access policy and nothing more. Understand?”
I couldn’t even nod. My throat locked, the weight of his words pressing me into the carpet.
“Good,” Dad said coldly. “Now get the fuck out of my sight.”
Uncle Jeff jingled the Yukon keys in his hand, expression one of utter defeat. My mother finally turned away, burying her face in her hands.
The room felt smaller than ever, as if I was already halfway erased.
The drive back to Riverside was silent except for the hum of the Yukon’s tires on the empty strip of University Boulevard. The SUV smelled like Jeff’s aftershave and stale dregs of a Circle K brew. My phone sat dark in my lap. My uncle hadn’t said a word since we left the Marriott; his hands were fixed at ten and two like he was driving through a minefield.
The neon from a late-night Wingstop smeared across the window. The Strip was empty now, the same streets that had been a living artery of boots and bourbon just hours ago now hollow and washed out.
It was 12:57 a.m. when he turned into the Riverside North lot. The building loomed ahead, every window dark.
He pulled up to the curb and idled.
I reached for the door handle.
“Wait.”
His voice stopped me cold.
Uncle Jeff reached into the inside pocket of his sports coat and pulled out a small hard case. He flipped it open and held out a pair of plain, rectangular reading glasses, nothing like the Oakleys he usually wore.
“Put these on for class tomorrow,” he said quietly. His tone wasn’t as sharp as Dad’s; it was flat, almost tired. “I’ll see if I can convince your dad to swing back after the meeting with the admin and get you something better. Maybe take you to dye your hair.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Back in junior year, one of my brothers in DKE had a makeover after he was trying to disappear from an ex…. It worked for a while. People stopped recognizing him. Stopped talking.”
He pushed the glasses into my hand. They felt cold and cheap.
“Trust me,” Jeff said, eyes on the dark building ahead. “Right now, you need boring. You need to blend until this burns itself out. Wear the glasses. Stay small.”
I stared at him, the glasses trembling in my hand, not sure whether to thank him or throw them back.
He didn’t look at me. “Go on,” he muttered, tapping the wheel with his fingers. “Get upstairs before somebody sees you.”
I opened the door and stepped out into the cool night. The Yukon’s headlights cast long, pale beams across the sidewalk. My shadow stretched thin on the pavement, leading all the way to the dark doors of Riverside.
Behind me, Jeff shifted the Yukon into drive.
“Wyatt?” he called softly through the open window.
I turned back.
“Keep your head down.” Then he pulled off, the red glow of the taillights vanishing down the street.
I stood there for a long time, the glasses in my hand, until the night swallowed even the sound of the engine.
Early Tuesday morning bled into me like a hangover, heavy and sour. The first thing I saw when I rolled over was my phone lighting up with notifications stacked like cordwood.
At the top: “You have been removed from ‘DKE UA Pledges Fall ’25.’ Reason: See email”
Another: “You have been removed from ‘DKE Psi Chapter UA’ Reason: See email”
And then to my university email, glowing in stark black and white:
Mr. Briggs, after careful consideration of recent developments, Delta Kappa Epsilon Psi Chapter regrets to inform you that your pledge status has been formally withdrawn, effective immediately. You are prohibited from attending any fraternity functions or entering the DKE property. We wish you the best in your future endeavors.
The words blurred in front of me. Effective immediately. Formally withdrawn. My whole body felt like it had been hollowed out.
I dropped the phone onto my chest, staring at the ceiling, until I looked at the next notification. Facebook. A tag.
My stomach dropped.
It was my mother.
The post was long, carefully worded in that way only a lawyer or a PR firm could write, and yet every sentence cut like a laser:
“This is a deeply personal and challenging private matter for our family, particularly for our son, Wyatt. We are taking this situation very seriously and are cooperating with any inquiries from the University of Alabama. Our immediate focus is on our son’s well-being. Thank you for all the love and support from those who have reached out to me and Henry.”
Below it was a photo I hadn’t seen in years. The four of us: me at fourteen, gangly and acne-ridden, Macy in an oversized Alabama sweater grinning at the camera, Mom and Dad behind us on the back porch. A picture of unity. Of stability. Of family.
Except now it was a billboard for my shame.
The comments were already piling up: Praying for y’all 🙏, Stay strong, Emily, Sending love to the Briggs family.
Not a single one was for me.
I stared at the picture until my throat closed, until my fourteen-year-old face blurred out into nothing but pixels.
Mom had done what Dad hadn’t. She’d erased me in public, dressed it up as compassion, and made sure everyone knew exactly who the story was about.
And I was tagged.
There was no going back to being Wyatt Jefferson Briggs, DKE pledge, dealership heir. I was Wyatt, a scandal headline, a family liability, a tagged face in my mother’s damage control post.
Tuesday morning in class, I stumbled into a performance I had never been prepared for.
I put on the glasses Uncle Jeff had shoved into my hand, a generic pair of half-rims that made me look more like a grad student TA than a DKE washout. A hoodie and a Bama ballcap did the rest. In the mirror, I almost didn’t recognize myself, and that was the point.
The disguise worked. People still stared in the lecture hall, but not the way they had yesterday. A few eyes lingered too long, a couple of phones tilted up as I passed, but most of the whispers floated right past me. To them, I was just another anonymous student grinding through mid-semester.
By 11:30, the University of Alabama press release went out.
UA Statement Regarding Donor Access Pass Misuse
“The University of Alabama has completed a preliminary review regarding misuse of a donor access pass. The pass in question has been revoked, and we will cooperate with any investigation by the NCAA if necessary. The University takes the safety of our athletes, staff, and students as the highest priority and will audit issuance of similar passes immediately.”
That was it.
No names. No athletes. Just a revoked pass, a slap on the wrist dressed up in formal language. My father’s influence had pressed down like a heavy thumb, and the Bama Machine had worked in my favor, for now.
I let out the faintest sigh of relief. My lungs felt like they’d been crushed under water, and I finally broke the surface.
But there was still the question of Adam.
After my last class, I took the long walk to Housing, ducking through back pathways like a fugitive. The receptionist at the desk was kind in that overly professional way, her smile lacquered on as she clicked through her screen.
“Resident Advisors are employees of the University, so we can’t comment on specific circumstances,” she said, practiced, crisp.
I leaned against the counter, heart thudding. “Please. I just need to know if he’s okay.”
Her smile faltered. She glanced at the papers on her desk, then back at me. Her voice lowered, almost conspiratorial.
“I can’t give you details. But I can tell you he’s been reassigned.” A pause. “Transferred to The Highlands.”
The Highlands. Upperclassmen apartments on the edge of campus. Practically in exile compared to Riverside.
My chest tightened. He wouldn’t be down the hall for me anymore. Grant hadn’t lied about that part.
By the time my parents picked me up that afternoon, I was moving like a shadow, hoodie pulled low, glasses fogged in the humid Tuscaloosa air.
They didn’t say much as we drove, just herded me into LensCrafters at University Mall like a project to be managed. “Emergency appointment,” Dad barked, dropping his Amex black card on the counter. By 4 p.m., I had prescription glasses in a matte black frame, chosen more for anonymity than style.
From there, they pushed me into a salon chair at a place across the street. “This is a rush,” Mom said tightly, her fingers twisting in her lap as she watched the stylist brush dye into my hair. “But it needs to be done.”
The peroxide stung my scalp, the smell sharp enough to make my eyes water. When it was done, the mirror showed a stranger with dark brown hair, thick glasses, and no trace of the boy smiling on my mother’s Facebook post.
By the time we got back to the Silverado, I was hungry, but I knew a family dinner was out of the question, and they’d just drop me off.
I was lying flat on the bed back at Riverside, the chemical smell of dye still clinging to my scalp, when a Regions Bank notification blinked at me like a lifeline:
Zelle deposit: +$800.00
Sender: Macy Regan Briggs.
Before I could even process it, the phone lit up with her name.
I answered, my throat dry. “Mace?”
“Wyatt.” She didn’t waste a second. “I read everything on AL.com. I saw the Facebook post Mom put up, like it was a goddamn cancer fundraiser. And I know Dad. First thing he does is cut you off.”
Her voice cracked, not from uncertainty but from anger. “So I sent you money. Don’t argue. You need it.”
I sat up, clutching the phone tighter. “Macy, you….”
“Shut up,” she snapped, but softer than it sounded. “I don’t care what you did or didn’t do. I know you’re probably sitting in your dorm or even at home, feeling like the floor’s caving in. But listen to me, Wy: you’re still my brother. And I’m not going to let him starve you out just because it makes his PR nightmare cleaner.”
The silence stretched. My throat prickled.
“Mace…” I tried to start, but she cut me off again.
“Don’t thank me. Just use it. Get groceries. Get gas. Get whatever you need to keep going. Don’t let him win by making you desperate.” She hesitated. “And… don’t trust anyone on campus. Not your frat. Not Dad’s people. No one. Except me.”
Her voice lowered, turning sharp and confidential. “I’ll keep sending what I can. But you have to promise me you’ll pick up when I call. Deal?”
I pressed the phone tighter to my ear, eyes stinging. “Deal.”
Wednesday morning, I woke up without the weight of a breaking headline waiting for me. The glasses itched against the bridge of my nose, the dark dye still looked wrong in the mirror, but in the lecture hall, I was just another kid hunched over a spiral notebook. Nobody whispered. Nobody stared.
By the second class, I almost believed it. My notes were legible. My heart wasn’t punching through my ribs. I even raised my hand once, heard my own voice answer a question like I used to. It wasn’t normal, but it was closer.
Walking back across the Promenade, the air was crisp with the first snap of October. For an hour, I let myself imagine it: surviving this. Dad’s lawyers had gotten the university to say “misuse of a donor pass” and nothing else. No NCAA hammer. No expulsion. Just whispers that would fade once the Tide’s season was on the line with one game.
I was halfway up the steps to Riverside when my phone buzzed.
Tate Harrison: 5 PM. Sigma Chi house. I have an offer.
I stopped cold on the brick path, students streaming past me in their crimson hoodies and backpacks. Tate.
Of course, it would be him. Fraternity row didn’t waste time. Since my family and the University had neutralized most of the PR disaster, it showed my name still carried weight in Tuscaloosa. Only half of Grant’s plan had worked. DKE kicked me out, but academically, there was nothing the University threatened to do.
I stared at the message until the screen dimmed, my pulse hammering in my ears.
An offer.
But it wouldn’t be charity. Someone like Tate never gave without taking more. I shoved the phone back into my pocket, the weight of it heavy against my thigh.
Whatever waited for me inside the Sigma Chi house at 5 p.m. would be the end of something. I just didn’t know yet if it would be Wyatt’s ruin or Wyatt’s rebirth.
The Sigma Chi house wasn’t like DKE. No raucous music spilling out the windows, no pong tables on the porch. It was quiet, almost formal, its white columns catching the late afternoon sun like something out of an admissions brochure.
I knocked once. The door opened immediately, and a junior I didn’t recognize gave me a curt nod before leading me through the foyer. The house smelled of leather furniture and wood polish, not beer. The hallways were lined with composite photos of clean-cut faces, generations of Sigma Chi men watching me walk deeper inside.
We stopped at a closed door. My guide didn’t bother to knock; he just opened it and gestured me in.
It was an office, paneled in dark wood, a heavy desk pushed against the far wall, and two armchairs facing it like a tribunal.
Elliot was in one of them.
My ears tingled. He wasn’t in DKE letters anymore. Just a plain gray hoodie, his hair still mussed like he hadn’t slept. His leg bounced, fast and nervous, but when he looked up and saw me, he tried to school it into something calmer.
I stopped just inside the doorway. “What are you doing here?”
He gave a small, bitter laugh. “Same reason you are. To meet Tate.”
His tone was flat, resigned. Like this wasn’t the first time he’d been summoned into a room like this.
I glanced around, at the second empty chair, at the desk that looked too big for any college kid to sit behind, at the silence that pressed down like a gavel.
And then I realized: Tate wasn’t just offering me an out. He was offering both of us something.
The door closed behind me with a soft click.
Elliot leaned toward me, his voice hushed. “Whatever he’s about to say? It’s not free. You know that, right?”
I swallowed hard and sat down in the other chair, the old leather stiff under me. My pulse was loud in my ears.
Because Elliot was right. Tate wasn’t in this to save us. He was in this to own us.
The door on the far side opened, and the footsteps that followed were slow, deliberate, and certain.
Tate Harrison stepped in. He didn’t fill the room with bluster like my father or with nervous energy like Elliot. He simply occupied it, his presence settling over everything like a quiet authority. He was dressed in a perfectly fitted polo and pressed chinos, his look casual but calculated. He didn’t glance at either of us as he walked to the heavy desk and leaned against its edge, crossing his arms.
For a long moment, he just looked between us, his gaze appraising, like a collector assessing two pieces of acquired art.
“I’m sure you’re both wondering why you’re here,” he began, his voice even and calm. “You’re both bringing a lot of weight to the table right now. A lot of… complications.”
His eyes lingered on me, then shifted to Elliot. “But I’ve been watching. And one of you was able to keep a secret better than the other.”
The pieces clicked into place with a sickening finality. My head snapped toward Elliot. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, his jaw clenched tight, the nervous bounce of his leg completely still now. He wasn’t just here for a meeting. He was here for the same reason I was. He was adrift.
“You,” I breathed out, the realization a physical blow. “They kicked you out, too.”
Elliot’s silence was all the confirmation I needed. Grant hadn’t just taken down Adam. He’d made DKE purge anyone with any hint of connection to the mess. I was the public face, but Elliot was the internal sacrifice. That awkward pledge that was connected to me because he was gay, even when there was nothing to prove it.
Tate gave a slight, approving nod. “Perceptive. DKE had to clean house. There were... questions about Mr. Withers long before your scandal. Why do you think a legacy like him only pledged as a sophomore?” He pushed off the desk and took a single step toward us. “Which brings us to my offer. I told you both once, the door to Sigma Chi is always open, I don’t care that both of you like dick.”
He let that hang in the air, the promise now feeling less like an invitation and more like a verdict.
“It’s going to be a huge ask to get you both off the rush blacklists and onto a bid this far into the semester,” Tate continued, his tone shifting to one of grave seriousness. “I’ll be sticking my neck out for you. A long, long way out. I’m doing it because I see something in you both. I think you’re worth the investment. You’re survivors.”
He paused, letting the flattery, thin and transparent as it was, sink in. It was a lifeline, and we were both still treading water.
“But,” he said, and the word was as sharp as a blade. “You need to understand the terms. If you accept this bid… I own you. Both of you. Your loyalty is to me. Your silence is mine. You do what I say, when I say it. You become a Sigma Chi, but first and foremost, you are mine.”
His eyes hardened, the pleasant facade melting away to reveal the cold steel beneath. “One wrong move. One whispered complaint. One moment of disloyalty. And you’re both out. And when I cut you loose, you’ll find out that what DKE did to you was a friendly warning compared to what happens when you’re excommunicated from Sigma Chi.”
The room was utterly silent. The hum of the central air felt like a roar. I looked at Elliot, and I saw my own reflection in his eyes: a trapped animal, weighing the gilded cage against the certain starvation of the wild.
Tate had just offered us a way back in. But the price was our souls.
He watched us, reading the silent communication between us. A slow, thin smile touched his lips, devoid of any real warmth. It was the expression of a man who had already won.
“You don’t have to decide this second,” he said, his voice dropping back to that conversational, reasonable tone that was more terrifying than any shout. “That wouldn’t be fair. You have twenty-four hours. Meet me here tomorrow at 5 p.m. with your answer.”
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a deadline.
Tate didn’t wait for a reply. He simply turned, walked back around the desk, and disappeared through the door he’d entered, leaving us in the heavy, wood-paneled silence.
For a full ten seconds, neither of us moved. The air was thick with the unspoken deal, its chains already feeling cold around my wrists. Finally, Elliot stood, the movement stiff and jerky. He didn’t look at me as he walked to the door. I followed, my legs numb.
We walked out of the office, through the unnervingly quiet foyer, and out the front door onto the columned porch. The late afternoon sun was golden, casting long shadows across Fraternity Row. It felt like emerging from a bunker after an explosion, the normal world still spinning, oblivious.
We made it to the sidewalk, putting a few yards of grass and concrete between us and the Sigma Chi house, before we both stopped, as if by some unspoken agreement. We stood there, two exiles in the shadow of the machine that had spat us out.
He finally turned to me, his face pale, the usual sharpness in his eyes replaced by a hollowed-out fear. "So," he said, his voice raspy.
"So," I echoed.
We needed to talk. We needed to figure out what to do. But not here. Not on this street, under the watchful eyes of the houses that had already judged us.
"Where to?" Elliot asked, the question hanging in the air between us.
I looked away from the row of stately houses, toward the distant, unseen thread of the Black Warrior River. The place where I had tried to drown the evidence, and instead, I baptized a new, harder reality.
"By the river," I said, my voice reflective. "I know a quiet place."
Elliot studied my face for a moment, then gave a single, grim nod. He didn't need the details. The understanding was enough. We were both men with secrets now, and the river was as good a confessional as any.
"Lead the way," he said.
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