Chapter 26
Carrie
The company car was waiting outside the arena. Black sedan. Tinted windows. The kind of vehicle that screamed corporate expense account and smelled like leather and decisions made by people who'd never have to live with the consequences.
Kyle was already inside, phone pressed to his ear.
"I don't care what time it is. Get the social media team on it now.
I want our statement out before their celebration hits the news cycle.
And get me three articles by tomorrow morning.
Local outlets, friendly journalists. I want pieces about Boston's thuggery, about the refs missing calls, about how they turned a hockey game into a cage match. "
I slid into the backseat and the door closed with a heavy thunk that felt like a seal forming.
Through the window, Boston fans poured out of the arena. Jubilant. Wearing Matt's jersey. Chanting his name. Riding the high of a comeback that would be replayed on sports channels for weeks. The kind of performance that cemented legacies.
And I'd sat in the White Hearts section looking like I was attending a funeral.
The truth was worse than what Matt had seen from the ice.
I hadn't been sad about the loss. I'd been sad about him.
About us. About the fact that every time he looked up at the stands and found me, I was wearing the wrong colors and sitting with the wrong people and my face was arranged in the wrong expression because Kyle and three White Hearts executives were six inches to my left and I couldn't afford to be the woman who smiled when the rival scored.
So I'd held still. Crossed my arms. Clenched my jaw until my teeth ached.
Dug my nails into my palms so hard I'd find crescent-shaped marks an hour later.
When he'd scored the first goal, the hat trick, the go-ahead winner, my heart had been screaming his name and my body had been a statue, and the disconnect between what I felt and what I showed had been violent enough to make me physically sick.
I'd wanted to stand up. Wanted to cheer.
Wanted to be the woman in the stands whose face he looked for after the biggest goal of his career.
Instead I'd been the woman who looked like the enemy, because I was sitting with the enemy, because I worked for the enemy, and the man I loved had looked up and seen exactly what the seating arrangement told him to see.
My chest ached with the weight of what that must have cost him. Winning everything on the ice and seeing loss when he looked at me.
Kyle hung up. The car pulled into traffic. Silence for three seconds. Then he turned to me with the expression I'd learned to dread, the one that meant a new assignment was about to land and it was going to hurt.
"We need to control the narrative. Make tonight about their tactics, not about Baker's resurrection story."
Baker's redemption story. That's exactly what it was. A man who'd collapsed from exhaustion, who'd been benched, who'd had everyone questioning whether the pressure had broken him, coming back to score three goals against his biggest rival. It was the kind of story sports media lived for.
And Kyle wanted to bury it.
"Carrie."
I blinked. He'd been talking. I hadn't heard a word.
"I've said your name three times. Where are you right now?"
"Sorry. Just tired."
He studied me with the flat, assessing look of a man who managed people the way he managed media, always reading, always calculating the angle. "You've been distracted lately. Since the season started. Maybe before."
"Just some issues in my private life. Nothing that affects my work."
"It better not." Cold. Professional. The voice of someone who cared about your productivity and nothing else. "Because I need you back to your best. We've got damage control to do and I need everyone performing."
Performing. That word again. The one that sat on everything Kyle said like a watermark.
"I'm about to give you an assignment," he said, pulling out his tablet. "And I need to know you can handle it."
My stomach dropped. "What kind of assignment?"
"A piece. Long-form. About tonight's game." He didn't look up. Just kept typing. "I want you to write about Matt Baker's behavior. His inability to keep his team in check. How he let the game devolve into chaos. How he failed as a leader."
The air left the car. Just gone, vacuumed out, replaced by a pressure that pushed against my ribcage from the inside.
"And I want you to tie it to his personal life." He looked up now. "His brother's addiction. How that's affecting his performance. His judgment. His ability to lead."
Every word landed on me like a blow delivered with professional precision.
I knew this technique. I'd studied it. I could diagram the strategy on a whiteboard.
Identify the target's vulnerability. Frame the narrative around concern rather than attack.
Plant seeds of doubt that grow into public consensus. It was textbook media warfare.
And he was pointing it at Matt. Using Frank's addiction, the thing Matt had been destroying himself to protect, as the ammunition.
"I want this done by Monday," Kyle continued. "Eight hundred words minimum. Sympathetic but critical. Like you're concerned about him. Like you're questioning whether he's fit to lead given everything he's dealing with."
Sympathetic but critical. I knew what that meant.
It meant building a scaffold of fake compassion around a demolition charge.
It meant writing "our hearts go out to Matt Baker during this difficult time" while systematically making the case that he should lose his captaincy.
I'd written pieces like this before, for other clients, about other people. I was good at it.
The fact that I was good at it made my stomach turn.
"How did you find out?" My voice came out level. Detached. The professional mask doing the one thing it was designed to do. "About his brother's addiction."
Kyle smiled. A genuine, satisfied smile, the smile of a man who'd been holding a card and was enjoying the reveal.
"I have a source. Someone close to the situation. Baker's been trying to keep it quiet but his brother's been in and out of trouble for years. And now he's living with Matt? During the season? That's affecting his game whether he admits it or not."
A source. Someone close to Matt. Someone who knew about Frank's withdrawal, about the nights Matt spent on the floor beside the couch, about the hell that had driven him to collapse on live television.
Someone had taken all of that private pain and packaged it into intelligence and handed it to Kyle Ashford of the White Hearts like it was a press release.
The betrayal wasn't abstract. It was specific. Whoever this source was had been in Matt's circle, had witnessed his most vulnerable moments, and had decided those moments were currency.
My mind started running names and I couldn't stop it.
A teammate who'd been in the apartment. A friend who'd been told in confidence.
Someone at the NA meeting who'd seen Frank arrive.
The in-home counselor. A neighbor. The possibilities multiplied and each one was worse than the last because each one meant that the small, fragile circle of trust Matt had built around his brother had a hole in it, and the hole was feeding directly into the machine sitting next to me.
My hands went cold. Not gradually. All at once, like the blood had been recalled to somewhere more essential.
"Who?" I asked.
"That's not your concern." Kyle put the tablet away. Straightened his jacket. "Your concern is writing a compelling piece that makes people question whether Matt Baker is the right person to lead the Boston Bruins. Plant the seed. Let the fans and media run with it."
The car pulled up to headquarters. Kyle was already gathering his things.
"Draft by Monday morning. Come on, we've got work to do."
He got out. Held the door.
I sat in the backseat for three extra seconds. Three seconds in which I ran the full calculation, every variable, every outcome, the way I'd been trained to run them.
If I wrote the piece, I would destroy Matt.
Not just his captaincy. His reputation. His privacy.
The fragile progress Frank was making would be blown open for public consumption.
The man who'd trusted me with his brother's secret, who'd let me into his home and his family and his bed, would learn that the woman he loved had used all of it against him.
And this time it wouldn't be an accident.
This time I'd know exactly what I was doing.
If I refused, I would lose my job. The promotion. The career I'd spent years building. Kyle would replace me by Tuesday, and whatever piece he commissioned would be written by someone who didn't love Matt, who didn't know Matt, who would have no reason to pull a single punch.
Either way, Matt gets hurt. The only question was who holds the blade.
The calculation was complete and the answer was a trap and my body knew it before my brain finished processing. My stomach was a fist. My lungs were refusing full breaths. The backs of my eyes burned with tears I was not going to shed in a company car with my boss holding the door.
I grabbed my bag with hands that were shaking visibly. Kyle noticed. I saw him notice and file it under data to be used later.
"You coming?"
"Yeah." I stepped out into the night air. "I'm coming."
I followed him into the building. Through the lobby. Past security. Into the elevator that took us to the floor where stories were built and people were broken and the difference between the two was a matter of framing.
And the whole way up, two thoughts sat in my chest like twin weights on a scale that would never balance.
The first was that I was going to have to choose between Matt and everything else.
The second, quieter, more terrifying, was that someone close to Matt was selling his pain to the people who wanted to destroy him. And I had no idea who it was or how to stop them without losing everything I had left.