Chapter 12
JAY
“Get your shit together,” Coach Lazovsky snarled the second I was off the ice, pacing up and down while he brandished his clipboard as if he wanted to hit someone with it.
“I don’t want you to even think about playing dirty.
Do you hear me, Worthington?” His icy eyes shot daggers at my hot-headed teammate. Kane jerked his head in assent.
“Yes, Coach.”
Back on the ice, I managed to swipe the puck from Whelford, passing it back to Neo, who dodged around Fontana, racing down to Whelford’s zone. He flicked out his stick, and the puck flew across the ice to Kane, who smacked it straight into the net.
“Fuck, yeah!” he shouted as we swarmed him, celebrating the goal. Two more. That was all we needed. And to keep Whelford from scoring.
Luck was on our side because Ryker scored just two minutes later after a board battle with Whelford’s defence, making it 3–3.
None of us wanted to go into overtime, and it gave us the motivation we needed, moving across the ice with single-minded determination. Ryker took a shot, but the goalie deflected it. Straight towards me.
Before he had a chance to recover, my stick connected with the puck, and this time, it went in.
“Fuck, yeah! Get in!” I raised my stick, pumping it up and down, a wide grin spreading over my face.
Kane skated over and threw his arms around me, knocking his helmet against mine. “Fucking beauty of a rebound! Whelford are fucked!”
He was right. A few seconds later, the buzzer sounded. We’d done it. 4–3.
“Good work.” Volkov looked around the locker room when Coach had disappeared after the post-game debrief.
“We did what we came here for, and now we celebrate.” His gaze met mine, just briefly, before it slid to Dan.
Maybe I’d imagined it. Why was he talking, anyway?
He wasn’t even the captain. Just because he was the most senior team member here, that didn’t mean he had the right to address us all as if he were in charge of the team.
“Double celebrations tomorrow,” Dan said with a grin. He rubbed his hands together. “Can’t fucking wait.”
“Yes. My engagement party.” Volkov remained expressionless, and I gritted my teeth, the high from the win disappearing instantly. He had no fucking idea how lucky he was—
“Banks? You okay?” Kane elbowed me sharply, and I turned to glare at him. He held up his hands. “Just a question, bro. Your face looks like King’s when he’s feeling murderous.”
“I need to fucking fight,” I muttered, sinking down onto the bench so I could remove my skates. Something, anything, to work out this buzzing beneath my skin. We’d beaten Whelford, our local rivals, who loved to taunt us for having to share their facilities. I should be on top of the world.
“You and me both. Wanna go tonight?” he suggested.
I nodded. This…feeling…whatever it was, wasn’t something I could articulate to my two closest friends, but with Kane, it was simple. We fought, we blew off steam, we were done.
I hoped.
“I’ve got to go to the clinic when we’re done here. Midnight at the yard?” I suggested, and Kane held out his hand for a fist bump.
“Get ready to have your ass kicked, Banks. I’ll try not to mess up your pretty face, though.”
“Can you stop fucking calling me Banks? Bad enough when Dan does it. And I’m not the one with the pretty face, pretty boy.”
“Aww, look at you two. So sweet, complimenting each other like that.” Dan threw himself down next to me, slinging his arm over my shoulders. He smirked at Kane. “Glad to see my nickname’s spreading. It’s great, isn’t it, Banks?”
“Fuck all the way off.” I shook off his arm, rising to my feet. “I’m going for a shower.”
Dan caught up with me when I reached the door to the showers, stopping me with a hand on my bicep. “Jay. Wait.”
“What?”
He bit down on his lip, uncharacteristically cautious as he spoke in a low voice. “If you really hate the nickname, I’ll make it stop. I just—”
“Just?”
“Fuck, mate, you know. It’s you, me, and Ry, yeah? Brothers. Me and Ryker have nicknames, and you… I dunno.” He shifted on his feet, staring down at the tiled floor. “I just wanted you to have one too.”
I swallowed hard. “Dan.”
“Stupid, yeah. I know. I’ll—”
“Daniel. You can call me Banks if it means that much to you. Just…don’t go spreading it around, okay?”
“Uh…I think that ship already sailed.” He glanced back at Kane, and his mouth turned down. “I won’t call you that in front of people anymore.”
Damn this fucking asshole for making me feel bad by showing me a genuine display of emotion. “Don’t worry about it. I guess as far as nicknames go, it’s inoffensive.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Really.”
A wide smile instantly stretched across his face. “I need to tell King. Fuck him for running off so quickly. Why does he always disappear whenever I have big news? He’s meant to be the captain, so he should be setting an example.”
“Big news. Okay.” Rolling my eyes, I left him to it, continuing on to the showers. Under the spray, I closed my eyes, trying to ease the buzzing under my skin that had returned in full force. But it remained.
“Dad.”
My dad’s weathered face creased even further as he lifted his head, his lips tilting upwards. “Jayesh. What are you doing here so late, son?”
“Priya said the Volkovs were sniffing around again, and she asked me to run through some of the numbers.” I gave a casual shrug, hoping it sounded as if the two things were connected, rather than the fact that he was a little lax when it came to the accounting part of the business, and any mistakes were likely to be down to him.
“Ah.” He waved his hand towards the computer in the corner of the room. “Go for it.”
Taking a seat behind the desk, I waited for the computer to boot up. My dad was focused on his own screen, probably updating his client notes as he tended to do in the evenings when it was quiet, with just the faint clicking of keys and his computer mouse to provide a background soundtrack.
“Had a good day?” I asked eventually, bored of waiting for the computer to finish its start-up process.
My dad hummed. “Good…that’s debatable. Successful, yes. One face lift, and one set of emergency sutures of a stab wound Des managed to incur.”
Desmond Johnson. Guillotine Graham’s right-hand man in the Thorpe Syndicate. I wondered what had happened. My dad would never tell me because of client confidentiality, so there was no point in my asking.
“Sounds great.”
He laughed at my flat tone. “Still no desire to join the family business, eh?”
“You know I will. I’ll take over the accounts, just not the surgical stuff. You have Mum and Priya for that.”
“I do.” His voice grew softer, as it always did when he spoke about our family.
“You know I don’t mind you going into a different side of the business.
I also don’t mind you doing something else entirely.
I know our…well, my choices have trapped you here, but once you have your degree, you’re free to go wherever you want to go. That’s a promise.”
“No, Dad.” I met his gaze, hoping he could see that I was serious.
“I don’t feel trapped. Okay, maybe Cranham wouldn’t have been my first choice of uni, but my friends are there, and I can see you, and Mum, and Priya whenever I want.
You’ve done your best to keep us away from the, uh, illegal side—and before you say anything, whatever involvement I’ve had has been my own decision, and my choice of friends has nothing to do with you or any decisions you’ve made.
They’re good guys, and we have each other’s backs no matter what.
No matter what our families are involved in.
And our family? We have a legitimate business here.
One that you built with Mum, on your own talents. ”
“One funded by the Volkov Syndicate,” he reminded me.
“Yeah, but you’ve paid that debt ten times over. Fuck, Dad. Half the crime families in the south-west probably owe you their lives.”
He rubbed his hand across his mouth, his gaze growing distant. “I know. I just hope… There’s been talk of an investigation into rural crime, and I don’t want anyone sniffing around. If they found my blood stores—”
“They won’t,” I assured him. “Guillotine Graham would never let that happen.”
A heavy sigh fell from his throat, but he nodded. “Enough talk of my problems.” His expression lightened. “How was the game? I heard your team won.”
“Yeah.” Finally, the computer had finished booting up, and I tapped out the password to log in. I opened the ledger software and began the monotonous task of checking back through the records. “We were down 3–1, but we managed to pull it back in the third period.”
“Good job. I knew you’d do it.” He paused for an abnormally long time, and I glanced up from my screen to see him eyeing me contemplatively.
“What?”
“I was wondering what your thoughts were regarding tomorrow’s event.”
The buzzing grew more insistent, impossible to ignore as my jaw tensed. “The engagement party?”
“Mmm.”
“None of my business, is it?” When my dad continued to stare at me, I groaned under my breath. “It’s not something I’d personally wish on anyone. I think people should be free to make their own choices. But this world is messed up, so.” I shrugged.
“You know, I met your mother on our second day at Cardiff Uni. She was…she was so beautiful. I never thought I’d have a chance with her. I was just a working-class boy from Gloucester. But somehow, she gave me a chance.”
“Dad, I know how you met.”
He held up his hand. “No. Listen to me. We reached our third year, and she began talking about perhaps going to join her grandmother in India after she graduated. Permanently. I was—I was gutted. It felt as if I’d already lost her.”
“But she didn’t go.”
“No, and do you know why? After a few weeks of moping around, I took a good look at myself. Did some reflecting. Told myself I needed to pull myself together so I didn’t lose the best thing that had ever happened to me.”
The ledgers were forgotten as I stared at him, caught up in this part of my parents’ story I’d never heard before. “What did you do?”
He gave me a wry smile. “Something I should have done much sooner. I sat her down and talked to her honestly. Laid it all out. I told her exactly what she meant to me and how I didn’t want to hold her back, but I didn’t want her to go.
Said that if she was in, I was all in. Even if she did still want to go, I’d find a way to go with her, if that was something she wanted.
” His voice grew firmer. “Jay. It was the hardest conversation I’d ever had, baring myself without knowing the outcome, but I didn’t regret a second of it. ”
“Because she stayed.”
“Yes. She stayed. Sometimes, people don’t realise how much they mean to someone unless it’s spelled out plainly. They might not realise they have other options.”
“Except when they don’t.”
“There’s always a way,” he said. “Always. I want you to remember that.”