Chapter 14 Aleksandr
ALEKSANDR
Tristan strode into the locker room, and the entire team fell silent. Through the glass partition of my office, I watched twenty pairs of eyes track his movement, the hostility so thick, I could taste it through the recycled arena air.
I looked up from the game notes I hadn’t been reading, hating myself for how desperately I craved news of her.
Tristan’s eyebrows swept up with surprise when he took in the team’s expectant faces, and then he grinned—the first genuine smile I’d seen from him since that disastrous game. “She’s okay. Home. Says thank you.”
Slava Bogu. Thank god.
I wasn’t the only one relieved. Around the room, shoulders dropped and fists unclenched. For the first time since that disastrous loss against the Hawks, I saw a glimmer of hope that we might salvage this season, that we might salvage anything from the wreckage I’d created.
The boys went back to their pre-game rituals, the familiar sounds of laces being pulled tight and equipment being adjusted filling the space. The relief was fragile. They still avoided looking directly at Tristan, maintaining deliberate distance as they moved around him.
Cole sat alone on the bench, fully dressed, staring into his hands.
He hadn’t looked up when Tristan walked in or when the team celebrated Eva’s recovery.
Cole hadn’t looked me in the eye, hadn’t said a damn thing to me outside of grunts of acknowledgment during practice, since Eva had told him what I’d done to her.
It felt like losing a son.
Except men didn’t fuck vulnerable, redheaded angels in hotel rooms with their sons, did they?
The thought stole my breath away. Cole, who I’d mentored since he was a teenager. Cole, who’d trusted me with his sobriety, his dreams, his fears about disappointing his father. Cole, who’d looked at me with hero worship until he learned what kind of monster I really was.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You did this, and you can deal with the consequences.
It felt like when I’d abandoned Dmitri, refusing to pay the price for my revenge sixteen years ago. The fluorescent locker room lights felt too bright, the sounds too sharp, like my skin had been peeled away and everything was hitting raw nerve.
Fuck.
To my surprise, Tristan sat down beside Cole and wrapped an arm around his back, murmuring softly in his ear.
I couldn’t hear what he murmured, but Cole finally looked up, and Christ, he looked like death warmed over.
His eyes were bloodshot, his face gaunt, and my stomach dropped at how his hands tremored.
Heartbreak weighed on my chest. Cole’s sobriety had become another casualty of my need for revenge.
He pressed his lips together and nodded at whatever Tristan said, then bent to lace his skates.
Tristan quickly changed beside him, their shoulders touching, and for the first time in days, they looked like teammates again.
A second wave of relief swept through me, though it did nothing to ease the crushing weight in my chest. That friendship, at least, I hadn’t completely destroyed. An hour later, it was clear that whatever fragile hope I’d held was misplaced.
We were getting slaughtered.
The Riverside Wolves were up 4-1 halfway through the second period, and my boys were playing like they’d never seen a puck before.
Worse than the score was watching Cole and Tristan embrace their pariah status, throwing themselves into every fight, absorbing punishment that should have been shared across the entire team.
Chyort voz'mi, the NHL had moved away from true enforcers, and collegiate sports even more so, but these two were violence personified, brutal and bleeding and horrifyingly reckless.
Cole’s lip was split, blood staining his mouthguard.
Tristan had taken an elbow to the temple that left him wobbly on his skates.
They took cheap shots that should have had their teammates jumping in to defend them.
Then, Cole skated in front of a Wolf who clearly intended to take out one of the rookies and slammed him into the boards.
One of the opposing team members mouthed something at him.
Cole laughed then punched him in the face.
“Worth it,” Cole snarled, his expression fierce as he skated into the penalty box.
His face went blank. Jedediah Carter stood behind the penalty box plexiglass, perfectly groomed in an expensive overcoat, smiling at his son like Cole’s self-destruction was everything he’d ever fucking wanted.
Carter caught my eye and nodded once, then began making his way around the rink toward the tunnel.
Toward me.
Color me surprised, because Carter never attended hockey games, and when he did attend other athletic events, he did so from the cushy box seats of the program’s biggest donors.
Not that Carter donated a penny to hockey.
Not when he wanted his son out so fucking badly.
The buzzer sounded. Intermission. Carter gestured to me, and I swore softly. I met him in the hallway as the team clomped by to the locker room, where my assistants would review plays and try to salvage this game, if that was even possible.
Cole saw me first. His step faltered when he spotted me standing beside his father, and raw betrayal mixed with grief on his face before he masked it. He stared at me for a long moment before continuing past, blood still dripping from his nose onto the tunnel floor.
The rest of the team gave Cole a wide berth, but their eyes found me and Carter as they filed past, leaving us alone in the hallway.
They weren’t stupid. They knew I’d been fighting Carter’s influence for years—they just didn’t know it had been a losing battle since I was a fucking rookie in the NHL.
“Coach Novikov,” Carter drawled, urbane and confident, and for the first time, I truly saw the evil oozing from his pores. Why had I thought it was enough to simply refuse to play his games instead of working to end them? Why had I spent two decades running from this fight?
I’d run from the cost of revenge on Conrad Jackson.
I’d run from the cost of fighting Carter.
I’d used Eva as a weapon against her own father.
Coward. I’d wronged Eva and Cole and Tristan and the whole fucking team. And it was about time I did something about that.
“Carter,” I acknowledged, my voice carefully natural.
“I heard Eva Jackson’s been in the hospital for the last week,” he said casually, as if we were discussing something as mundane as the weather. “Word is, she quit the team.”
My eyebrows shot up despite my effort to remain impassive. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Dr. Parker had assured me Eva would have her position back when she was ready, but we’d agreed to let her make that choice herself.
“Make sure there’s a place for her if she wants to come back,” Carter continued, and the alarm bells in my head started screaming.
He was going to force her back, force her to continue spying, continue feeding him information that could destroy my players’ futures and the team’s shot at a championship.
After everything she’d been through—the surgery, the trauma, the week in intensive care—he was going to drag her back into his web.
She’d been fighting for her father’s life while I’d been hell-bent on ruining it. Of course she’d done what Carter demanded. I would have done the same, and worse.
“I don’t know anything about Eva quitting,” I lied, meeting his eyes. He had to know I was lying, and I didn’t fucking care. “But she’ll always have a place with the Marauders if she wants one.”
“She’ll want it,” he promised, and my vision turned red around the edges.
“How do you know?” The words came out sharp. Too sharp. Fuck!
He looked me up and down, at my clenched fists, the tension in my shoulders, and smiled. “Have a thing for the pretty little medic, do you?”
The bottom dropped out of my world. If Carter knew about Eva and me, she was fucked.
Her scholarship, her job, her entire future—gone.
The university would fire me eventually, but they’d blame her first because she was young, female, and beautiful.
She’d be too easy to paint as the seductress corrupting the older coach who’d led the Marauders to multiple championships.
Her dreams would go up in smoke because I couldn’t keep my hands off her.
“I try to do right by all of my students,” I said, fighting to keep my voice neutral.
Carter laughed, low and cruel. “Yes, like you’ve done right by my son? Encouraging him to keep playing when he should be preparing to take over my empire?”
This was the first time Carter had stated his fury so plainly, and I wondered what was driving him to this uncharacteristic bluntness.
“I expect the Marauders to continue to lose this season,” he continued. “So badly, they don’t make the playoffs.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind.”
Carter’s smile turned cold. “If you don’t, I will kill Conrad Jackson. I’ll destroy my son’s future, and every dirty secret your team has will go public. It’ll be the end of several players’ careers.”
The threat hit, but I forced myself to stand straighter, to pretend he was as full of bullshit as I wanted him to be. “This team has won three championships in the last five years. I intend to take them all the way to the Frozen Four again this year.”
“Don’t cross me, Novikov.” His voice dropped to a whisper, more menacing for the quiet. “You don’t want me to take my gloves off.”
I turned to face him, looking him up and down, noting the worn lines around his eyes, not quite as perfectly put together as he usually was.
Whatever pressure he was under, it was taking its toll.
“I’ve been crossing you for almost two decades now,” I said. “Why stop now?”
His smile turned predatory. “Because this time, you have something to lose.”
He didn’t need to say her name. We both knew who he meant.
“If you fuck this season up for Cole, you’ll lose him forever,” I said, grasping for any leverage I could find.
Carter’s face didn’t change. “He’s been lost to me for a long time. I intend to force him back into the fold, whether he wants to or not.”
I stepped closer, close enough that I could feel his breath on my face. “Touch my players, any of them, including your son, and I’ll do what I should have done sixteen years ago.”
Carter’s smile never wavered. “Careful, Coach Novikov. Threats like that have a way of coming back to bite you.”
“That wasn’t a threat.” I turned toward the tunnel, already hearing the buzzer calling the teams back to the ice. “That was a promise.”