Chapter 15 Eva
EVA
I watched the game on television, watched the team play like they’d never seen the ice before, watched them leave Cole and Tristan hanging out to dry.
My fault my fault my fault. The refrain repeated in my head every single time one of them took an injury, every time the other team scored, every time something went wrong.
The Marauders had been the best team Yorkfield University had ever seen, and that was saying something, given how many championships Alek had won.
Now, they played like shit.
My father tucked a worn quilt around me as I curled up on the couch, his weathered hands lingering on the faded fabric. His fingers traced the delicate stitching with a reverence that made my chest tighten.
“Your mom’s mom made this,” he said quietly, “for your mother, shortly after we got married. Your mother hated the cold. Always said Yorkfield winters were trying to kill her.”
My eyes shot to his, and I leaned forward so fast, my stitches pulled, making me gasp. But I didn’t care. I was desperate—fucking starving—for any scrap of family history, any piece of the woman who’d given me life and then abandoned me.
I reached for my father’s hand, and he squeezed my fingers gently. “Tell me more,” I whispered.
Dad’s smile was bitter. “She made this quilt in blues and greens because they reminded her of the ocean back in Ireland.” His fingers stilled on the fabric. “She hated me.”
He squeezed my fingers gently, but his grip felt fragile, as if he might disappear if I let him go. “I deserved it, though—every bit of her hate.”
No. My father was a good man—broken, maybe, but good. Whatever Alek had accused him of—
But the words were there, clawing at my throat, demanding escape. I had to know. I had to understand why Aleksandr Novikov looked at me with such hatred, why he’d used my body as revenge for sins I’d never committed.
“Dad, Alek—Coach Novikov—he said you hurt him.” The words came out in a rush, barely above a whisper. “I know you would never, but—”
My father froze, his body rigid. His eyes squeezed shut, and, fuck me, a tear slid down his cheek.
“I did.” The confession was barely audible, spoken to the floor between us. “I hurt him. I took a crowbar to the back of his knee before a playoff game and ended his career.”
The world stopped.
My heart forgot how to beat. My lungs forgot how to pull in air. The quilt slipped from my suddenly nerveless fingers as everything I thought I knew about my father—about myself—shattered into a million sharp pieces, each slicing off a piece of my soul.
“Eva?”
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. The room tilted sideways, and black spots danced at the edges of my vision.
“Eva!”
Dad’s voice cut through the roaring in my ears. A cool glass bottle pressed against my burning cheek, the shock of it dragging me back from the edge of unconsciousness.
“You did it,” I breathed, the words raw in my throat. “You actually did it.”
My father—this man who’d read me bedtime stories and taught me to ride a bike and held my hand through surgery after surgery—knelt beside me like a penitent.
His shoulders curved inward, shame radiating from every line of his body, and the contrast between this broken creature and the giant who’d raised me made something fracture in my chest.
A sob tore out of me before I could stop it.
“I—” he began, but I was crying again. Fucking again. Great, heaving sobs ripped out of my chest, turning me inside out.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he whispered. “You’d just come out of the hospital for the first time, and when Jed Carter offered to pay—”
“Jed Carter?” The name exploded out of me. Ice flooded my veins as connections started forming, a horrifying web of cause and effect that stretched back sixteen years—longer, even.
Dad nodded, aging ten years in that single movement. The lines around his eyes deepened into chasms. “He owned me by then. Had for years.”
I tugged on his arm, pulling him onto the couch beside me. He was my father, for fuck’s sake. He shouldn’t be kneeling on the floor like he was begging for absolution I couldn’t give him anyway.
“Tell me,” I whispered, because I had to know, even if it destroyed whatever was left of my world. “Tell me everything.”
He sank into the cushions beside me, and I threw the quilt over his lap, needing his closeness, needing the physical contact to ground me as my world was falling apart.
“I was twenty-two when you were born. A rising star who had everything—a beautiful wife, a perfect daughter, and a future in the NHL.” His laugh was brittle. “But I also had a gambling problem.”
My stomach dropped. No.
“I’d already thrown games for Carter. In small ways at first, just enough to cover my debts. But the hole just kept getting deeper.” His hands shook as they fisted in the blanket. “And then, you got sick.”
I remembered fragments of that time in my life—lying in bed, struggling to breathe, Mom crying, and the maze of machines that had surrounded my hospital bed.
“The surgery was expensive as hell. And you know insurance companies. Especially then, they didn’t want to cover shit for a preexisting condition. So, when Carter offered to clear my debt and pay for your treatment—” Dad’s voice cracked. “I would have sold my soul to save you, Eva.”
“What did he ask you to do?” But I already knew. The pieces were sliding into place with sickening finality.
“He wanted Aleksandr Novikov taken out. Permanently.” Dad’s eyes met mine, and I saw the monster he’d had to become. “Alek was clean. Untouchable. Carter had been trying to get hooks into him, but the kid wouldn’t bite. He decided if he couldn’t corrupt him, he’d destroy him.”
The room felt like it was spinning. “And you said yes.”
“I said yes.” The words fell between us like stones.
“Me and three other guys, we waited for him after practice in the parking garage of his apartment building.” Dad’s voice went flat, emotionless.
“I held him down while the others broke his ribs, and then I took a crowbar to his knee. Shattered it. Made sure he’d never play again.
His teammates came after me in the next game,” Dad continued, his voice eerily calm.
“Left me unable to play. And then your mother—”
“And then Mom left,” I finished, my voice hollow.
“Yep.” He tried for his old sardonic humor, but it came out broken. “Can’t say I blame her.”
He’d started drinking, and I’d lost him too, piece by piece, bottle by bottle, until all that was left was this shell of a man who could barely look at himself in the mirror.
It all circled back to Jedediah Carter. Billionaire. Media mogul. The puppet master who’d been pulling our strings for my entire fucking life.
I knew what I had to do.
There had to be evidence somewhere of what a fucking bastard Jed Carter was, of how many lives he’d ruined. I was going to find it, and I was going to take him down.
Dr. Parker had offered me my job back. I could use that as an excuse to dig into what was going on, to talk to the other teams. I fucking had to.
Carter had taken enough from me. He’d taken from my family, from the people I loved.
And I wasn’t going to let him take anything from anyone else.
No matter the cost.