Chapter 61
COLE
My apartment was fucking depressing. I stood in the middle of bare white walls and boxes I hadn’t unpacked, staring at my phone like it might tell me who I was now that I wasn’t my father’s son, not a hockey player, not hers.
It wasn’t the first Christmas morning I’d spent alone, but this one hurt more than usual.
My phone buzzed with the daily update I’d bribed the hospital for, throwing more and more money at more and more people until I’d finally convinced someone to check her chart every day.
Nurse Fuckface
She’s stable. Cardiac function improving. PT going well. Her father visited yesterday.
She asked to be taken down to the hospital cafeteria to meet friends later today.
Merry Christmas.
We’d blackmailed her. Coerced her. Used her. She almost died because of us—twice—because of my father, because of the situation we’d put her in. The least we could do was stay the fuck away while she healed.
That didn’t stop me from paying for everything—a private room, the best physical therapists specializing in cardiac rehab, anything and everything she needed, donated anonymously, although Eva wasn’t a fucking idiot. She had to know it was me.
My phone buzzed again. It was my lawyer about the emergency board meeting they’d called for tomorrow morning to deal with the fact that I was now a majority shareholder, even as my father’s empire circled the drain without him.
I swiped it away.
I needed coffee. I needed—
A sharp knock thudded at my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Tristan was at the hockey house, and Alek was wherever the fuck Alek went.
When I opened the door, my mother stood in the hallway in designer clothes, wearing an expression I couldn’t read.
“Hello, darling,” she said. “Are you going to let me in?”
I hadn’t seen my mother in over a year. She hadn’t even come to my father’s funeral.
She walked into my apartment like she had every right, setting her suitcase down and looking around with those sharp blue eyes that saw too fucking much.
“Lovely,” she said, voice dry.
“How did you find me?” My voice came out rougher than intended.
“Do you think I spent thirty years married to your father without knowing how to track down a person, let alone my son?”
When I simply raised an eyebrow, she said, “Slade called me.”
That fucker. He hadn’t picked up my calls, but he had time to call my mother?
Mom’s eyes were clearer than I’d ever seen them. There was a lightness in her step I’d never seen before, and for the first time, I wondered whether she’d stayed with my father because of his wealth, or because he didn’t give her any other choices.
She studied me the same way I was studying her. What did she see? The son who killed his father? An addict in rehab? A monster like her late husband?
“You look like shit,” she said finally.
“Thanks.”
“When did you last eat?”
I shrugged. “Probably the donuts at my group therapy session last night.”
“Group therapy? On Christmas Eve?”
So her investigation wasn’t as complete as she wanted me to believe. “I’m sober,” I offered quietly, “but it’s fucking hard.”
My mother took a deep breath and moved toward me like she might pull me into a hug. I couldn’t stop myself from flinching. She hadn’t been there when I OD’d—Alek and Tristan were. She hadn’t stood between my father and me, and she hadn’t done a fucking thing to help me manage my demons.
Even if she was here now, and even if my therapist would remind me that she too had lived with my father, I wasn’t quite ready to forgive.
Mom made a soft sound and moved toward my kitchen, with the coffee maker still in its box and exactly three protein bars in the cabinet. “Slade said there weren’t any charges. That the bratva cleaned up after you.”
“Turns out, cops are as happy to take bribes from me as they were from my father.” Dmitri’s influence with the right people had also helped. “I’m a free man still.”
“Are you?” She turned to face me, holding up an empty protein bar wrapper. “Because this looks like you’ve just locked yourself in another cage.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“I also heard,” she continued, voice softer now, “that you did it all for a girl.” Fuck. “And not Delaney Hartwell, who, by the way, is the person who reached out to me.”
My throat closed. I turned away, staring at the empty wall where normal people would hang pictures. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Eva’s better off without me.” The words tasted like ash. “Without all of us.”
“Where is she?”
“Yorkfield Memorial. She’s in rehab for her heart. Her valve failed the night I—” I stopped, the agony of my own heartbreak swelling in my throat. “The night I killed Dad.”
“Because of the girl?”
“Because of all of us.” I turned back to face her.
“I blackmailed her, Mom. Coerced her into—” I couldn’t finish, couldn’t say it out loud to my mother.
“I became exactly what he made me. And then I killed him to save her. Now, she’s alone in the hospital, recovering from surgery, and I don’t deserve to kiss the ground she walks on. ”
Mom finished whatever she was doing on her phone and looked at me with an eyebrow raised. “Is she alone because she wants to be, or because you want her to be?”
Fuck. Dr. Rivera had asked me the same thing yesterday. Alek had gently suggested therapy might be helpful along with the sober group I met with a few times a week. I’d stayed sober this long; might as well try to figure out why I was so fucked up.
“It’s the right decision,” I said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Anger flared, hot and defensive. “What do you want me to say? That I should show up at her hospital room and what? Apologize? Beg? Tell her I love her after everything I did? She deserves better than three fucked-up hockey players who used her like—”
“Like your father used people,” my mother finished quietly. “I told myself the same thing,” she continued. “That you deserved better than a mother who couldn’t protect you from him. So I almost didn’t come back.” Her voice cracked, just slightly. “But I’m so glad I’m here.”
We stood there in the empty apartment, years of abandonment and survival hanging between us.
“I’m seeing a therapist,” I said finally, “twice a week.”
My mother’s expression softened. “Good.”
“She keeps asking me whose choice I’m protecting. Mine or Eva’s.” I sank to the floor.
My mother sat beside me, possibly the most casual I’d ever seen her.
“What if she hates me?” The words came out raw and broken. “What if I walk in there, and she looks at me and sees him?”
My mother took my hand. “What if she doesn’t? What if she gets to decide for herself what she sees?”
My phone buzzed again.
“There’s a board meeting tomorrow,” I said.
My mother nodded. “I’ll come with you.”
“Mom—”
“I didn’t fly across an ocean to leave you to face his legacy alone.” Her voice was steel. “He started the company with my inheritance. We’ll do this together.”
The conference room overlooked Manhattan like my father’s own personal kingdom. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Mahogany table. Leather chairs that cost more than most people’s cars. Twelve board members in expensive suits, waiting to dissect what was left of Jedediah Carter’s empire.
My mother waited in the lobby downstairs. I’d told her she didn’t need to come up. She’d insisted on being close.
I walked in wearing jeans and a Yorkfield Hockey sweatshirt. Let them fucking judge.
“Mr. Carter.” The CFO—Gerald, I thought—stood. “Thank you for coming. We have much to discuss.”
I took my father’s seat at the head of the table, because that was what they expected. The leather was still warm from whoever had sat here during the last meeting, trying to hold this thing together.
“Investors want reassurance. We need to know if you’re taking over operations, or if we should begin transition planning,” Gerald continued.
Spreadsheets appeared on the screen behind him, numbers so large, they looked fake, listing our real estate holdings, entertainment ventures, and a million restaurants, clubs, and other businesses.
It had all been supported by my father’s sports gambling operation, now absorbed by the bratva, leaving only the shakiest of foundations for me to inherit, no matter what the board might think was left.
“Your father built this for you,” another board member said, a woman whose name I should know.
I stared at the numbers. Thought of Eva in a hospital bed. Thought of Tristan losing his shot at the NHL. Thought of Alek joining the bratva. Thought of every life my father had crushed building this monument to his own ego.
“Your father’s second-in-command has been managing day-to-day operations,” Gerald said. “But we need leadership and long-term vision—a Carter at the helm.”
I looked around the table, saw the hunger in their eyes, the fear. They’d built their lives on my father’s foundation, and now, they needed me to become him.
“What would you do?” I asked Gerald. “If you were me?”
He blinked, surprised. “I would secure your legacy. Your father spent thirty years building this empire.”
“My father,” I said slowly, “was a monster. He hurt everyone he touched.” I stood, pushing back from the table. “I won’t be him.”
“Mr. Carter—”
“Liquidate my shares.” My voice was steady. “All of them.”
Chaos erupted.
“That’s millions of dollars—”
“Your legacy—”
“You can’t just—”
Gerald’s face had gone pale. “You’re walking away from everything.”
“I’m walking away from my father,” I corrected as I looked around the room full of smug, rich assholes who’d ignored my father’s cruelty because it lined their pocketbooks. “You can run these companies, sell them, or tear them apart. I don’t care. But I won’t touch his blood money. Not anymore.”
“What will you do?” someone asked.
The question stopped me. What would I do? I had nothing except sobriety and therapy appointments and the memory of Eva.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But not this.”
I walked out while they were still arguing. The elevator doors closed on their shock and anger, and I descended through my father’s building for the last time.
My mother waited on a marble bench in the lobby. I sank down beside her, suddenly exhausted. The adrenaline of the meeting draining away, leaving just the hollow ache.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Empty.” I stared at my hands. “Terrified. Free.”
We sat in silence. Around us, people moved through the lobby, life continuing like I hadn’t just burned my entire inheritance to ash.
“I don’t know who I am,” I said finally. “Without his money. Without hockey. Without—”
I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say her name.
“Without Eva,” my mother supplied gently.
I nodded, my throat too tight for words.
My mother didn’t try to fill the silence with platitudes or comfort. She just sat beside me, solid and present in a way she couldn’t be when my father was still alive.
My phone sat heavy in my pocket. The nurse I’d bribed would text soon with evening updates on Eva’s progress—heart rates and walking distances—moving on and healing without me in her life.
Maybe that was what I deserved. Maybe staying away was the only good thing I could do for her now.
My mother finally spoke. “What if you’re wrong?”
I looked at her.
“What if you’re not poison?” Her blue eyes held mine. “What if you’re more than what he made you?”
The question hung in the air between us, unanswered.