Chapter 3
Nikolai
“Any property damage, other than the window?”
I’ve faced a lot of lectures over the years, but no coach—Dad excluded—comes close to the intensity of my grandfather when
he’s pissed off. And right now? He’s focusing all of that energy on me.
I clasp my hands behind my back. As soon as I staggered into Mom’s apartment earlier, carrying half the shit I own, she made
me change into a suit and sent me to Grandfather’s. Like showing up in a collared shirt will do a fucking thing to make up
for the fact that I just got expelled from college.
Yet here I am. This morning, I was the team captain of UMass Amherst Men’s Hockey. Now I’m not even a college student.
“No, sir. We only broke one window.”
Grandfather snorts, drumming his fingers against the arm of his chair. I force myself not to fidget. He has yet to shoot a
puck at my face guard and call it training, but in a way, his disapproval is worse than Dad’s. It radiates throughout the
room like poison. To him, I’m sure, this situation is confirmation of what he already suspects: that I’m the same kind of
bastard as my father.
“But this Grady Szabo—”
Donna, his assistant, leans in and murmurs, loud enough I can hear, “One of Nikolai’s former teammates. A freshman, new this
year.”
She smirks as she calls Grady my former teammate. Fuck you too, Donna.
“Thank you. Mr. Szabo is still in the hospital, correct?”
I didn’t visit Grady in the hospital before I left Massachusetts. A lifetime of playing hockey means I’m no stranger to injuries,
but the thought of Grady in that hospital bed—all because I didn’t handle my team the way I should have—makes my stomach roll
with guilt. Even though I didn’t tell Grady to get fucked up on blow and try to head-butt some idiot from the football team through a second-floor window, I could
have done more. Grady is just a freshman, and now instead of taking reps in practice, he’s dealing with a broken leg. Thanks
to the shrub he fell into, he avoided a head injury, at least.
“Right,” I manage to say. “The rehab will take a long time, but they think by next—”
“Did you know about the drugs?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me, Nicholas.”
I grit my teeth. I know he hates the way my name has the unmistakable mark of my father, but still, it’s my name. Nikolai , not Nicholas. “I’m not lying. I had no idea someone brought drugs.”
“The university didn’t seem clear on that.”
I hesitate. “I needed to be loyal to my teammates.”
“So, you knew and lied to them.” He sighs, pinching his nose between his fingers. “No wonder my offer of a very generous donation
was met with silence.”
“I learned more about it after. I didn’t know about it in the moment.” It’s taking all my effort not to snap. “I just want
to figure out a way to finish my degree and play hockey.”
“Good. Because that’s what I want as well.” He stands, stepping around his spotless wooden desk, and gives me a calculating look. His eyes are like pieces of flint, his silver hair combed carefully over his temples. He might be old, but he’s powerful. You don’t get to the point where you own half the buildings in New York City, plus hundreds around the world, by playing it safe.
The Fifth Avenue penthouse that he calls home is as light and modern as an avant-garde art piece, but his office stands apart,
a relic from a time long past. A gas fireplace trimmed with marble stands guard behind his desk. Dark wood paneling gives
the entire room a heavy, dramatic air. The last time I snuck in here—to steal a sip of the good brandy with my cousin, Cricket,
during an insufferable party—I couldn’t understand how easily she flopped onto the leather couch.
Then again, she’s fit into this world her entire life. When Mom divorced Dad and we moved from Moscow to New York, I was already
thirteen.
Grandfather turns his gaze away as he considers one of the only photographs in the room: my mother, Katherine, embracing her
older sister, back when they were eight and ten. Despite the frilly dresses they’re wearing, they look solemn. I’ve always
wondered if the photographer threatened to drown their puppy or something.
“I wanted you and your cousin to pose for something similar, but Andrei wouldn’t allow it,” he says, spitting out my father’s
name as he adjusts the cuffs of his crisp white shirt. “You should have been here all along. My only grandson, and I barely
knew you until you were a teenager.”
“It’s unfortunate.”
“It’s unacceptable,” he snaps.
Despite his intensity, he rarely raises his voice, so I’m taken aback as much as Donna. She looks away politely.
I swallow the panic that threatens to rise at his tone. The past is past, and right now, I have to figure out what the hell
I’m going to do about my senior year of college. “Wherever I transfer, it has to have a hockey program equal to UMass’s. Part
of the timing of my rookie contract is because of the strength of the—”
“We don’t have to worry about that.” He gestures to the couch. The crystal decanters on the bar cart next to it wink in the lamplight as he takes out two glasses. “Take a seat.”
“Grandfather.”
He pours a few fingers of brandy into each glass. “Sit, Nikolai.”
At the sound of my real name, I listen. I should have known that his help would come with a price. Grandfather doesn’t see
much distinction between business decisions and family matters.
“If I do this for you, I need you to make me a promise.”
I stare at my glass. No matter how hard I worked in practice, or how well I played in games, I never earned my father’s love,
but I can still earn Grandfather’s. Whatever his bargain is, it can’t be that bad.
“Anything.”
“Work for me after graduation.”
I nearly choke on the brandy. “What?”
“I will help you transfer to another school—one with a good hockey team—and in return, when you graduate, you’ll come work
for the family business.”
“But... I’m going to play hockey.”
“A couple years spent in an unforgiving league that will tear your body apart? Or worse, joining your father in the KHL? No.
I won’t allow it.”
“You seriously think I’d agree to a contract with my father’s team? In Russia ?”
“He was your first coach.”
“He’s dead to me.” I spit out the words, even though they make my heart ache. I point to the scar on my face. “He gave me
this .”
“I’m well aware.”
“Then you don’t know me at all.”
“I do know you, Nikolai. I want the best possible future for you, and preparing you to take over Abney Industries is the way to make that happen. Did you think I wasn’t serious about that? The company can’t go to just anyone when I’m gone. It’s you or no one.”
When I applied to college, Grandfather wanted me to go to Harvard, his alma mater. Harvard’s hockey team is excellent, but
UMass Amherst had a better coaching staff, so I said yes to their recruiters. He wasn’t thrilled about the National Hockey
League draft, either, but he still congratulated me when the Sharks took me in the first round. SKA St. Petersburg, the team
my father coaches in the Kontinental Hockey League, the Russian equivalent of the NHL, drafted me as well, but I never considered
it a serious option. I’ve made other concessions—studying political science, making it clear that I want my college degree
before playing professionally—but never once did Grandfather say that he wanted me to join the family business instead of playing hockey.
I stand as the magnitude of what he’s asking hits me. “You can’t do this.”
“This is generous, son.” He stands, too. We’re the same height, so unless I want to look like a coward, I have to stare straight
into his eyes. “You’ll graduate from a good university and have another season playing your sport. You’ll tell the NHL and
KHL that you’re retiring, take the job, and start your MBA at Columbia. Now, I would have preferred Harvard for your senior
year, but I figured you’d want to stay in the same division. There’s a spot for you at McKee University, and the coach is
prepared to start you.”
At the mention of McKee, the back of my neck prickles.
Before this mess, I had a good summer. Development camp with the Sharks, time spent with Cricket, and messing around with Isabelle Callahan, who just so happens to be the little sister of Cooper Callahan, the captain of McKee’s hockey team—UMass Amherst’s biggest rival school. I didn’t plan that last one, and if he ever finds out about it, I’m sure to get a punch to the jaw like the season before last, but fuck if it wasn’t worth it.
If I go to McKee, I’ll be on her turf. This time with Callahan for a team captain. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to play with me after what I chirped at him about his girlfriend—even if I
didn’t know at the time that they were dating—when we faced each other last fall.
In my defense, it was the first time I ever saw Isabelle. A minute before the puck drop, and I couldn’t stop staring; I blurted
out something about her like a fool. Covering it up by taunting Cooper about the redhead he couldn’t stop staring at seemed
like a smart decision at the time.
Usually when I play, the audience is a blur, but Isabelle stayed crystal clear. Laughing. Talking with her family. Jumping
out of her seat to cheer on her brother, her smile so breathtaking that I wanted nothing more than for it to be directed at
me. Her hair hung loose around her heart-shaped face, dark and wavy. Absurdly, she reminded me of a mermaid, maybe because
of her eyes, blue like the ocean in a storm. If her last name wasn’t Callahan, I’d have found her after the game and charmed
my way into her bed.
I was prepared to stay the hell away from her when I found out she was my mother’s summer intern. I wasn’t even going to entertain it.
But then I met her for real, and I couldn’t resist. Not because her brother would have hated it, but because I knew then,
just like I knew the moment I first saw her, that she was special, and special doesn’t come around every day.
I’ve been missing her like hell since we broke off our fling, but I never expected to actually see her again. If I agree to
this, we won’t just be in the same city for a few months. We’ll be on the same campus, in the same small town. I can’t risk
falling back into bed with her, especially right under her brother’s nose.
“McKee? Are you serious?”
“It’s an excellent school.”
“You can’t force me into anything.”
“No,” Grandfather says lightly. “You’re an adult, you can make your own choices. But I’d implore you to make the right one.”
“You realize that I’m good at what I do, right? It’s my whole life.”
“That’s what worries me.” He clasps my shoulder firmly. “I’m not denying your talent. You clearly inherited many things from
your father. But I worry that you inherited too many of the wrong things.”
I blink, hard. My mind spins. I could tell him to fuck off, but I wouldn’t put it past him to block me from every top hockey
school in the country, if only to screw me over for not agreeing to what he wants. I could try to play for a junior league
until the Sharks are ready to discuss a rookie contract, but there’s a reason why I went the college route. I wanted an education,
and I wanted a shot at the Frozen Four. McKee won it last season. Plenty of their core players are still on the team, Isabelle’s
brother included. There’s nothing stopping them from winning it again, especially with me on the ice.
Reaching out to Dad isn’t a real option. I never had intentions of playing in the KHL, even if he wasn’t still part of that
league.
That leaves a spot at McKee.
One more year.
One more season .
And Isabelle will be there.
“You say you want to be nothing like him? Prove it. Choose a different path.”
Grandfather’s words hang in the air for several long seconds, taunting as they pull me in.
I tell everyone I hate my father, but that’s not true. I still love him, because he made me the way I am, and while some of it is good—hockey has always been the one good thing in my life—I know I’m lying to myself about not inheriting any of the rest of it. I’m terrified of the day I’ll wake up and see him staring back at me in the mirror. It’s a piece of shrapnel in my heart, aching with every beat.
And it’s why nothing serious could ever happen with Isabelle. What if I tried and fucked it all up? What if I hurt her the
way my father hurt my mother for fucking years ?
I can’t have her, but at least I can have hockey for one more season.
“Fine. Call McKee.”