Chapter 28
Declan
My father’s voice fills the room. It’s not the cold, sharp bark from our last call.
It's amused.
The sound of it turns my stomach.
“Well, Declan,” Alistair Reid says, a light, dismissive chuckle in his tone. “I have to admit, I’m impressed. A ‘Poison Pill’ clause. A ‘merger.’ You've been busy. And you've allied yourself with the campus blogger. How... quaint.”
The word blogger drips contempt. Like it's synonymous with irrelevant.
My hand is fisted on my knee. Knuckles white. Nails biting into the cut I made earlier. I can feel Talia's leg trembling beside me—tiny, involuntary shocks through the couch cushion—and under my other hand, resting on her thigh, I feel her force it still. She’s fighting not to flinch for him.
“It's not a blog, it's an NCAA violation,” Maya snaps, voice like ice. She’s standing now, hand braced on the back of Genny’s chair, but I see the way her knuckles are bleaching white. “And a blackmail charge.”
“It's a draft, Ms. Maddox,” my father counters, amusement fading, replaced by a cold, bored venom.
The shift is so fast, so familiar, it makes the back of my neck prickle.
“A draft that will never see the light of day.
Because if you dare publish that, if you even think about it, I will not just pull the grant.
I will call the trustees, and I will have Coach Addison fired for gross negligence before your article even hits the server.
And then, I will sue this university for slander, and I will sue you, personally, for libel, until you're begging for a job writing cafeteria menus. Am I clear?”
The threat lands, sucking the air from the room.
I hear somebody swear under their breath—Gio, probably. Zoe lets out a sharp, cut-off inhale like she’s been punched. Clara’s hand flies to her mouth. Adrian’s jaw flexes hard enough I can hear his molars grind.
Even Maya wavers. For a split second, the journalist mask slips, and I see the nineteen-year-old student underneath, realizing exactly how big the boot is that’s about to crush her.
“You think you're the first 'kid' who's tried to play this game?” he scoffs. “You're holding a grenade, but you're forgetting I’m the one who built the bunker. Bury it. Or I bury all of you. Starting with her.”
His emphasis is a knife. Her. Talia.
My fingers convulse around Talia’s thigh at the same time her breath stutters. She doesn’t make a sound, but I feel the flinch all the way through my ribs.
He hangs up.
The silence that follows is a tomb. Thick. Sealed.
No one moves. The only sound in the room is the faint hum of Genny’s desktop and the distant, muffled slam of a door from another apartment down the hall.
“Holy shit,” Gio whispers from the counter, voice stripped of its usual joking edge.
Clara is pale, eyes huge. “He's... he's not bluffing,” she says, looking at Adrian. “He’ll do it. He’ll fire Coach tonight.”
“He’s got the lawyers,” Adrian agrees, voice hollow. “If we drop this, Coach is dead in the water. If we don’t drop it… he’s dead in the water.”
The Line looks shattered. The air feels like the aftermath of a hit in the boards—everyone stunned, wind knocked out, unsure which way is up. We have the bomb, but he's called our bluff. He's willing to let it go off, as long as it takes us with him.
Maya stares at her screen, finger trembling over the trackpad. “I can’t,” she whispers, looking at Talia. “Talia, I can’t do that to your dad. If I hit send, he calls the Board.”
I look at Talia.
She’s staring at the blank laptop screen where Maya’s draft still glows in black and white. At first, I think she’s frozen. Her shoulders are rigid, jaw tight. But when I look closer, really look, I see it: she’s not shaking. She’s not crumbling.
She’s furious.
She stands up. The movement is sudden enough that my hand slips from her leg. She doesn’t seem to notice. She looks at Maya.
“He's right,” Talia says, voice so cold it makes my skin prickle. It doesn’t wobble. Doesn’t crack. It slices. “He thinks we're kids. He's counting on us being too scared to fight back. He's counting on me being the 'distraction' he can scare off.”
She turns her head, eyes finding mine. Blazing with a fire I’ve never seen—not on the ice, not in the tunnel. This is different. Sharper. Focused.
“But he’s lying,” I say, the logic clicking into place in my head.
Talia nods, seeing it too. “If we wait, he fires my dad quietly. He spins it as negligence. He buries him.” She turns back to Maya. “But if we publish now? If the story breaks that he’s blackmailing the program?”
“Then firing him looks like retaliation,” Dante finishes, stepping forward from the doorway. Dark eyes gleam. “It becomes a whistleblower case. He can’t fire the Coach without confirming the story.”
“The article is the shield,” I say, standing up. My blood is humming now. Not fear. Strategy. “It’s the only armor Coach has. We have to move before he makes that call.”
Maya looks between us. Fear is still there, but the logic is taking hold.
“Talia,” I say, voice rough. “Your dad...”
“My dad taught me to fight,” she says.
She pulls her phone from her hoodie pocket. Fingers move fast, typing a short message. I see the screen over her shoulder.
Dad. Don’t answer the phone tonight. Trust me.
She hits send, then sets the phone face down on the coffee table with a decisive click.
Her chin lifts, just a fraction, enough that the overhead screen-light carves a hard line along her jaw. “He's wrong about one thing. He's not the one holding the grenade. We are.”
I look at her. Really look. At the girl who flinches at slamming doors and still walked herself across campus at night. At her strength. Her fire. Her stubborn, reckless, impossible courage.
I take her hand. Fingers cold. She lets me lace mine through them anyway. I squeeze. She squeezes back, firm, no hesitation.
I look around the room. At Adrian. Clara. Dante. Genny.
“We do this together,” I say. “Or not at all.”
Adrian nods. Dante crosses his arms and gives a sharp chin lift. Genny cracks her knuckles.
Maya looks at us—the joined hands, the line we’re drawing—and a slow, dangerous smile spreads across her face. “With pleasure.”
She hits the key.
“It's live,” she says.
No dramatics. No countdown. Just that. All that.
The room exhales all at once—a mix of terror and electric adrenaline. Zoe lets out a low, hysterical laugh she smothers with her fist. Gio drags a hand down his face like he’s bracing for impact.
My heart is pounding, but it’s steady. No scatter. No panic. Just the clean hum of game-day focus.
I stand up. My fingers slip from Talia’s, but not before I let my thumb drag slowly across her palm, a silent promise: I’m not walking away. Not this time.
“I have one more thing to do.”
Talia's eyes meet mine. She nods. Just once. No questions. Go.
I walk into Genny's empty bedroom, closing the door behind me. The muffled click of the latch cuts off the others. The sudden quiet is disorienting, like stepping off the ice into a vacuum.
The silence is a relief. And a weight.
I sit on the edge of the narrow bed. I look down at my hand.
The ink from the pen I destroyed in my father’s office is still there, stained deep into the ridges of my thumb. Next to it, the cut from the metal clip is a jagged red line, tacky with dried blood. A smudge of gold flake glitters in the wound.
It hurts when I flex my hand. Good. It reminds me who I’m fighting.
I pull out my phone. I scroll past my father. I find her.
Beatrice.
I find the text from her. The "personal bomb."
I don't call my father. I call her.
She picks up on the second ring, her voice that same, fake, syrupy-sweet coo she uses at fundraisers. “Declan, darling. You're finally calling me back. Your father is—”
“It's over, Beatrice.”
My voice is flat. A blade. I don’t raise it. I don’t have to. The edge is in the calm.
A beat of silence. I can almost see her blinking. Then a cold, sharp laugh. “Don't be dramatic. It's not over until my father and your father sign the merger. You're just having a tantrum.”
“I'm not talking about the merger,” I say. I open my email with my free hand. “I'm talking about us.”
My thumb moves in automatic, practiced motions—compose, attach. I attach the screenshot of her text.
Beatrice: Alistair, I saw Declan with the coach's daughter at the fundraiser... She is a 'complication' we don't need.
I hit send.
“I just emailed you,” I say. “Check it.”
I wait. I hear the faint rustle of movement on her end. A click. A breath.
Then a sharp, choked intake of air.
“You...” she whispers, fake sweetness gone, stripped away in an instant. “You wouldn't.”
“The Briarcliff Chronicle just published an article about my father's 'transactional' donations,” I say, voice as cold as the ice. “I’m wondering how the New York Times social column would react to this screenshot. ‘Prominent Merger Called Off Due to Blackmail Scheme.’ It’s a hell of a headline, Bea. Hard to get invited to the Met Gala with that kind of stink on you.”
I can hear her breathing—ragged, furious. The threat of the NCAA meant nothing to her. But social suicide? That’s a language she speaks fluently.
“You're bluffing,” she hisses.
“Was my father bluffing?” I ask quietly.
“When he threatened to fire Coach Addison?
When he called Talia a 'distraction'?” I look down at the blood on my hand.
“The leash is cut, Beatrice. We're done.
You'll call your father, you'll call my father, and you will tell them the engagement is off. That it was your choice. That we’re ‘incompatible.’”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I forward this to every gossip columnist in the city within five minutes.”
Silence. Thick. Heavy.
Then, the sound of her swallowing hard.
“Fine,” she chokes out. “Fine. Go to hell, Declan.”
The line goes dead.
I lower the phone. My hand is shaking. I stare at it for a second, at the faint tremor in my fingers, at the ink and the blood.
Standing, I walk back out into the living room. The noise hits first—Zoe swearing at the refresh wheel on her phone, Gio pacing, Clara clutching a throw pillow like a life raft, Genny muttering into her keyboard as the view count climbs.
Talia is standing by the window, arms folded over her chest, eyes fixed on the dark slice of campus beyond the glass. Her reflection is ghosted over it—tired, fierce, unbroken.
She looks up as I walk in. She doesn't ask. She doesn't need to. She knows.
I don’t say a word. I just cross the room in six long strides, ignoring everyone else, and walk to her. I slide one arm around her waist, the other around her shoulders, and pull her into my chest.
She comes willingly. No hesitation. No flinch. She presses her face into my t-shirt, fingers fisting in the hem at my sides like she’s anchoring herself there.
I bury my face in her hair, breathing her in—shampoo and coffee and the faintest hint of peppermint that never really leaves. My eyes close. For the first time today, my shoulders drop a fraction of an inch.
“It's done,” I whisper into her hair.
Her voice is muffled against my chest, but there’s steel in it. “No,” she says. “It's just starting.”
My mouth curves in agreement. In recognition.
She’s right. The article is live. My father is wounded, which makes him dangerous. Beatrice is cornered. The Coach is in the crosshairs.
The war isn't over.
The fuse is just lit.
And now that the leash is cut, he has no idea how hard it's going to be to hold us when the explosion hits.