CHAPTER 4
Seventy-two hours of weaponized adrenaline finally hit the wall.
Everett snapped the heavily waxed laces of his left Bauer skate, ripping the nylon through the top eyelet with enough force to burn the thick calluses on his index fingers. He kicked the molded composite boot away. It hit the rubberized floor mat of his locker stall with a dead, heavy thud.
Around him, the Chicago Inferno locker room was a humid, chaotic disaster of post-practice relief.
The wet slap of shower sandals, the harsh tear of athletic tape, and the heavy bass of a hip-hop track rattling the industrial overhead vents created a localized wall of white noise.
Half the roster was already dressed and heading for the garage; the other half was loudly debating the merits of a steakhouse reservation over the roar of the showers.
Everett dragged in a lungful of air. It smelled of menthol muscle rub, damp equipment, and peeling stick tape.
This was his sanctuary. The one room in the city where external politics, media vultures, and federal warrants fundamentally failed to penetrate the concrete.
He stripped off his soaked black dry-fit shirt, tossing it blindly into the canvas laundry cart.
Then the reinforced steel door of the player lounge was shoved inward.
It didn’t open naturally. It was breached with a sharp, aggressive force that entirely severed the relaxed rhythm of the room.
Everett’s head snapped up. His defensive instincts—honed over a decade of tracking high-speed blindside hits across the neutral zone—flared into the red.
A man in a slate-grey, off-the-rack suit stepped onto the rubber mats.
He didn’t have the rolling, loose-limbed gait of an athlete, nor did he carry the hurried, frantic energy of the sports press.
He moved with the stiff, arrogant precision of government authority.
A gold badge hung clipped to the breast pocket of his suit jacket.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Everett felt his jaw lock. The heavy cords of muscle in his neck tightened into steel cables.
The locker room went completely dead. The music was killed mid-beat by one of the rookies holding a phone. The remaining forwards, entirely unaccustomed to suits entering their private domain without prior front-office clearance, stopped moving.
The agent scanned the room. His pale, investigative eyes cataloged the half-naked players, the expensive carbon-fiber gear, and the sheer volume of wealth insulating the roster.
His gaze was cold, heavily steeped in a bureaucratic cynicism that immediately categorized everyone in the room as a potential hostile.
"Everett Kane," the agent stated.
The voice was reedy, nasal, entirely lacking the physical weight to back up the intrusion.
Everett didn’t stand. He maintained his seated position on the heavy wooden bench, his bare, deeply scarred chest rising and falling in a slow, controlled rhythm.
He let the silence stretch out. He forced the federal officer to stand there in the center of the locker room, acutely aware that he was entirely outnumbered by men who made a living executing high-speed, violent collisions.
"This is a restricted area," Everett said. His tone was perfectly flat. Unbothered.
"Officer Hawkins. Department of Homeland Security," the man replied, stepping deeper into the room.
He pulled a folded file from his inner jacket pocket, his dark leather shoes squeaking sharply against the wet rubber flooring.
"Your security staff at the arena entrance was uncooperative regarding my access.
I bypassed them. We need to have a conversation regarding the emergency civil application filed with Cook County this morning. "
Everett gripped the edge of the wooden bench. The wood groaned audibly under the localized pressure of his heavy fingers.
He didn't look at the file. He kept his dark eyes locked dead on Hawkins’ face.
The kiss from City Hall—the desperate, heavy friction of Dorian’s mouth yielding under his own—was still a phantom weight burning against Everett’s lips.
It had been barely six hours since they signed the parchment, and the federal hammer was already swinging down.
"My legal counsel filed an I-130 petition," Everett said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register. "The paperwork is complete. The federal stay of deportation is active. If you have a grievance with the filing, take it up with my father’s firm. You do not walk into my locker room."
Hawkins let out a short, dry scoff. It was an ugly sound.
"The federal immigration bureau does not take its marching orders from corporate defense lawyers, Mr. Kane.
Nor do we blindly accept overnight marriages of convenience executed twenty-four hours after an active deportation warrant hits the wire. "
The remaining players in the room went perfectly still. A heavy, suffocating tension sucked the remaining oxygen out of the space.
"The timing of a union does not invalidate its legality," Everett countered smoothly, though his blood was beginning to run hot.
"Legality is a matter for the courts," Hawkins snapped, tapping the thick file against his palm.
"Fraud is a matter for my department. The Vladivostok directors provided comprehensive, verified financial data proving Dorian Pike actively participated in structural contract forgery.
Now, conveniently, the second he faces expedited removal, the captain of his hockey team decides to marry him at dawn in a municipal office?
The bureau views this as a blatant, desperate maneuver to evade a federal warrant. "
Everett stood up.
He didn't rush the movement. He executed it with a deliberate, terrifying economy of motion.
At six-foot-four, with shoulders built to shatter composite glass, Everett entirely eclipsed the overhead fluorescent lighting.
He stepped off the rubber matting and closed the distance, stopping exactly two feet away from the agent.
The sheer height and mass difference was staggering.
Hawkins had to physically tilt his chin upward to maintain eye contact.
"My marriage," Everett said, every syllable dripping with a cold, aristocratic menace, "is a private domestic matter. My husband’s past management was corrupt, and my legal team is currently dismantling their fabricated claims on an international level.
You want to audit the paperwork? Be my guest. We welcome the scrutiny. "
Hawkins didn't flinch. He adjusted his grip on the file, a cold, predatory satisfaction settling over his features.
"We won't just be auditing the paperwork, Mr. Kane," Hawkins said, his voice dropping the polite bureaucratic facade. "I have been personally assigned to field-verify the legitimacy of this household. An unannounced, comprehensive home inspection will occur within the next forty-eight hours."
Everett’s eyes narrowed into dark slits. The tactical board in his mind began to rapidly reconfigure.
"An inspection," Everett repeated slowly.
"Yes. A physical residency verification," Hawkins detailed, his pale eyes tracking Everett’s micro-expressions for any sign of a fracture.
"We will audit the closets. We will check the bathrooms. We will verify dual occupancy, shared utility logs, and domestic routines.
If I walk into your primary residence and find that Mr. Pike is not living there full-time—if I find a single discrepancy indicating he is maintaining separate quarters or that this union is a paper shield—the stay of removal will be instantly voided. "
Hawkins leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. "And I will personally execute a federal arrest warrant for conspiracy to defraud the United States government. For both of you."
The sound of a heavy tile door swinging open echoed from the back corridor.
Dorian walked out of the shower stalls.
The goalie stopped dead in his tracks. Water dripped heavily from the dark, wet ends of his hair, pooling on his collarbones.
He wore nothing but a thin, white facility towel slung dangerously low on his hips.
The brutal physical toll of his position was entirely exposed under the harsh locker room lights—deep, purple contusions mapped his ribs, and a raw stick-burn sliced across his left oblique.
Dorian’s grey eyes darted from Everett to the man in the grey suit.
He heard the words arrest warrant. The blood completely drained from Dorian’s face, leaving his skin a stark, translucent white.
The sheer, unadulterated terror that seized the goalie was visible; his chest locked, refusing to draw breath, and his long, wet fingers clamped down convulsively on the knot of the towel at his waist.
He looked entirely defenseless.
A violent, primitive possessiveness detonated in the center of Everett’s chest. The strategic, calculated captain vanished, entirely overridden by a blind, territorial alpha necessity to guard his own.
Everett moved.
He didn't just step toward Dorian; he deliberately cut across Hawkins’ line of sight, forcing the federal agent to step back or be physically trampled. Everett reached Dorian in three massive strides. He didn't hesitate or ask for permission.
Everett’s heavy right arm wrapped aggressively around Dorian’s bare, wet waist.
The physical impact forced a sharp, fractured gasp out of Dorian’s throat.
Everett clamped the goalie flush against his side, his large, calloused hand gripping the curve of Dorian’s hip with an unyielding, branding pressure.
The damp heat of the shower radiating off Dorian’s skin soaked instantly into Everett’s bare side.
Dorian was trembling—a fine, high-frequency vibration of pure panic—and Everett’s grip tightened significantly, anchoring the goalie’s entire body weight against his own solid frame.
Everett turned slightly, positioning his towering body to act as a literal meat shield between his husband and the federal agent.
"The primary residence," Everett stated, his voice a deep, vibrating threat that completely dominated the room, "is my penthouse. Downtown. Pike moved his belongings in this afternoon."
Dorian didn't say a word. He couldn't. His wet shoulder was pressed hard into the deep pectoral muscle of Everett’s chest. The sheer, overwhelming reality of the captain’s body heat was a heavy narcotic, forcing Dorian to remain upright when his knees threatened to buckle under the weight of the federal threat.
Hawkins watched the display. His eyes dragged over the bruising on Dorian’s ribs, then tracked upward to the heavy, possessive placement of Everett’s hand on the goalie’s bare skin. The agent’s expression tightened into a mask of bitter skepticism.
"Is that so," Hawkins muttered, making a deliberate, slow note in his file. He snapped the folder shut. The sound was sharp, final.
Hawkins looked directly at Dorian, completely ignoring Everett. "I hope you pack light, Mr. Pike. Because if your toothbrush isn't wet, and your clothes aren't mixing with his in the master bedroom, you’ll be sleeping in a holding cell by the end of the week."
Dorian’s throat clicked as he swallowed hard, his fingers digging desperately into the side of Everett’s hip, entirely uncaring of the audience watching them.
Everett felt the sharp dig of Dorian’s nails against his skin. It sent a wild, heavy spike of adrenaline straight into his bloodstream. He glared down at Hawkins, his jaw set like carved granite.
"Get out of my locker room," Everett commanded. It wasn't a request. It was an eviction.
Hawkins smiled. It was a cold, utterly bloodless expression that didn't reach his eyes. He adjusted the lapel of his grey suit, entirely satisfied with the psychological damage he had just inflicted.
"Enjoy the honeymoon phase, gentlemen," Hawkins said, turning toward the heavy steel door. "I will see you at the penthouse."
The heavy door swung shut behind the agent with a loud, metallic slam, sealing the locker room back up.
The silence that followed was deafening. The remaining players stared at the floor, acutely aware they had just witnessed a massive, high-stakes collision that had nothing to do with hockey.
Everett didn't release his hold. He kept his arm securely wrapped around Dorian’s waist, his thumb pressing a slow, heavy rhythm into the damp skin of the goalie’s hip.
He could feel Dorian’s heart hammering a frantic, uneven beat against his ribs.
The fake legal contract they had signed that morning was entirely dead.
The federal government had just drawn a hard perimeter around them, forcing the lie into a brutal, inescapable physical reality.
They weren't just names on a document anymore.
Everett looked down at the pale, bruised man trembling against his side. The realization hit him with the force of a freight train. To survive the audit, he was going to have to take the most guarded, deeply traumatized athlete in the entire league and force him into his bed.
And heaven help them both, Everett realized he was entirely prepared to lock the door behind him.