CHAPTER 11
A massive pocket of dead air over Lake Huron dropped the fuselage forty feet in a single, gut-wrenching second.
The heavy plastic of the overhead bins rattled violently. A sharp, collective curse echoed from the back rows of the Inferno’s private charter flight, followed by the dull thud of a dropped water bottle rolling down the carpeted aisle.
Dorian didn't flinch. He kept his head turned toward the double-paned window of his oversized first-class seat, his dark eyes locked on the pitch-black expanse outside.
There was nothing to see. The cloud cover was absolute, a thick, suffocating blanket that entirely swallowed the lights of the North American grid.
He stared at his own faint reflection in the glass.
The heavy shadows under his eyes looked bruised in the dim cabin lighting.
He looked like a man waiting for a firing squad.
The turbulence smoothed out. The low, deafening roar of the twin Rolls-Royce turbofans leveled into a steady, vibrating drone that pressed against his eardrums.
The cabin of the Boeing 757 was a high-altitude pressure cooker.
Thirty professional athletes, six coaches, and a dozen management executives were sealed inside a flying metal tube, hurtling toward the most hostile playoff environment in the league.
The air smelled of recycled oxygen, expensive cologne, and the sharp, undeniable metallic scent of pre-game adrenaline.
To a casual observer, the team was resting.
The overhead lights were killed. Most of the window shades were drawn.
Three rows ahead, a rookie forward was hunched over a glowing laptop, the faint, tinny sound of skates cutting ice leaking from his noise-canceling headphones as he reviewed tape of Toronto’s neutral zone trap.
Dorian saw none of it. His mind was entirely consumed by the invisible, tightening snare of the federal government.
They were crossing an international border.
The charter flight had pre-cleared customs in Chicago, but the reality of leaving United States soil sent a cold, heavy spike of paranoia straight through his digestive tract.
Officer Hawkins wasn't a standard bureaucrat making empty threats.
The agent was actively hunting them. Hawkins had promised a physical spot-check during this road trip.
He had promised to tear through their hotel suite, to interrogate the concierge, to pull the keycard logs, and to execute a federal detention warrant the second he found a microscopic fracture in their domestic facade.
Dorian’s hands were clamped over the ends of the leather armrests. His knuckles were a stark, bloodless white.
If Hawkins breached the hotel perimeter in Toronto, the fallout wouldn't just destroy Dorian’s life.
It would decimate the entire Chicago Inferno franchise.
The media would detonate. Everett would be dragged out of the arena in handcuffs for federal conspiracy.
The playoff run would instantly collapse.
The sheer, overwhelming guilt of being the active liability threatening the captain’s legacy was crushing the oxygen out of Dorian’s lungs.
A heavy, deliberate shift in the floorboards broke his spiraling focus.
The suspension of the aircraft tilted slightly to the left as a massive frame moved down the narrow, dark aisle.
Dorian didn't need to look up to know who it was. The heavy, rhythmic stride lacked the loose, restless energy of the forwards. It was the calculated, space-consuming march of a defenseman who fundamentally owned the ice he walked on.
Everett Kane stopped at row four.
The captain was wearing the mandatory team travel suit—a bespoke, dark navy wool two-piece that stretched tight across the immense width of his shoulders. His tie was already stripped off, the top two buttons of his crisp white dress shirt undone, exposing the thick, tanned column of his throat.
Everett didn't ask if the aisle seat was taken. He turned and dropped his heavy frame into the leather chair beside Dorian.
The physical displacement of air in the cramped space was immediate. Dorian’s rigid posture locked further, his spine snapping straight against the cushion.
Everett didn't settle back. He leaned forward, his large, battered hand reaching down between the two seats. His fingers found the mechanical release latch of the heavy leather armrest divider. He pushed the heavy metal button.
Clack.
Everett shoved the thick armrest backward, recessing it entirely into the seat back, forcefully eliminating the only physical boundary between them.
The transition was jarring. Without the divider, the sheer size of the captain spilled over the invisible property line of the seats. Everett shifted his weight to the right. The heavy, abrasive wool of his suit jacket pressed flush against the sleeve of Dorian’s identical uniform.
The sudden, aggressive physical contact sent a violent jolt of heat straight down Dorian’s left side.
It wasn't just proximity; it was a deliberate, heavy claim. Everett’s broad shoulder dug firmly into his, an unyielding wall of muscle that offered a silent, terrifyingly solid resistance against the panic spiraling in Dorian’s head.
"Breathe," Everett commanded.
The word was barely a whisper. It was a dark, rough vibration pitched so low it didn't carry past the headrests of their seats, intended entirely for Dorian’s ears.
Dorian swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the quiet cabin. He slowly turned his head away from the window.
Everett was already looking at him. The ambient light from a reading lamp two rows up caught the sharp, brutal angles of the captain's jawline. His dark eyes were entirely focused, stripping away the public executive mask he wore for the management staff sitting in the front of the plane.
Everett reached into the inner breast pocket of his suit jacket. He pulled out a sleek, encrypted digital tablet.
"Look at this," Everett murmured, resting the heavy device on his thigh, angling the screen so only Dorian could see it.
Dorian forced his eyes to drop to the glowing display. It wasn't hockey footage. It was a highly complex, multi-tiered financial spreadsheet. The columns were filled with international routing numbers, timestamps, and blocks of text translated from Cyrillic to English.
"Sterling received the encrypted wire logs an hour before wheels up," Everett explained, his voice a low, steady hum that entirely blocked out the noise of the aircraft engines. "My father’s forensic accountants bypassed the Russian privacy firewalls. They tore the Vladivostok club’s internal ledgers completely open. "
Dorian’s breath hitched. He leaned closer, the heat of Everett’s body radiating against his side as he strained to read the tiny, glowing text.
"Line forty-two," Everett instructed, his thick index finger tapping the glass screen, leaving a faint smudge over a massive numerical value.
"Three days before they terminated your contract and filed the initial fraud report with the State Department, your former general manager executed a transfer of four million rubles. "
"To where?" Dorian asked, his voice a tight, fractured rasp.
"To an offshore shell corporation registered in Nicosia, Cyprus," Everett replied, the predatory satisfaction in his tone entirely unmistakable. "A shell corporation that our investigators just definitively linked to an illegal, high-stakes sports betting syndicate operating out of Macau."
The words hit Dorian’s brain, but it took three full seconds for the sheer magnitude of the information to process.
He stared at the routing numbers. The screen blurred.
"They were betting," Dorian whispered, the horrific reality of the betrayal taking on an entirely new, entirely lethal shape. "They were betting against their own roster."
"They were throwing games in the third period to cover the syndicate's spreads," Everett confirmed, his jaw locking into a hard, unforgiving line.
"And when the league authorities started an internal audit last month, the directors panicked.
They needed a scapegoat to take the fall for the missing operational funds.
They needed an asset with no political leverage, no family protection, and a pending visa transfer they could weaponize. "
"Me," Dorian breathed, the single syllable tasting like ash.
"You," Everett agreed. He turned his head, his face mere inches from Dorian’s profile.
"They backdated the illegal transfers, forged your signature on the electronic receipts, and fed the manufactured evidence directly to the American immigration bureau to ensure you were deported before you could ever testify. "
The dark clouds outside the window suddenly didn't matter. The suffocating confines of the airplane vanished.
Dorian stared at the glowing tablet, his chest rising and falling in rapid, violent spikes.
The massive, invisible weight that had been crushing his spine for the past week—the shame of the allegations, the deep, agonizing fear that no one would ever believe a backup goalie over a team of wealthy foreign executives—began to violently fracture.
They had the proof.
Everett’s family hadn't just filed defensive paperwork to stall the deportation.
They had launched a massive, highly illegal international cyber-operation to hunt down the men who had ruined him.
They were actively dismantling the conspiracy, executing a war of attrition that the Vladivostok directors couldn't possibly survive.