Chapter 24
Killian POV
The concrete underpass beneath the north bleachers of The Pit smelled of wet limestone, de-icing salt, and the oily stench of the Zamboni exhaust pipes.
Outside, a freezing November drizzle glazed the asphalt apron in a slick, treacherous sheen of black ice. My practice gear was slung over my left shoulder, the heavy duffel pulling against my bruised trap, my right hand buried deep in the pocket of my dark team jacket.
My knuckles were raw from two hours of power-play drills. My muscles hummed with a clean, honest exhaustion, my mind locked on the memory of Nadia’s mouth on mine against the front door twenty-four hours ago.
I turned the blind corner past the chemical storage cages, heading toward the staff exit.
A shadow moved out from behind the yellow salt hopper.
"Still got that heavy stride, Killian."
The voice hit my eardrums like a bucket of lye.
Every drop of blood in my body turned to liquid nitrogen.
My boots stopped dead on the grooved concrete.
The duffel slipped an inch down my bicep, the nylon strap biting into the bone.
A deafening, high-pitched whistle detonated behind my temples, narrowing my vision down to a sharp, circular tunnel.
The cold air in the underpass backed up in my windpipe, thick as ash, tasting of bitter iron and three-year-old mud.
Standing ten feet away in the yellow glare of an unshielded bulb was Jared Holt.
He hadn't changed. The same stained sheepskin coat with the worn fleece collar. The same greasy thinning hair combed back over a red, wind-burned scalp. The same faint, sour reek of cheap menthol tobacco and wet gravel that had clung to the locker rooms of the Northern Tier prospect camp in Duluth.
The man who had taken five thousand dollars of my father’s overtime money to put Mateo on the ice against twenty-four-year-old minor league washouts.
The man who had stood by the dasher boards with a stopwatch while my brother’s sixth cervical vertebra snapped like dry kindling, and then handed me the business card of a private high-interest debt broker before the ambulance even cleared the parking lot.
"What are you doing in Michigan, Holt?"
My voice didn't sound human. It was a low, guttural vibration that rumbled from the bottom of my boots, flat and dead as river stone.
Holt pulled a plastic lighter from his pocket, snapping the wheel twice before holding the yellow flame to a squashed cigarette. He dragged the smoke deep into his chest, the tip flaring orange in the gloom, watching me through hooded, calculating eyes.
"Came to watch the showcase," Holt said, exhaling a thin gray cloud that swirled toward the water pipes overhead. "Heard the scouts from Montreal and Calgary were in town. Wanted to see if that six-foot-four enforcer from the iron range was really worth seven figures."
My molars clamped together with enough force to send a blinding jolt of agony down into my jawbone.
"You're trespassing on university grounds," I said, my voice dropping an octave, each word dragged over broken glass. "Get off the property."
"I have business with you, kid," Holt replied, taking a slow step forward, his boots scuffing on the wet floor.
He reached inside the lining of his sheepskin coat.
My left shoulder dipped on pure, feral instinct, my center of gravity dropping, ready to drive my shoulder through his sternum and smash his skull into the cinder blocks.
Holt didn't pull a weapon. He pulled a folded sheet of legal-sized pink carbon paper.
He held it up between two nicotine-stained fingers.
"January fifteenth," Holt said, tapping the paper with a dull thud of his thumbnail. "Thirty-five thousand dollars. The second balloon payment on the medical promissory note you signed in Minneapolis to keep your brother on that robotic treadmill."
The tunnel lights seemed to dim, the concrete walls leaning inward, pressing the breath out of my lungs.
"I wired the monthly interest to Ross last week," I rasped, my fists clenching inside my pockets so hard the fingernails sliced through the skin of my palms.
"Ross handles the clinic," Holt said, a thin, yellow-toothed smile stretching across his mouth. "I hold the promissory note, Killian. I bought the paper from the broker in St. Paul two months ago when I saw your name climbing the Central Scouting bureau list."
He took another step, closing the distance until the sweet, rotten smell of his tobacco washed over my chin.
"Thirty-five thousand covers the medical lien," Holt murmured, his voice dropping into a sleazy, conspiratorial purr.
"But the draft is a different market. You're projected top-five.
That's a nine-hundred-and-fifty-thousand base salary, plus an eighty-thousand-dollar signing bonus on day one.
I want fifty grand out of that bonus, Castaneda. Added to the principal."
* * *
A red haze detonated behind my eyes.
The air in my chest didn't circulate; it burned like sulfur, searing my bronchial tubes. A violent, sickening rush of adrenaline coated the back of my tongue with the taste of copper.
My knuckles shook inside my pockets. The urge to kill him—to drop my bag, step into his chest, and tear his throat out with my bare hands—screamed in my ears like a jet engine.
One punch.
That was all it would take. One clean, unchecked strike to his jaw, and Jared Holt would be lying motionless on the concrete, his pink paper drowning in the slush.
And then the police would arrive.
Palmer would call the NCAA compliance committee before the sirens faded.
Bylaw 16. Assault charges. Immediate suspension.
My captaincy stripped. The Montreal draft dossier thrown in the shredder.
And Mateo would be wheeled out of the Duluth clinic by Friday noon because the promissory note defaulted.
He knew it.
Holt stood there in his greasy coat, his chest hollow, his eyes gleaming with the pathetic, cowardly confidence of a parasite who knew he was protected by the rulebook.
"You don't have fifty grand, Holt," I grated, my voice a ruined, vibrating rasp. "You have thirty-five thousand on January fifteenth. Not a penny more."
"Then maybe I have a chat with Martin Cole," Holt countered smoothly, taking another drag of his cigarette.
"I hear he's running an investigative piece on your family's finances.
Wonder what the regional compliance officer would think if he saw a private, unregistered loan note tied to your athletic eligibility. "
He paused, his eyes flicking past my shoulder toward the distant parking lot.
"Or maybe I talk to that little brunette fellow," Holt sneered, his mouth twisting into a grotesque grin.
"The one with the clips in her hair. Saw her climbing out of your truck by the bluffs this morning. Biomechanics, right? Wonder what she’d think if she knew her golden boy captain is being bankrolled by dirty paper from the camp where his brother broke his neck. "
The world snapped.
The last shred of discipline I possessed didn't dissolve; it was ripped to ribbons.
I didn't think about the draft. I didn't think about Palmer.
I dropped the heavy duffel. It hit the wet concrete with a dead, rubbery slap as I closed the four feet between us in a fraction of a second.
My right hand shot out, broad fingers clamping like an iron vise into the sheepskin lapels of his coat.
I didn't punch him. I lifted him.
Two hundred and twenty-eight pounds of athletic violence drove forward, slamming Holt backward into the cinder-block wall with a bone-jarring impact that knocked the breath out of his lungs in a wet, wheezing choke.
His cigarette flew from his lips, hissing out in a puddle of muddy water.
I held him pinned six inches off the concrete deck, my forearm buried deep against his windpipe, my knuckles grinding into his sternum until the sheepskin stitching tore with a sharp screech.
My face was two inches from his.
My eyes were wild, black voids consuming the amber, my chest heaving against his in heavy, violent surges that shook the wall behind him. The vein along the side of my neck throbbed like a drum, my teeth bared in an animal snarl that made the color drain completely from Holt's blotchy face.
"You listen to me, you miserable piece of shit," I whispered.
The sound wasn't loud. It was a lethal, frozen gravel that vibrated straight through his collarbone.
"You will never speak her name," I rasped, leaning my full weight into his throat until his eyes bugged wide with sudden, suffocating terror. "You will never look in her direction. You will never set foot on this ridge again."
Holt clawed at my wrist with trembling, yellowed fingers, his boots kicking uselessly at the air, his mouth gaping as he starved for oxygen.
"You get your thirty-five thousand on January fifteenth," I growled, my lips hovering over his ear, each word an unyielding promise of death.
"You bring that paper to the Duluth clinic, you sign the release, and you disappear.
If I see your face in this town before then, or if you ever put your filthy shadow within a mile of Nadia Gregory, I won't care about the draft.
I won't care about the police. I will hunt you down and tear you apart with my bare hands. Do you understand me?"
He couldn't speak. He nodded frantically, his eyes rolling back in terror, his breath rattling in his throat.
I held him there for two more agonizing seconds, letting him feel the absolute, terrifying reality of his own mortality.
Then I let go.
Holt collapsed to the concrete deck in a sodden, gasping heap, clutching his bruised throat, coughing violently into the slush.
I didn't look back at him.
I bent down, scooped my duffel off the ground with one hand, and walked out into the freezing drizzle, leaving him choking in the dark.
* * *
The drive up the bluffs was a blur of gray ice and black asphalt.
My hands on the steering wheel were shaking with a violent, uncontrollable tremor that rattled the transmission shifter. The rage was still screaming in my ears, hot and poisonous, coating the back of my throat with the bitter tang of battery acid.
The walls were closing in.
Holt. The debt. The draft. The threat to her name.
The past was clawing at the door, trying to drag me back into the frozen Minnesota dirt, trying to poison the only clean, holy thing I had left in this miserable life.
I pulled into the saltbox driveway, killed the engine, and practically tore the truck door off its hinges getting out.
I took the porch stairs in two lunging strides, my boots tracking wet snow across the wood. I jammed my key into the brass deadbolt, threw the heavy door open, and stepped inside.
The house was warm.
The scent hit me like a physical blow—seasoned birch, clean linen, and the faint, sweet warmth of her vanilla soap.
Nadia was sitting on the living room rug by the woodstove, wearing my heavy gray hockey socks and an oversized navy sweater. Her notebooks were spread around her in neat, orderly rows, her chestnut curls falling across her cheek as she highlighted a line of text.
At the sound of the door slamming, she looked up.
A bright, beautiful, unguarded smile broke across her face—a smile that belonged only to me, born of the secret world we had built behind these walls.
"Killian," she said, her voice soft, warm, welcoming me home.
The sight of her broke me clean in two.
My duffel bag hit the pine floorboards with a heavy thud. My keys clattered across the entryway table, forgotten.
I crossed the living room in three long, desperate strides, my boots silent on the rug.
Before she could speak, before she could ask why my hair was soaked or why my knuckles were bleeding, I reached down, caught her beneath the arms, and hauled her clean off the floor.
"Killian?" she gasped, her hands coming up to clutch my shoulders.
I didn't answer.
I fell to my knees on the wool rug, pulling her with me, wrapping my massive arms around her waist with a crushing, frantic strength that pulled her body flush against my chest. I buried my face into the crook of her neck, my forehead pressing hard against the soft, burning hollow of her throat, dragging in her scent like a drowning man breaking through the ice.
My chest heaved in ragged, violent surges against her ribs, my shoulders trembling with the savage aftershock of the violence I had barely held back.
Nadia went still for half a second. Then, her small, warm hands came up, sliding into the dark hair at the back of my neck, her fingers tangling into the damp strands with fierce, tender devotion.
"I've got you," she whispered, her voice steady and soft against my ear, her lips pressing a warm, gentle kiss to my temple. "I'm right here. I've got you, Killian."
I held her tighter, my fingers digging into the wool of her sweater, anchoring myself to the only light in the dark.
"Don't leave me, Nadia," I rasped, the words tearing from my throat in a broken, bleeding whisper. "Never leave me."
She tightened her arms around my neck, her heartbeat drumming against mine in the quiet room, holding me safe while the wolves circled in the cold outside.