Chapter 29
Nadia POV
The third-floor reading annex of the Science Library was dead silent, save for the rhythmic, violent slap of winter sleet against the leaded-glass arched windows.
It was ten o'clock on Friday morning. Gray, bleached light filtered through the tall panes, illuminating dust motes suspended in the dry air rising from the floor radiators.
I sat at a long oak table in the deepest corner of the stacks, surrounded by open bound volumes of the Journal of Applied Biomechanics. Beside my notebook, a mug of peppermint tea had cooled to room temperature, a thin film gathering over the surface.
A sudden, greasy wave of nausea lurched in the back of my throat.
My stomach contracted in a sharp, sour spasm that made the skin along my hairline prickle with cold sweat. I closed my eyes, digging my fingernails into the dark grain of the oak table, breathing in slow, measured counts through my nose until the bile receded down my esophagus.
Beneath the heavy knit of my oversized cream sweater, my left hand slid off the wood, coming to rest flat and motionless over my lower abdomen.
Twenty-one days.
Three weeks without a cycle. My body felt altered from the inside out—the persistent, heavy fatigue that made my shins ache by noon, the hypersensitivity to the smell of old paper glue and printer toner, the sudden swelling along the sides of my breasts that made every seam of my clothes feel tight.
I hadn't bought a test. The coward inside me had clung to the ridiculous lie that stress could suspend biology.
Across campus at The Pit, Killian was in locked-down team walkthroughs. In twenty-four hours, the Dreadnoughts would take the ice against Northland State for the regional qualifier—the game that would decide their Frozen Four seed and put sixty NHL scouts in the arena boxes.
He had kissed my temple at dawn, his voice low and gravelly as he pulled my coat tight around my throat, swearing that after Saturday, the worst of the pressure would be over.
Heavy, wet bootsteps broke the silence of the corridor.
The sound was deliberate, the rubber soles dragging with an unhurried, arrogant scuff against the linoleum runner.
I didn't move my hand from my belly until the shadow fell across my open notes.
Martin Cole pulled out the heavy oak chair directly opposite mine and sat down.
* * *
He wore the same wrinkled brown overcoat, smelling of stale menthol tobacco, damp slush, and rancid coffee.
He didn't take off his coat. He leaned his forearms onto the polished wood, his rat-like eyes gleaming with a manic, triumphant malice that made every nerve ending along my spine pull taut as wire.
"Miss Gregory," Cole said, his voice a greasy whisper that seemed to coat the air between us. "Hard at work on the science, I see."
I slowly lifted my hand, resting my forearms on the table, my spine locking into rigid, clinical alignment. My face settled into the cold, stone mask I had worn for four years against men who thought they could intimidate me.
"This is a designated quiet study wing, Mr. Cole," I said, my voice level, sharp as an edge of broken glass. "You are trespassing in an academic building."
"I don't think the dean of students is going to care about library noise regulations after they see what I have in this folder," Cole sneered.
He reached into the lining of his overcoat and produced a thick, red-tabbed legal dossier.
He dropped it onto the center of the oak table with a dull, heavy slap that sounded like a gunshot in the empty room. He placed two nicotine-stained fingertips on the edge and slid it across the wood, stopping it an inch from my mug.
"Open it," Cole murmured, leaning back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach. "Go ahead. You're the researcher. Check the data."
My heart gave a single, violent thud against my ribs, the blood rushing into my ears with a deafening roar.
I didn't want to touch the paper. Every instinct in my marrow warned me that opening the cardboard was stepping over the edge of a cliff.
Slowly, forcing my fingers not to tremble, I pulled the red tab and flipped the cover open.
The breath froze in my throat.
On top lay a series of high-resolution, glossy photographs.
Me, standing on the porch of the saltbox house on the bluffs in the pre-dawn gray, unlocking the front door with Killian’s brass key.
Killian, lifting me into the passenger side of his black truck outside the arena, his large hand resting broad and possessive over my waist.
Me, asleep against his shoulder in the cab beneath the sodium lights of the staff lot, his mouth pressed into my hair.
Beneath the photographs was a certified bank slip—the eight-thousand-dollar departmental fellowship grant that had cleared my bursar account in October, stamped with an anonymous booster routing code that traced directly back to an escrow account registered in Duluth.
And beneath the check was a pink carbon copy of a legal promissory note bearing Killian Castaneda’s jagged signature, dated three years ago, with a thirty-five-thousand-dollar balloon payment circled in red ink.
"Jared Holt was very cooperative," Cole whispered, his eyes narrowing to slits.
"Turns out, Castaneda has been bankrolled by predatory private paper since his brother broke his neck.
And the athletic department used booster funds to pay off your tuition in exchange for a clean bill of health on his sixty-hour suspension. "
"That grant was funded by the kinesiology endowment," I rasped, my throat so dry the syllables scraped against my vocal cords.
"That's not how it looks on paper, sweetheart," Cole countered, tapping a typed memorandum attached to the back of the file.
"On paper, it looks like the lead researcher on an NCAA behavioral diversion protocol took an eight-thousand-dollar payoff to falsify torque baselines and conceal a concussion history for the top NHL draft prospect in the state. "
The room seemed to lose all heat, the air turning thin and toxic.
"I never falsified a single metric," I said, my voice dropping into an icy register, though my pulse was hammering behind my eyes like a trapped bird.
"The regional compliance committee doesn't care about your integrity," Cole said, his voice dripping with venom.
"They care about the headline. Tomorrow morning at eight AM, two hours before team skates, this dossier goes to Indianapolis, the Barrow board of regents, and every scout representing the Montreal Canadiens and Detroit Red Wings. "
He leaned across the table, his breath foul against my face.
"Bylaw Sixteen," Cole whispered. "Fraudulent academic reporting. Receipt of unauthorized financial benefits. Killian gets disqualified from the regional final. Barrow forfeits the tournament. And the NHL draft bureau blacklists his name before the first round opens."
* * *
A cold, sickening tremor rippled down through my thighs, my knees shaking uncontrollably beneath the denim of my jeans under the table.
His life.
His Entry-Level Contract. Mateo’s clinic bills. Everything Killian had bled for since he was nineteen years old, hanging by a thread over the edge of an abyss.
And I was the blade they were using to cut it.
"What do you want, Cole?" I asked, my voice barely louder than the drumming sleet, fighting with every cell in my body to keep the tears burning behind my eyes from falling.
Cole’s mouth curled into a grotesque, triumphant grin.
"I want a clean story," Cole said. "I want you to sign a formal withdrawal of your fellowship certification. I want a signed statement admitting that the data collected during the sixty hours was corrupted by personal conflict of interest. And then I want you on the one-fifteen bus to Duluth."
My lungs seized. "You want me to walk away."
"I want you gone," Cole said, tapping the desk with his blunt thumb.
"If you resign and leave campus, the university buries the investigation to save face.
Castaneda sits for one game with a technicality, but his draft status survives.
If you stay, if you show up at that arena tomorrow, I detonate the entire package.
Both of you go down. You lose your degree, and he ends up back on the iron range with a ruined name. "
He stood up, shoving his hands back into his overcoat pockets, looking down at me with cold, dismissive contempt.
"Eight AM tomorrow, Gregory," Cole murmured. "Tick-tock."
He turned on his heel, his wet boots squeaking against the linoleum as he walked down the corridor toward the stairwell.
The heavy double doors of the reading annex swung shut with a hollow, echoing bang that shuddered through the floorboards.
I was alone.
My hands, clamped hard to the oak edge of the table, gave way.
My vision blurred with a sudden, blinding rush of adrenaline. My knees buckled beneath me, my chair rolling backward with a sharp screech as I slid to the carpeted floor, my back hitting the heavy wooden base of the bookshelf.
A violent, suffocating wave of nausea slammed into my throat, so intense that I had to bury my face in my knees, dry-heaving in silent, ragged gasps that rattled my ribcage.
The room was spinning.
Eight AM.
In twenty-two hours, Martin Cole was going to destroy him.
And the only way to save Killian’s life was to become the very thing I had terrified myself of being: the wedge that tore his future to shreds.
Slowly, through the fog of nausea and terror, my trembling hand came up.
I pressed my fingers flat against the knit of my sweater, over the sacred, fragile warmth growing beneath my skin.
A ragged sob tore from my chest, swallowed by the empty stacks.
I had to confirm it. I had to know for certain before the clock ran out.
Because tomorrow morning, the storm wasn't just coming for Killian.
It was coming for our child.