Chapter 37
Killian POV
Nine-fifteen on Tuesday morning.
The doors slammed back against the dark mahogany wainscoting with a violent bang that rattled the framed portraits of past university chancellors. Outside the tall arched windows, a freezing Michigan drizzle coated the glass in sheets of gray ice.
Inside the executive boardroom, four heads jerked toward the doorway.
Derrick Palmer stood at the end of the thirty-foot table, his coffee mug frozen inches from his mouth.
Beside him sat the university general counsel, Dr. Evelyn Morris with her glasses clutched in a white-knuckled fist, and sitting casually in a leather armchair with his damp overcoat draped over the mahogany—Martin Cole.
Cole was smiling. The greasy, triumphant grin of a scavenger who thought he was thirty minutes away from a wire transfer.
My knuckles were bloodless inside the pockets of my dark jacket, the skin split along the cuts from the brass key. I hadn't shaved in a week. I hadn't slept. My eyes were bloodshot, burning with a cold, terrifying clarity that felt like iron dragged through ice water.
I crossed the room in five heavy, unhurried strides.
I didn't yell. I didn't reach for Cole’s throat.
I hauled the heavy black duffel off my shoulder, swung it with a dull thud onto the polished mahogany, unzipped the nylon, and dumped two reams of printed digital forensics and an external solid-state hard drive directly onto Palmer’s blotter.
Paper scattered across the polished wood, sliding into the crystal water carafes.
"Castaneda, what is the meaning of this—" Palmer sputtered, rising to his feet.
"Shut up, Palmer," I said.
The voice was low, flat gravel, vibrating with an absolute, lethal authority that made the general counsel shrink back into his chair.
I leaned forward, planting both palms flat on the table, pinning Martin Cole with an unblinking, dead-eyed focus that made the smile vanish from the reporter's mouth in half a second flat.
"Item one," I rasped, pointing a scarred forefinger at the top dossier. "Server logs from the Science Library archive annex, time-stamped Friday, December nineteenth, ten-fourteen AM. Digital proof of an unauthorized recording device planted on a university network terminal by Martin Cole."
Cole shifted in his seat, the sheepskin collar of his coat pulling tight against his neck.
"Item two," I continued, tapping the hard drive.
"The unedited, un-spliced master audio file extracted from Lindqvist’s shared team drive.
The conversation where Cole attempts to extort Nadia Gregory, threatening to tank my draft eligibility with a forged promissory note if she didn't sign a fraudulent compliance withdrawal. "
I reached out, pressed the spacebar on the tablet resting beside the drive, and let the boardroom speakers fill the silence.
Nadia’s voice rang through the vaulted room—clear, sharp, unyielding as forged carbon steel:
"I will take the raw dasher-board impact data to the state attorney general and have you indicted for extortion before you clear the county line. I will protect his name with my life."
Dr. Morris let out a sharp, choked gasp, pressing her hand against her mouth.
The general counsel turned to look at Cole, his face draining of color until he looked like chalk.
"That's illegal wiretapping under Michigan penal code seven-fifty," the counsel whispered, his voice trembling with immediate corporate terror. "That's felony extortion of a state employee."
Cole pushed his chair back with a loud screech, his hands scrambling across the table to grab his coat. "That audio is unverified—"
"Sit down," I growled.
I took one step toward him, towering six-foot-four over his chair, my shadow blotting out the boardroom lights. The physical mass of my body pressed into his space until Cole froze, his breath rattling in his throat like a trapped rat.
"You move an inch, Jared Holt's little errand boy," I whispered, the words scraping cold against his cheek, "and I will tear your arms out of their sockets in front of this entire board."
* * *
"Killian, think about what you're doing," Derrick Palmer pleaded, his hands shaking as he gripped the edge of the mahogany table.
"If we file these charges with the county prosecutor, this goes public.
The state police will subpoena the athletic department.
The NCAA will freeze our postseason records. And the Montreal scouts—"
"I don't give a damn about Montreal," I rasped.
I turned on Palmer, stepping around the table until I was three inches from his chest. The smell of his expensive cologne clashed with the cold rain soaked into my jacket.
"The draft is four months away," Palmer stammered, backing into his leather chair until the frame hit the credenza.
"You're projected top-three! If the national media catches wind of an extortion investigation tied to your family's medical debt, your signing bonus will drop by half!
You could lose the first round entirely! "
A harsh, bitter sound broke from the back of my throat.
"Do you think I care about money, Derrick?"
I leaned down until my face was level with his, my dark eyes boring straight into his skull.
"I will burn this athletic department to the foundation," I whispered, each syllable heavy enough to break bone.
"I will forfeit every banner hanging in The Pit.
I will stand in front of every television camera in Detroit and tell them I took sixty hours of behavioral probation because this university was too cowardly to stand behind an enforcer.
I will play senior league in the iron range for fifty bucks a night before I let one microscopic drop of your filth stick to Nadia Gregory's name. "
Palmer swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the silence.
The boardroom double doors opened again.
Two uniformed officers from the Houghton County Sheriff's Department stepped into the room, their wet rain slickers dripping onto the carpet, followed by the chief of campus public safety.
Dr. Evelyn Morris stood up from her chair, her back straight as an iron rod, her chin lifted with that familiar, fearless academic dignity.
"Officers," Dr. Morris said, pointing directly at Martin Cole. "That man is in possession of stolen university research data, illegally obtained wiretap recordings, and has engaged in felony extortion against a senior university fellow. Take him into custody."
Cole scrambled to his feet, knocking his chair onto the hardwood with a loud crash. "You can't do this! Palmer, tell them! I have sources—"
An officer twisted Cole’s arms behind his back, the steel handcuffs snapping shut around his thin wrists with two sharp, metallic clicks.
They hauled him through the shattered double doors, his pathetic, sputtering protests echoing down the marble hallway until the heavy glass lobby doors cut him off.
I didn't watch him leave.
I reached down, picked up a fresh sheet of Barrow University administrative letterhead from Palmer’s folder, and slammed a gold fountain pen into the Athletic Director's palm.
"Write it," I commanded.
Palmer looked up at me, his eyes wide and terrified. "Write what?"
"An official, unconditional letter of exoneration," I rumbled, my voice dropping into that dark, lethal register that left no room for survival.
"Signed by you and the dean. Stating that Nadia Gregory acted with complete professional integrity, that her kinematic research is verified, that her senior fellowship stipend is cleared in full, and that her capstone defense is transferred to independent standing with Dr. Morris.
Sign it right now. Or you and I are going to have a conversation in the parking lot. "
Palmer didn't argue.
His hand shook so hard the gold nib scratched violently against the heavy paper, but he wrote the words. He signed his name, stamped the university seal into the corner, and slid the paper across the mahogany.
I picked up the document.
I folded it once, slid it into the interior pocket of my dark jacket next to the notched brass key, and walked out into the rain.
* * *
The freezing drizzle swept across the campus plaza in blinding sheets, turning the brick walkways into dark rivers of slush.
I rounded the corner of the Science Annex at a dead sprint.
Twenty yards ahead, walking toward the student parking deck with an athletic equipment bag slung over her shoulder, was Siobhan Kelly.
"Kelly!"
My voice tore through the wind like a foghorn.
Siobhan stopped dead in the center of the walkway.
She turned slowly on her boot heels, her green eyes narrowing into razor slits the second she saw me charging through the slush.
She dropped her duffel to the wet bricks, her soccer cleats digging into the path, her shoulders squaring like she was preparing to block a penalty kick with her teeth.
"Take one more step toward me, Castaneda," Siobhan warned, her voice cold as lake ice, "and I'll put my studs through your knee."
I didn't stop.
I closed the ten feet between us, my boots sliding in the gray slush.
I didn't square my shoulders. I didn't loom over her.
I stopped two feet away, dropped my arms to my sides, and bowed my head.
My two hundred and twenty-eight pounds sagged on trembling legs, my broad chest heaving in ragged, broken bursts of cold air. The rain dripped off the end of my nose, mixing with the blood from my split lip, spattering the wet asphalt between our boots.
"Where is she, Siobhan?"
The words didn't come out as a command.
They were a ruined, bleeding rasp that cracked right down the center, stripped of every ounce of pride, arrogance, and athletic armor I had ever worn in my life.
Siobhan blinked, startled by the sudden, staggering absence of the enforcer. She looked at my bloodshot eyes, at the hollow gray pallor of my cheekbones, at the uncoordinated tremor running through my scarred hands.
"Why do you care?" she asked, though the venom had drained from her tone, replaced by hard, cautious suspicion. "You called her a parasite in that tunnel. You told her she was the biggest mistake of your life."
"I know what I did," I choked out, a dry, agonizing sob tearing through my ribs, rattling my collarbone.
My hands came up, raw knuckles pressing against my temples as my shoulders shook in the freezing drizzle.
"I know I don't deserve to breathe her air," I whispered, the words drowning in the rain.
"I know I deserve to burn in hell for what I said to her.
But Cole is gone. The police have him in handcuffs.
Palmer signed her clearance. I just need to see her face, Kelly.
I'm not going to touch her. I'm not going to force her to come back.
I just need to drop on my knees in the dirt and tell her she was right about everything. "
Siobhan watched me for five long, suffocating seconds.
The wind whipped her dark curls around her face, the rain plastering her jacket to her shoulders. She saw the absolute, irreversible annihilation of my ego, saw a man who had been stripped down to his bare, bleeding soul.
She reached into the pocket of her parka.
She pulled out a small piece of blue waterproof paper, scrawling a series of numbers and a rural route address with a black marker against the palm of her hand.
She stepped forward, shoving the paper hard against the center of my chest.
"My aunt's cabin," Siobhan said, her voice dropping into a fierce, protective warning that brooked no mercy. "Six miles north of Duluth, off the old logging trail. The driveway is buried in three feet of powder."
She grabbed the lapel of my wet jacket, pulling me down until her eyes bore straight into mine.
"If you break her again, Killian," she whispered, "I don't care how many millions of dollars you make in the NHL. I will hunt you down myself."
I gripped the blue paper in my fist like a lifeline.
"Thank you," I rasped.
I turned on my heel, sprinting through the slush toward the staff lot.
I threw myself behind the wheel of my black truck, jammed the key into the ignition, and slammed the shifter into gear.
The four-wheel drive caught the asphalt with a savage screech of rubber, throwing plumes of gray slush as I blew through the campus security gates onto US-41 South.
I hit the open interstate, the speedometer climbing past eighty into the whiteout blizzard, my knuckles bloodless around the steering wheel, my heart hammering against my ribs in a single, desperate, unyielding rhythm:
Nadia.
Hold on, sweetheart.
I'm coming to crawl for you.