Chapter 2
ISABELLA
I, Isabella Pierce, also sometimes referred to as the Ice Princess, am honest enough with myself to admit this: I was never supposed to want anything different.
Different is a luxury. Different is what you chase when no one has mapped your life out in advance. For me, the map has existed since I was small enough to be lifted onto the ice in my skates, my parents’ hands steady at my waist like they were placing a crown on the flat surface.
Lake Jasper didn’t just teach me how to jump. It taught me how to be watched.
It also taught me how everything runs when no one is watching.
The schedules, the staffing, the quiet negotiations over ice time and resources. Who gets the early sessions, who gets the physio blocks. Who gets seen first.
I run all of that now.
It started as something to pass the time after I retired, just hanging out in the rink for longer periods week over week, until someone gave me something meaningful to do.
Five years later, it’s a full system I can move with several hundred emails, a handful of daily phone calls, and conversations in the building’s hallways.
But above all else, Lake Jasper Training Center taught me that figure skating is a machine that rewards certainty, and that my job, as an elite skater, was to become inevitable inside of it.
I learned how to execute under pressure and how to speak without saying too much.
I learned how to smile when my ankle was swollen and my back was screaming and my coach was counting rotations like they were the only thing that mattered.
Then I retired and everyone acted like the next step was obvious.
My parents have said the word influence like a blessing and a threat.
“You become the next association president and influence the sport,” my dad said once at brunch three years ago, when I told them I was going to work full-time at the training center that made me and they deemed it completely unacceptable for an athlete of my caliber.
“The person at the head of the table. Imagine, Princess, the things you could do with that much power.”
I’m in my mid-thirties now and still, sometimes, feel sixteen in a dress my mother picked out, sitting at a dinner I didn’t ask to attend, learning how to be charming instead of honest.
That’s the problem with being raised inside a legacy: you don’t always notice the chains until you try to move a little.
On my desk, the Ascend Skating Foundation binder sits open like a dare.
It started here. In this office, between scheduling and budget meetings and conversations about injuries and pilates lessons.
It has all the bylaws. Oversight. A robust, influential board. A mission statement I revised six times until it didn’t sound like charity or like a teenager rebelling against her parents, either.
Access. Infrastructure. Opportunity for athletes who don’t have a federation that can float them without blinking.
This is the first thing that feels mine in a very long time.
And I can already hear my father’s voice, calm and disappointed. “Your job, Princess, is influence,” he would say. “Not disruption.”
I drag my thumb along the edge of the paper until the sharp corner dulls.
The movement of the door is what finally snaps me out of it.
My sister doesn’t knock. Nina has never knocked once in her life. She pushes the office door open with her hip, coffee in one hand and an impatient stare on her face, and she looks exactly like the version of me our mother never managed to fully polish.
Her hair is cut shorter than mine and it’s always a little wild, like it refuses to stay where it’s told.
Her eyes are green—warm where mine are icy blue—and she has this way of holding herself like she’s both amused and ready to bite.
Nina grew up like any sibling of an elite athlete did: in the bleachers while I was on the ice, a little shadow our parents insisted on keeping in frame whenever the cameras widened.
Family, like it was a brand we needed to protect.
Nina learned early on how to stand adjacent to the spotlight without letting it carve her into something else. I never had that option.
She clocks my expression in one glance.
“You’ve been here for three hours,” she says.
“I’m working.”
“I think you’re spiraling, actually.”
I don’t bother denying it. Denial is a waste of energy with Nina. There’s so much hinging on this program that we developed together and she knows all of the implications. With our parents, with the skating association, with other athletes.
She sets her coffee down on the corner of my desk with too much confidence, like this room belongs to her, too.
My mouth moves before my brain catches up. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, and I cringe because I recognize the people pleaser inside of me. The one I was trained to be by my parents.
Nina’s mouth quirks. “I mean… You funded an international placement a month after you publicly questioned infrastructure on national television, Izzy. That’s not wrong, but we had it coming.”
The way she says it makes it sound like I ran out onto the ice and lit a match.
I sit back, forcing my shoulders to drop. “It was a comment.”
“It was a comment from you.” Nina leans forward, palms on my desk, like she’s trying to pin this reality in place. “You don’t get to be the most decorated skater in history and pretend the words you say can slide with no consequence.”
I don’t respond. Because she’s right and I hate she’s right, and hating it doesn’t change anything.
Nina points at the binder. “Mom called me.”
“Of course she did.”
“She said you’re trying to make this about you.” Nina’s voice shifts into a perfect imitation of our mother: polite, airy, and fucking sharp at the edges. “She says the initiative needs to be aligned.”
Aligned. Another word for obedient.
“And Dad?” I ask, even though I already know.
Nina’s expression tightens. “Dad thinks you’re positioning yourself.”
“For what?”
She looks at me like I’m being deliberately stupid. “For the association.”
I let out a breath through my nose. Slow. Controlled. The way I learned to breathe before a short program, because the body does better when the mind is pretending not to panic.
“I’m not—”
Nina cuts me off. “They want you to keep them relevant. Your image keeps them relevant. Your proximity to decision-making keeps them relevant. This initiative is yours and it scares them because they didn’t script any of it.”
I grip the armrests of my chair. My nails bite into the upholstery. “It’s ours, Nina.”
She smiles.
“And,” I say, shifting in my seat, “I did it because if I’m going to carry this fucking name for the rest of my life, I would like it attached to something that actually changes the sport.”
Nina’s face softens in the smallest way. “Izzy…”
I don’t let myself linger there. If I sit in that emotion too long, I’ll start wanting things. I’ll start believing I’m allowed to want things. Different things.
Instead, I reach for the safest pivot. The one thing I can talk about without cracking.
“Is he here yet?”
I already know the answer. His name has been on my screen for weeks. Video clips. Judges’ notes. That free skate at Worlds in Vegas I’ve watched more times than I’ll ever admit to anyone, more times than I even want to admit to myself.
“They’ve been here since six,” Nina says.
“Oh my god.” A smile threatens to form on my face, but I don’t want Nina to catch my enthusiasm about the athlete we’re developing and his coach.
“Izzy,” she adds, voice turning dry, “I think she’s worse than you.”
She’s one hundred percent talking about Cecilia Montenegro.
I haven’t seen her in years. Not properly.
Not up close and outside of archival footage and result sheets and from across the ice at certain competitions.
Her senior career started after mine did.
I went to my first Olympic Games in 2006 and she went in 2010.
By then, I was already established and existing in a seamless bubble of sponsorships and infrastructure I barely registered as privilege.
We never overlapped in the way people assume rivals do. Other skaters were competition in theory, of course, but not necessarily in practice.
And, my parents never allowed for distractions. My world was small by design: training, travel, press, repeat. The machine kept me moving so I didn’t have to look sideways.
“That’s not funny,” I tell Nina.
“I’m not joking,” she says as she straightens in her seat. “She was on rink two before the Zamboni finished, looking around and studying the space.”
Nina says it like it’s a personality flaw.
But I know what it means when someone arrives early. I know what it means when someone watches before they move. It means they’ve learned the cost of being unprepared, and they’re not interested in paying it again.
“What about him?” I ask, and I mean Rodrigo, but Nina hears the other question anyway.
“He’s excited,” she says with a smile. “He’s a kid. He’s looking at the rafters like the banners are speaking to him.” Her expression sharpens. “She’s looking at the exits.”
It’s an uncomfortable image, what Nina is implying.
“Okay,” I say, because it’s the only neutral word I have.
“Armand is already here,” Nina adds, like she’s dropping a weight onto the desk. I glance at the calendar block on my computer. “And two others. They’re sniffing around.”
The president of the International Skating Association is a politician first and has probably never put on an ice skate in his life.
Armand Paulsen is the kind of man who can smile while he takes something from you.
He doesn’t have to be loud. He just has to be in the room and open his mouth for things to magically happen in the sport.
I stare at the binder again. The pages don’t move and the words don’t change.
“Okay.” I stand, pushing my chair back quietly. I smooth my blazer because my hands need something to do. I’ve been smoothing fabric my whole life, it seems. “Let’s head to rink two.”