8. Chapter Eight #2
“Off the record, I need to ask. Do you have any plans in mind for the money?”
I chew on my lip for a moment, pondering his question.
There are so many things that I could do with the money.
I could buy a big fuck off mansion, luxury cars and fashion pieces.
I could buy my own jet and travel the world, never settling in one place for too long.
I could disappear tomorrow and never have to work another day in my life.
But there is only one thing that feels right to me.
Money has never been the thing that motivated me.
Justice has.
Family has.
Home has.
The answer comes so naturally that I’m almost annoyed I had to think about it at all.
“I am going back to Vadena to buy back the Cardinals.”
It feels strange to be back at the Cardinals headquarters.
Months have passed since I last walked through these doors, yet somehow it feels as though I’ve been gone for years.
While nothing has changed, it feels like everything has shifted beneath the surface.
The walls are still the same, the faint scent of freshly brewed coffee, expensive cologne and sharpened skate blades lingering in the air, but there is an emptiness to it now.
The warmth I had once felt is gone. In its place sits a chill, one that settles deep beneath my skin and follows me through every corridor, as though the building itself is still mourning everything it lost.
That's the first thing I will be changing.
It was almost pathetic the way the board scrambled when I called back saying that I would buy back the team for their enormous price.
I’d barely finished my sentence before calendars were being rearranged, meetings postponed and executives who had conveniently ignored my calls for months suddenly finding all the time in the world.
The same board that had been so quick to cast me aside suddenly couldn’t return my calls fast enough.
Funny what a couple billion dollars and a rightful owner will do to people’s priorities.
But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t come with some…
concessions. If the board wants me to buy back the team, which they very clearly do, I want them to do something good.
I want them to pull their heads out of their asses and see the damage their previous leaders caused their families since the media turned into a fucking shark pool.
They’ve spent decades celebrating championships, hanging banners from rafters and immortalizing men who could score goals, throw punches and fill arenas.
But somewhere along the way, they stopped asking what happened after those men went home.
They stopped asking who paid the price behind closed doors when crowds disappeared and the cameras stopped rolling.
When I was exiled, because, let’s call it what it was, there were children who paid the price too.
Wives paid the price. Just because players made the decision to walk, sign other contracts, secure a more steady future for themselves, doesn’t excuse the actions leadership showed throughout that whole situation.
One of the conditions to my return is that they are to be compensated for any damages caused in their transfer.
But that’s not the only condition I stipulated.
I want the franchise to fully fund non-profit charities and safe houses for children that have suffered parental abuse.
I want scholarships established for disadvantaged children.
Discreet mental health programs for the players, their families, and others across the country.
Literacy initiatives. Organizations where kids can simply be kids without homes due to family violence, instead of surviving the adults who were supposed to love and protect them.
They were hesitant at first, but after I informed them it was something I would not sway away from, they really had no choice.
If they wanted my family’s money, they were going to honor my family’s values.
The negotiations dragged on for days, every clause scrutinized, every condition questioned, every attempt at compromise swiftly shut down.
They tested my resolve more than once. They learned very quickly that my resolve wasn’t the thing that would break.
I am not the same Omega who left this place.
For so long I’d spent my life reacting to the decisions of powerful men.
Patrick, even if he played the role of doting father well.
Brett. The board. My old job. Men who believed they had the right to dictate the direction of my life because they possessed more influence than I did.
Not anymore. This time, they sat across the table from me, and for the first time in my life, I held every card that mattered.
After receiving the exorbitant amount of funds from my parents’ estate, combined with the amount I had received from Patrick, the process of purchasing back the team was fairly simple.
Money may have opened the door, but my surname gave me every reason to walk through it.
And I’m not talking about the Gilmore name.
I’m talking about the Welsh name.
A name built on integrity long before I was born.
A name my grandfather spent six years protecting because he refused to believe I was gone.
A name my real father proudly carried onto the ice every single time he stepped onto it.
Until recently, Welsh had been little more than another surname in a stack of legal jargon.
Now it feels different when I think it. Heavier.
Warmer. Like every sacrifice my family made has somehow settled onto my shoulders, not as a burden, but as a responsibility. One I will gladly take on.
For years I thought I was fighting to earn my place within this world. This organization. I was wrong. I wasn’t earning my place. I was on a journey to find my way home. My real home. The real me.
My father died loving hockey just as much as I do, perhaps even more.
It was enough for him to fight my grandfather and to chase his dream to play in the NHL over becoming a lawyer at my family’s firm.
Julian had been kind enough to tell me the story of how my dad loved hockey in the first place.
Apparently, it started long before the NHL ever came calling.
Before the contracts. Before the roaring crowds and television cameras.
It started in frozen ponds, at community rinks and in the stands beside my grandfather, who somehow managed to be both his biggest supporter and his fiercest critic.
Julian told me they argued constantly about hockey, yet my grandfather never missed a game.
He’d complain the entire drive there, mutter about wasted potential from the stands, then spend the drive home dissecting every shift as though he were the team’s head coach.
It made me smile knowing that. Knowing the man I never had the chance to meet wasn’t just a hockey player. He was someone’s hero. His father’s.
It felt bittersweet to see the money transfer out as quickly as it did from my accounts, but I know it's worth it. The string of numbers disappeared from my screen in a matter of seconds, enough money to change thousands of lives, and yet I didn’t hesitate.
Not once. Money had been used as a weapon in my career as a lawyer.
I’ve seen families torn apart over it. But me, I wanted to use it in the way I feel like my family would have wanted me to.
To take back what my father loved. What I love.
It will be worth honoring my family's name. Not the man who took it from me. The Gilmore name is lost to me now. As soon as I could change it to Welsh, I did. Well, technically, it had always been Welsh. Though everything had been tied to who I thought I was, it took me days to switch everything over. The first time I saw my new driver’s licence, I couldn’t stop staring at it.
Welsh. Six letters that somehow felt both unfamiliar and as though they had belonged to me all along.
I traced them with my thumb more than once in disbelief, letting the reality settle beneath my skin.