Chapter 2
Roman
Control is not a personality trait. It is a survival mechanism.
My life is built on a grid of variables I can manipulate. Input equals output. Calories in, energy out. Puck speed, angle of deflection, net probability. If I control the inputs, I control the result.
Chaos is the enemy. Chaos is a variable you cannot predict, and in my experience, chaos usually has a last name like Volkov—or, as I was rapidly learning, Sterling.
I woke up at 4:45 AM. I didn’t need an alarm. My body was tuned to the rhythm of the season, a biological clock wired for violence and ice time.
The basement suite—my team called it "The Dungeon," I called it "The Only Quiet Place in Hell"—was pitch black. I liked the dark. The dark didn't ask questions. The dark didn't stare at you with doe eyes while scrubbing profanity off a locker.
I sat up, the sheets pooling at my waist. The air in the basement was filtered, cool, and odorless.
Except it wasn’t. Not anymore.
I inhaled, and my jaw locked.
Vanilla.
It was faint, a ghostly impression clinging to the synapses of my brain rather than the air itself, but it was there. It had been twelve hours since I found Vanessa Sterling defacing my property, and the scent of her expensive, cloying perfume was still stuck in my nose.
It pissed me off.
I threw the covers back and stood up, the concrete floor cold against my bare feet. I walked to the dresser, my movements automatic. Sweatpants. Hoodie. Socks. Everything was folded with military precision. Grey. Black. Navy. No patterns. No noise.
My hand brushed against the denim of the jeans I’d worn last night, draped over the back of the chair. I paused.
Slowly, against my better judgment, I reached into the pocket.
My fingers closed around the cold metal of the ring.
I pulled it out. In the gloom of the basement, the tiny diamond chip caught the faint light from the crack under the door. It was a delicate thing. Frivolous. Gold twisted into a shape that looked like a vine. It was jewelry for a hand that had never done a day’s manual labor in its life.
I should have left it at the front desk of the athletic center. I should have thrown it in the trash.
Instead, I had slept with it on my nightstand.
I stared at it, feeling that familiar, dangerous itch under my skin. The itch that told me my control was slipping.
"You are a fool, Roman," I muttered in Russian. The rough syllables felt better in my mouth than English. English was the language of business, of PR statements, of my father’s lawyers. Russian was the language of my anger.
I shoved the ring back into the pocket of the jeans. I would return it. Eventually. When I could look at her without imagining her on her knees, looking up at me with that defiant, terrified pout.
I grabbed my gear bag and headed for the door. I needed to hit something.
The house upstairs—The Hive—was a biological hazard zone.
I moved through the kitchen like a ghost. The air up here was thick with the smell of stale beer, pizza boxes that had been fermenting since Friday, and the distinct musk of twenty-year-old athletes.
The Sterling Sentinels were gods on campus, but at home, they were animals.
I stepped over a body passed out on the rug in the living room—Johnson, a sophomore winger who couldn't handle his tequila—and made for the coffee machine.
"You're stomping."
The voice came from the kitchen island. Carter "Banksy" Banks sat perched on a stool, eating cereal directly out of the box with his hand. He was wearing nothing but boxer briefs with cartoon ducks on them.
Banksy was my goalie. He was also, unfortunately, my best friend. He was chaos incarnate, a golden retriever in human form who stopped 90-mile-per-hour pucks with his face for a living.
"I don't stomp," I said, pouring black coffee into a travel mug. "You have a hangover. Your auditory sensitivity is heightened."
"I don't have a hangover," Banksy mumbled, shoving a handful of Frosted Flakes into his mouth. "I have a delayed onset sobriety headache. There's a difference. Also, you look like you want to murder someone. More than usual, I mean."
I took a sip of the coffee. It was bitter. Scalding. Good.
"I am fine," I said.
Banksy narrowed his eyes at me. "Bullshit. You've got 'The Tsar' face on. The one where your eyebrows do that scary flat thing. What happened? Did your dad call? Or did you finally realize that sleeping on a twin mattress in a basement makes you a serial killer?"
"It’s a California King," I corrected. "And the basement is soundproof. Unlike this kitchen."
"Whatever. You're tense." Banksy hopped off the stool, scratching his stomach. "You need to get laid, man. Seriously. It’s becoming a team safety issue. You checked Kowalski into the boards so hard yesterday I think he forgot his middle name."
"Kowalski needs to learn to keep his head up," I said, moving toward the door. "If I can hit him, a defenseman from Harvard can hit him harder."
"Yeah, yeah. Tough love. Leadership." Banksy followed me to the door, leaning against the frame. "By the way, did you hear about the dorms?"
I paused, hand on the latch. "What dorms?"
"Alpha Chi. The sorority row," Banksy grinned, a wicked glint in his eye. "Massive pipe burst in the middle of the night. Sewage everywhere. Total disaster. They're evacuating the whole building for 'repairs and sanitization.' Rumor has it half the girls are homeless."
I felt a cold prickle at the base of my neck.
Alpha Chi. That was Vanessa’s sorority. I knew this not because I cared, but because her father, President Sterling, had made a point of mentioning it during the donor gala last month, right before he implied that my scholarship was contingent on the team making the Frozen Four.
"Tragic," I said flatly.
"Tragic?" Banksy laughed. "It's an opportunity, Captain. Do you know how many helpless, displaced sorority girls are going to be looking for warm beds tonight? The ecosystem of the campus is about to shift. I’m thinking we offer humanitarian aid. You know, foster a refugee."
"No," I said. "No guests. No parties. We have a game against Boston on Friday. Focus on the puck, Banks."
"You're no fun," Banksy called after me as I walked out into the biting morning air. "Zero fun, Volkov!"
I let the heavy oak door slam shut, cutting off his voice.
Sewage.
I pictured Vanessa Sterling standing in a flood of wastewater, clutching her pink coat, her perfect boots ruined.
A dark, twisted sense of satisfaction curled in my gut. Maybe the universe did have a sense of justice after all.
The ice was the only place that made sense.
I was the first one at the arena. I always was. The zamboni had just finished its run, leaving the surface glistening and wet, a perfect, unblemished sheet of white.
I laced my skates tight, pulling the laces until they bit into the leather. Pain was a focusing tool.
I stepped onto the ice, the familiar crunch of the blades grounding me. I pushed off, gliding into the center circle. The air here was sharp, refrigerated to fifty degrees. It cleared the fog in my head.
For an hour, I didn't think. I just moved.
Drills. Edges. Sprints. I skated until my lungs burned and my quads screamed. I shot pucks against the glass until the sound was a rhythmic, deafening boom that echoed in the empty arena.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Every shot was an exorcism.
Bam. Get out of my head.
Bam. I don't want you.
Bam. I don't need the distraction.
I was twenty-one years old, and I carried the weight of a franchise on my back. The draft was in four months. My agent, a shark named Marcus who my father paid for, had made it clear: First round, top five, or I was a failure.
My father, Aleksander Volkov, didn't accept failures. He liquidated them.
I had spent my entire life trying to be the son he wanted. The perfect athlete. The perfect investment. I had carved away every soft part of myself until I was just steel and ambition.
And then a girl with eyes like hazel whiskey had looked at me and asked me to say please, and for one insane second, I had wanted to kneel.
I slapped a puck harder than necessary. It hit the crossbar with a metallic ping and ricocheted into the netting.
"Impressive velocity, Volkov."
I stopped, chest heaving, vapor pluming from my lips.
Coach Miller stood at the bench door, holding a clipboard. He looked tired. He always looked tired. Coaching the Sentinels was a high-pressure job; donors like the Sterlings and the Volkovs expected championships in exchange for their millions.
"Coach," I said, skating over. I stopped with a sharp spray of ice.
"Good workout?" he asked, eyeing the sweat dripping off my chin.
"Fine."
"Good. Because we have a situation." Miller rubbed his temples. He looked uncomfortable. Nervous. "Come to my office. Leave the skates on. This won't take long, but... you’re not going to like it."
My stomach tightened. "Is it my father?"
"No," Miller said. "Worse. It's the President."
Coach Miller’s office smelled of stale coffee and fear.
I sat in the chair opposite his desk, my skate guards tapping rhythmically against the floor. Miller was pacing. He picked up a stress ball, squeezed it, put it down.
"So," Miller started, avoiding my eyes. "You heard about Alpha Chi?"
"The sewage," I said.
"Right. The sewage." Miller grimaced. "Total loss. The building is condemned for at least six weeks. Mold remediation, pipe replacement. It's a mess."
"Okay," I said slowly. "And this concerns the hockey team... how?"
Miller sighed. He sat down heavily. "It concerns you, Roman. Specifically."
He slid a piece of paper across the desk. It was an email. Printed out. I recognized the header immediately. Office of the President: Sterling University.
"President Sterling is... particular," Miller said. "His daughter, Vanessa. She was in the Master Suite of Alpha Chi."
"I am aware of who his daughter is," I said, keeping my voice neutral.