Chapter 37
Chase POV
My boot struck the brass latch of the executive boardroom doors with the force of an unpadded body check.
The double oak doors slammed backward on their heavy hinges, rebounding against the interior stops with a concussive crack that rattled the frosted glass in the transom.
Around the twenty-foot mahogany conference table, five people flinched.
Athletic Director Miller sat at the head, flanked by Harlan Sterling, university general counsel Evelyn Cross, and two senior compliance auditors. Sitting in the leather armchair at the far corner, a porcelain cup of black coffee resting comfortably between his manicured fingers, was Carter Ross.
Outside the high arched windows, a freezing northern rain lashed the glass, throwing gray, distorted shapes across the Persian rug. The room smelled of polished wood, stale espresso, and the oily stench of Ross’s expensive pomade.
I didn't take off my coat.
I hadn't slept twenty minutes since Silas walked out of my loft.
A thick, dark beard rasped across my jaw, my black wool peacoat hung open over an unwashed dark henley, and my bloodshot eyes were hollowed out by pure, unadulterated adrenaline.
The dull ache in my left shoulder joint was dead, burned away beneath a cold, surgical clarity that left my pulse resting at forty beats a minute.
I took three heavy, measured strides into the room, stopping directly opposite Carter Ross.
I reached into my pocket.
I pulled out the thick manila folder stamped by the Duluth Police Department and the black metal USB drive Silas had delivered.
I slammed them onto the center of the mahogany table.
The impact cracked like a gunshot through the quiet boardroom, making the silver water pitcher jump on its tray.
"What is the meaning of this, Guzman?" Miller barked, rising half an inch from his leather seat, his face flushed with administrative indignation.
I didn't look at Miller.
I looked straight into Carter Ross’s eyes. The smooth, predatory smirk on the agent’s mouth froze, his knuckles going pale around his coffee cup as his gaze dropped to the police seal on the cardboard.
"That drive contains the digital forensics pulled from Tyler Evans’s laptop forty minutes before the state police booked him into the county holding facility," I said.
My voice was a low, gravelly rasp that scraped the bottom of my register, carrying a flat, lethal finality that sucked the air straight out of the room.
"It contains the server logs proving Evans deployed an automated cryptographic script from Minneapolis to breach Nola Wagner’s private university cloud profile," I continued, holding Ross’s stare until his pupils contracted in sudden shock.
"It contains the audio capture of Carter Ross extorting her in the Goldthwait archives on Friday morning.
And it contains the unedited telemetry proving my medical records were doctored. "
* * *
The silence in the boardroom was absolute.
Evelyn Cross, the university’s chief legal counsel, reached across the table with steady, manicured fingers. She pulled the manila folder toward her, adjusted her reading glasses, and flipped open the first page.
Her face drained of color in three seconds flat.
Ross set his coffee cup down with an unsteady rattle of china against wood. He forced a thin, oily sneer onto his face, leaning forward. "This is a desperate fabrication by a player trying to evade an active compliance audit—"
I moved.
I crossed the remaining distance between us in a single, fluid blur of two hundred and twenty pounds.
I slammed both hands flat on the mahogany table on either side of Ross’s chair, leaning down until my face was six inches from his nose, blotting out the ceiling lights with my shoulders.
"Two state detectives and campus security are standing in the hallway behind that door, Ross," I whispered.
The words came out in a ruined, lethal growl that vibrated straight through the wood into his hands.
"You committed wire fraud, digital grand larceny, and corporate extortion on a state university property," I rasped, my breath hot and sour against his cheekbone. "If you open your mouth again before those detectives read you your rights, I will break your jaw right across this table."
Ross shrank back into the leather cushions, his jowls quivering, the blood draining from his lips until his skin looked like lard.
Harlan Sterling pushed his chair back, standing up, his silver eyebrows pulled into a tight knot of aristocratic panic.
"Chase, you need to think about the broader institutional impact.
If these charges are filed publicly, the NCAA will open a full investigation into the hockey program.
The Frozen Four championship banner will be scrutinized.
Boston and Colorado will pull their draft evaluations.
You're talking about millions of dollars. "
Miller leaned forward, his hands flat on the desk, his voice dropping into a desperate plea: "Chase, listen to Harlan.
We can handle Ross internally. We can file an emergency sealed settlement, quietly expunge the compliance file, and preserve your first-round status for the draft.
If you go public with this, you burn your own career to the ground. "
The words washed over me like dirty dishwater.
The draft. The seven-figure bonus. The prestige of walking onto a professional stage in an expensive suit.
It was all garbage. It was a mountain of foul, suffocating ash that had blinded me to the only thing that had ever mattered.
I straightened my spine, stepping back from Ross’s chair, looking down the table at the men who had spent five months treating my body like a commodity.
My chest expanded on a slow, deep breath, my jaw set into an unyielding block of iron.
"I don't give a damn about my career," I rasped, the syllables rumbling through the room with concussive weight. "I will burn this program, my captaincy, and every contract in the National Hockey League to the ground before I let one drop of blame touch Nola Wagner."
I pointed a calloused, bruised index finger directly at Evelyn Cross.
"You draft an official administrative exoneration right now," I commanded, my voice dropping into that dark, absolute register that made Miller flinch.
"You clear her record. You restore her departmental research grant with full funding, and you sign an unconditional recommendation to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
You do it before noon, or I walk down to the media concourse and hand the Minneapolis Star Tribune every page of this file. "
Evelyn Cross didn't argue. She nodded once, her hands trembling as she reached for her legal pad.
I didn't wait for the ink to dry.
The double doors swung open, and two plainclothes detectives stepped across the threshold, their badges flashing under the halogens as they moved toward Carter Ross.
The cuffs clicked shut around the agent’s wrists with a sharp, final snap.
The parasite was dead.
* * *
I pushed through the exterior glass doors of the athletic administration building, stepping straight into the freezing drizzle.
The rain was forty degrees, biting into the raw skin of my face, but the furnace burning in my ribs kept the chill from reaching my marrow.
Standing on the granite landing halfway down the walkway, holding a heavy umbrella against the wind, was Maya Lin.
She wore a dark green parka, her reporter's notebook tucked under her arm, her boots planted firmly in the slush.
The second her eyes caught my frame, her face turned to pure, unadulterated venom. She didn't move to get out of my way; she locked her knees, her jaw tight, ready to spit fire.
I didn't try to loom over her.
I stopped three feet from her umbrella, planting my heavy boots in the gray slush.
My spine bowed.
My head dropped forward, my chin sinking straight into my chest, two hundred and twenty pounds of collegiate enforcer folding in on itself like a collapsing bridge.
"Maya," I choked out.
The syllable tore out of my throat, broken and raw, vibrating with an agony so deep it made my shoulders heave under the wool of my coat.
"Don't you dare speak to me, Guzman," she spat, her voice shaking with disgust. "You broke her. You took everything she had and you threw it in the dirt."
"I cleared her," I rasped, forcing my head up.
My bloodshot, swollen eyes locked onto hers, tears mixing with the freezing rain in the dark stubble along my jaw.
"Carter Ross is in handcuffs," I whispered, my voice cracking on the words. "The board signed her exoneration ten minutes ago. Her grant is restored. Her fellowship recommendation is safe. Her record is clean."
Maya’s breath hitched in a sharp, audible catch, her dark eyes scanning the wrecked, hollow ruins of my face.
"Where is she, Maya?" I whispered, my voice dropping down to a broken, pleading rasp, my bare hands hanging open and helpless at my sides. "Tell me where she went. I swear on my brother’s life, I’m not going there to explain. I’m not going there to make excuses. I’m going there to crawl on my knees."
Maya stared at me for five agonizing seconds.
She looked at my split lip, the dark hollows beneath my eyes, and the destruction of every scrap of the arrogant captain who had owned this campus.
She reached into the pocket of her parka.
She pulled out a small, folded piece of yellow lined paper and shoved it hard against the center of my chest.
"Marquette," Maya whispered, her voice tight with a lethal, trembling warning. "She’s at an old harbor rental near the state research annex on Lake Superior. If you hurt her again, Chase, there won't be enough of you left to put on the ice."
My fingers clamped over the yellow paper like it was the only source of oxygen on earth.
"Thank you," I choked out.
I didn't waste another second.
I broke into a dead sprint across the slush-rutted parking lot, my boots skittering on the ice as I reached the Silverado. I tore the driver's door open, threw myself behind the wheel, and twisted the ignition key.
The heavy V-8 engine roared to life with a guttural, concussive rumble.
I jammed the transmission into drive, the heavy tires biting through the snowbanks as I ripped out of the parking bay, blowing through the campus gate onto US-2, pointing the hood east toward Michigan.
Two hundred and fifty miles.
My knuckles turned dead white around the steering wheel, the gas pedal pressed flat against the floorboards, my heart hammering a brutal, desperate tempo against my ribs as the highway stretched into the storm.
I was coming.
And I would crawl through five feet of ice just to lay my head at her feet.