CHAPTER 6 #2
“You could forget my name.”
His eyes sharpened.
“I will never forget you.”
“You cannot promise that.”
“I can.”
“No, you can’t.”
Fear cracked through my voice.
His face changed.
He pulled me closer.
“Then I will write it everywhere.”
“What?”
“Your name. Our history. Every place I need to see it.”
“That is not funny.”
“I am not joking.”
His forehead rested against mine beneath the falling water.
“If my mind loses everything else, it will still have you.”
I closed my eyes.
“That is not romantic.”
“No.”
“It’s terrifying.”
“I know.”
I wrapped my arms around him.
For once, neither of us pretended the embrace meant we had solved anything.
Derek remained unconscious but stable.
The hospital moved him to a secured floor after the second attempted intrusion.
Naomi arrived at Matteo’s apartment shortly after eight, carrying coffee, legal pads, and the expression of a woman preparing to sue an entire professional league into the earth.
She found Lars and me sitting together on the couch.
My head rested against his shoulder.
His hand covered mine.
Naomi stopped.
“Mhm.”
I lifted my head.
“There it is.”
“I did not say anything.”
“You never have to.”
She placed a coffee in front of me, then looked at Lars.
“For the record, saving her from bullets has not erased the previous eight years.”
“I did not expect it to.”
“Mhm.”
“But,” she added reluctantly, “you covered her with your body.”
“Yes.”
“Without hesitation.”
“Yes.”
Her expression softened by less than a degree.
“Fine.”
Lars looked at me.
“Was that approval?”
“No,” Naomi said.
“It sounded close.”
“It was an acknowledgment of basic usefulness.”
Matteo entered from the kitchen.
“I also avoided bullets.”
Naomi gave him his coffee.
“You were third on my list for a reason.”
He pressed one hand to his chest.
The moment of humor did not survive the email that arrived next.
It came from an anonymous account and contained an audio file.
I played it over the speakers.
My own voice filled the room.
“I can make the coverage favorable, but I need private access.”
Then Lars’s:
“I’ll give you whatever you want.”
The recording continued.
Fragments of conversation.
My voice asking for locker-room information.
Lars promising to arrange interviews.
Me laughing.
Him saying, “No one needs to know how you got it.”
My stomach turned.
“I never said that.”
“Parts are real,” Lars said.
I listened again.
The tone changes were subtle.
Different rooms.
Different years.
Words cut and stitched together.
The first sentence came from an argument during college when I jokingly offered to write a flattering article about one of Lars’s games if he introduced me to a coach for an academic assignment.
His answer had come from our wedding night.
I’ll give you whatever you want.
Private words reconstructed into evidence of corruption.
The file had already been sent to multiple news outlets.
Within minutes, it was everywhere.
LEAKED AUDIO SUGGESTS AALIYAH GRANT TRADED FAVORABLE COVERAGE FOR ACCESS
The Ledger released another statement.
The Norsemen announced an internal investigation into whether Lars had violated league integrity rules.
My social media accounts disappeared beneath threats.
Sponsors suspended their relationships with him.
A sports network removed his photograph from an upcoming campaign.
A crowd gathered outside Matteo’s building.
Some carried signs demanding Lars return to hockey.
Others demanded my arrest.
One sign showed my face beside a racial slur.
Another told Lars to “send her back.”
Back where, I did not know.
Black women were always being ordered back to some imaginary place where we had been quieter.
Lars stood at the window behind the closed metal screen.
“Open it,” he said.
Matteo looked at him.
“The shutters?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Lars moved toward the controls.
I caught his hand.
“What are you doing?”
“I am going downstairs.”
“You are suspended.”
“I am still allowed to leave a building.”
“There are hundreds of people outside.”
“Good.”
“Lars.”
“They keep saying I hid you because I was ashamed.”
His voice had gone quiet.
The dangerous quiet.
“I will not hide you now because they are.”
I looked toward the cameras gathered below.
My instinct told me to wait.
To draft a statement.
To find counsel.
To control the angle, background, and language.
My career had trained me to treat visibility as strategy.
Lars treated it as loyalty.
“What are you proposing?” Naomi asked.
“We walk out.”
“That is a terrible legal plan.”
“It is not a legal plan.”
“Those are my least favorite kinds.”
I looked at my husband.
He held out his hand.
Not grabbing.
Not ordering.
Offering.
My eyes lowered to his wedding band.
For eight years, he had worn it while telling the world nothing.
Now the entire world knew, and he was willing to walk directly into its hatred beside me.
I placed my hand in his.
We took the elevator down.
Security tried to stop us in the lobby.
Lars ignored them.
The glass doors opened.
Noise crashed over us.
Reporters surged against barricades.
Fans screamed.
Police pushed people back.
Questions flew from every direction.
“Aaliyah, did you manipulate your coverage?”
“Lars, did your wife use you for access?”
“Are you refusing to play because she threatened to expose you?”
“Did the Norsemen pay her?”
Someone shouted a racial insult.
Another person threw a cup.
It struck Lars’s shoulder and burst across his coat.
He did not flinch.
His fingers tightened around mine.
We walked forward.
The cameras followed.
A reporter forced his microphone over the barricade.
“Lars! Do you regret destroying your career for a woman whose ethics are now under criminal scrutiny?”
Lars stopped.
Security tensed.
I felt the moment he decided to answer.
“No.”
The reporter leaned closer.
“Do you believe Aaliyah Grant ruined your career?”
Lars looked at me.
Then at the camera.
“No. My career nearly ruined my wife.”
The crowd erupted.
Another reporter shouted, “Are you still refusing to play?”
“Yes.”
“Even after the leaked audio?”
“The audio is manipulated.”
“How can you prove that?”
“My wife will.”
The certainty in his voice nearly broke me again.
Not because he had rescued me.
Because he had finally trusted me to rescue myself.
We reached the SUV.
Before we entered, Matteo’s phone rang behind us.
He answered while pushing through security.
His expression changed.
He called Lars’s name.
We stopped.
Matteo looked pale.
“What happened?” Lars asked.
Matteo lowered the phone slowly.
“I need to tell you something.”
The crowd roared behind the barricades.
Cameras captured every second.
Lars stared at his teammate.
“What?”
Matteo swallowed.
“Graham knew Aaliyah was meeting Derek because I told him.”
The world seemed to go silent around us.
Lars released my hand.
His face emptied.
Matteo continued quickly.
“He threatened to release my medical evaluations. He said he would void my contract and tell every team I was unstable. I thought he only wanted to stop the story. I didn’t know anyone would hurt Derek.”
Lars crossed the distance before I could react.
His fist struck Matteo’s face.
Matteo fell against the SUV.
The crowd exploded.
“Lars!”
He grabbed Matteo by the coat and hit him again.
Blood sprayed across the side of the vehicle.
Security surged forward.
Lars shoved one guard away and drew back his fist.
I stepped between them.
“Stop!”
His fist froze inches from my head.
The sight of me shattered through his rage.
His arm dropped.
Matteo slid to the pavement, blood pouring from his nose.
Lars’s breathing came hard.
“He gave them your location.”
“I heard him.”
“He gave you to Graham.”
“And Derek needs us.”
His eyes burned.
I put both hands against his chest.
“Do not turn into the weapon Graham trained you to be.”
The words reached him.
Slowly.
Painfully.
He looked down at Matteo.
Then at the cameras recording everything.
Graham had just been handed the perfect footage.
The unstable player.
The violent husband.
The corrupt journalist standing between them.
Matteo wiped blood from his mouth.
“There’s more,” he said.
Lars’s body tightened.
“What?”
“Derek woke up.”
I turned.
“He told the hospital the server beneath the training facility contains more than medical records. There are payments, altered reports, private surveillance orders. Everything.”
“We have the drive,” I said.
“No.” Matteo shook his head. “Derek said that was only a backup. The original server is still beneath the facility.”
“Why does that matter?” Naomi asked.
“Because Graham scheduled the system for deletion.”
“When?” Lars demanded.
Matteo looked at his phone.
“Tomorrow night.”
I stared at the blood on Matteo’s face.
At Lars’s trembling hands.
At the crowd calling me every name except journalist.
Graham had taken my career.
He had turned my marriage into pornography.
He had nearly killed Derek.
Now he intended to erase the evidence that proved all of it.
I looked at Lars.
“We’re going back.”
His eyes narrowed.
“To the facility?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“I can try.”
I stepped closer.
“Then waste time fighting your wife while Graham destroys the truth.”
For several seconds, the Ice Wolf stared at me.
Then something in his expression shifted.
Not surrender.
Recognition.
He finally understood that protecting me did not mean standing in front of me.
Sometimes it meant standing beside me while I walked toward danger.
Lars held out his bloodied hand.
This time, I took it immediately.
Behind us, Matteo pushed himself upright.
Naomi sighed.
“Mhm. I suppose we are committing felonies now.”
“No,” I said as we entered the SUV. “We’re retrieving evidence.”
“That is exactly what people say before felonies.”
The door closed.
Outside, the league continued tearing us apart.
Inside, we began planning how to tear it open.