37. Mason
MASON
Lilah’s shellshocked face, flushed skin and red-ringed eyes had sent chemical burns of rage searing across my body.
I’d left her at home when all I wanted to do was tear the school apart brick by brick.
But I’d have been better off doing that to my own house.
It wasn’t until she took her first bites of food and started to pack, that I’d finally left, not wanting to, but knowing exactly how I could fix this.
I launched across the lawn to the back door of the house. Downstairs was quiet. A flicker of light under my father’s office door was the match that ignited the blistering intensity of my anger.
I shouldered the door open without waiting to be let in and slammed it behind me, rattling the glinting trophies and awards on the bookshelves.
“You went after Lilah.” My back teeth clenched, catching the side of my tongue. The coppery taste of blood coated my mouth. He didn’t even deserve to hear her name.
“Alena had your suit for the gala put in your room. We leave in one hour.” My father pulled the stopper from his crystal decanter and poured the clear liquid into two tumblers. “Join me for a drink,” he said smoothly as if I wasn’t standing in front of him, vibrating with seething fury.
“A drink? Are you serious right now?” I marched across the room, not stopping until I was toe-to-toe with him. Right in his face, I bristled with a rage so sharp I could smell it over his vodka.
The corner of his mouth tugged in a smirk. “I went after no one.”
“Bullshit.” I yanked the glass from his grasp and smashed it into the fireplace. Flames erupted from the hearth.
“Such fire.” My father’s eyes lit with amusement, cruel and twisted. “Those glasses are quite expensive, Mason.” He picked up another and poured from the decanter. “So this is where your passion has gone now that it’s no longer with hockey? This girl?”
“I won a state fucking championship.”
“And you think a single championship is enough? You would stop pushing yourself for what? You have greatness within your reach.” He clenched his fist in front of his face.
“What I consider greatness or what you do?”
He offered me a glass again. “They are one and the same.”
I clenched my hands at my sides, so hard that I waited for my scars to reopen, wanting nothing more than to smash the glass against his face, but I needed his cooperation. “You’re trying to ruin Lilah’s life. Take the scholarship from her.”
“I’m not trying to do anything.”
He was doing it. Would do it, if he didn’t have my cooperation. My compliance. My surrender.
“Why do you even care where I go? You have Bair already doing everything you ask and Zoe is the best on her team.”
“Zoe’s is a cute distraction.”
“She’s your daughter.”
He made a noise as close to sympathy as he could. “She is not my legacy, but Alena enjoys their time together. She serves her purpose. They both do.” He leveled a pointed look at me. “So did your mother, but now…” A shrug.
Nonchalance like there was nothing he could do.
A beast paced behind my eyes, ready to make him pay for those words.
What would happen to Zoe if I didn’t fall into line?
The little girl who looked up to him and couldn’t help but want to impress him on the ice.
I’d been that same kid. Hadn’t that been what I’ve craved?
Needed more than anything? For him to see me as worthy of his attention?
And I’d fallen in line just like he’d wanted.
“There cannot be a weak link,” he said with a steel bar of conviction running through every word.
“Why is it weak to go to a different school? Seattle has had just as many players go pro as Rhode Island.”
“You would play for Larson, if only to trail behind that girl.” He spat the final word. “You do not follow like a sad little puppy. You lead, she follows. This will make it possible.”
“Lilah has worked hard. Worked her ass off harder than anyone I’ve ever met and you want to take this from her?”
He toasted his glass toward me with a hint of amusement in his eyes. “No, you do.”
Three lives trapped in the palm of his hand with his iron grip locked around them.
“By making silly decisions.” He raised his chin toward the Washington commitment papers sitting on the same circular side table like they’d been sitting there since the last time I was here.
I gripped my hair with both hands. “You’d ruin multiple innocent people’s lives to make me do what you want?”
“All I am doing is showing you the outcome when you will not listen to reason.”
I yanked the papers off the table. The ones meant to write a new story for me.
I sank into a crouch in front of the crackling, slowly charring logs and stared at the papers.
My hands shook. My heart twisted into raw knots.
I’d explain it all to Lilah after our weekend.
I wouldn’t ruin it by telling her I hadn’t been strong enough to fix this.
My head dropped, body sagging under the weight of this loss.
My father’s presence loomed overhead, weighty, oppressive, like he was trying to ground me into the wood floor beneath my feet. He dropped a hand onto my shoulder and squeezed.
I flicked the small stack of paper into the fire. The whole thing curled in on itself as if that could protect it from the flames. Pages blackened, circles of fire scorched and blistered through the paper and ink and then disintegrated, turning into nothing but ash.
As if they’d been there this whole time, the Rhode Island papers sat in a new pristine packet with a shiny navy pen beside it.
“I am glad you’ve come to your senses.”
Lilah and I had three months until I’d leave for training camp. We could go away for more than this weekend. Hell, we could disappear for the next ten weeks.
Maybe I could get her set up at her school. Then I’d go to her for every break. The flight was only six hours. Video calls, texting, voice notes. It would be like we were together. I tried to convince myself I hadn’t just signed my life over to the devil.
Dad casually drank from his glass as if we were discussing the choice of Range Rover models, not three lives he’d been ready to destroy without a second thought. “You will also no longer associate with this girl.”
I faltered. “What? I’m doing what you want. I’m going to Rhode Island.”
His hand clamped around the back of my neck, squeezing. His fingers dug deep into the muscle, like he was trying to pry it from bone, but I didn’t flinch.
“But what is it about this girl who put thoughts of your own choices in your head to begin with? No, we must not have this influence around to jeopardize what I’ve built.”
“Sir—”
“And we will be sure your jersey has the Petrov name on it.” He clamped a hand on my shoulder.
“Perhaps for Zoe as well.” The shiny, bright lure dangled in front of me.
Protection for Zoe. I didn’t care about myself, but if he gave Zoe his name, there was no way he’d abandon her.
At least he’d have to consider the optics of that.
That was what was most important to him.
How we all looked. How we reflected him. How his legacy lived on.
“And if I don’t?”
“There are many deals I can make, but I don’t believe you will like any of them for you…for Zoe…for your mother or for the girl. I’m not a man without flexibility, but that does not mean I won’t get what I want. Now it’s for you to decide who and what you are willing to risk.”