Chapter 28
Mauricio POV
The blinding white glare of forty camera flashes hit my eyes the second I stepped onto the raised dais of the media room.
The St. Jude Sentinels were forty-eight hours out from the regular-season finale against Boston Commonwealth. The winner took the number-one overall seed in the regional tournament; the loser had to skate through three sudden-death play-in games.
I sat down behind the folding table, the microphone in front of my chest humming with a low, sixty-cycle electrical drone. Beside me, Coach Henrik Lindqvist cleared his throat, his posture rigid in his gray suit.
Before the sports information director could open the floor, three reporters from Boston and Montreal shouted over each other.
"Leal! Central Scouting moved you up to six on their North American draft board this morning," a Boston beat writer barked, thrusting a digital voice recorder toward my face.
"There are rumors out of the Commonwealth camp that you've been nursing a stress fracture in your lower right leg since October.
Tyler Brody told reporters this morning that you're an injury risk who shouldn't be cleared for contact. Can you address that?"
A dull, heavy pulse thudded behind my eyeballs, keeping time with the vein standing out thick along the right side of my neck.
My teeth clamped shut so hard the roots of my back molars ached.
Beneath the gray Sentinel polo shirt, the athletic tape binding my lower ribs pulled tight against bruised bone, but my face remained an unbroken block of stone. I looked the Boston reporter dead in the eyes, refusing to blink under the strobe of the flashes.
"Brody can talk to reporters," I said. My voice was a flat, gravelly scrape that cut clean through the cross-talk. "He can talk in the papers, and he can talk on television. On Friday night, he has to play sixty minutes on my ice. That's the only answer he gets."
"What about your draft projection, Mauricio?" a Montreal scout called from the back row. "Are you declaring for the combine in Buffalo next month?"
"My focus is Boston Commonwealth," I replied, keeping my hands resting flat against the laminate table, my knuckles pale under the fluorescent tubes. "I don't look past Friday."
They fired seven more questions about my penalty minutes, my lateral skating agility, and the six-game suspension that had almost landed in October. I answered every single one in clipped, monosyllabic dismissals, offering zero headlines, zero emotion, and zero blood.
The public saw an armored defenseman who felt nothing.
They had no idea that my ribs burned with every breath, that my bank account was running on ninety dollars after paying Rafael’s clinic invoice, or that the only thing keeping my sanity intact was waiting for me outside the player tunnel.
* * *
The second the sports information director cut the microphones, Lindqvist’s thick hand clamped onto my bicep.
The coach’s face was mottled dark red, his breathing heavy through his nose. "Upstairs, Mauricio. Vance's office. Right now."
We took the concrete service stairs two at a time, Lindqvist's heavy wingtips slapping against the iron treads.
The door to Arthur Vance’s executive suite was open.
Inside, the Athletic Director sat behind his mahogany desk with his tie yanked loose at the collar, a stack of printed emails spread across his blotter.
Standing by the window, nervously wiping his wire-rimmed glasses with a silk handkerchief, was Dr. Warren Hayes.
Lindqvist shoved the door shut, throwing the deadbolt.
"Sit down, Leal," Vance said, his voice clipped and thin.
I didn't sit. I stood planted in front of the desk, six feet, four inches of motionless mass, my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my jacket. "What is this, Director?"
Vance picked up a single sheet of paper with a red-flagged heading from the regional NCAA compliance liaison.
"Two hours ago, an anonymous formal inquiry was submitted to the conference oversight committee," Vance said, his jowls tight with stress.
"The complaint alleges that the St. Jude men's hockey program is actively concealing a structural bone injury in your lower right leg to protect your first-round draft projection. "
My lungs tightened until the air went thin in my chest.
Cross.
The predator in the cashmere coat had made his move.
"The complaint goes further, Mauricio," Dr. Hayes chimed in, his voice trembling as he stepped away from the window.
"It claims that my department—specifically my lead honors intern, Kiyomi Blake—has been manipulating raw motion-capture telemetry and withholding force-plate landing data to generate false medical clearances for your file. "
The blood drained from my skull, replaced by a blinding, suffocating fury that made the room tilt.
"That's a lie," I growled.
The words came out as a dangerous, guttural vibration that made Hayes take an involuntary half-step back against the credenza.
"Miss Blake’s logs are accurate to the millimeter," I said, leaning over the mahogany desk, planting both palms flat on the wood.
"She ran every test by the book. If there's a delay in the database sync, it's on me.
I missed two testing sessions because I was running extra conditioning on the ice. Kiyomi didn't falsify a damn thing."
"It doesn't matter what you missed, Mauricio!
" Vance barked, slamming his fist onto the blotter.
"The NCAA compliance board has issued a formal documentation demand.
If we don't submit the raw, unedited sensor drives from your Week 5 and Week 6 sessions by tomorrow at noon, they are placing you on immediate provisional suspension.
You will not dress against Commonwealth. "
A sharp, violent pulse hammered in my ears.
"And Kiyomi?" I asked, my voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
"If the conference finds discrepancies between her clinical notes and your physical condition," Vance said coldly, "her research fellowship recommendation is rescinded, her grant is frozen, and she faces an academic integrity board by Monday."
My hands curled into fists on the mahogany, the wood groaning under the pressure of my palms.
They were holding her future hostage to get to me. Cross was using the system like a garrote wire around our necks.
"I'll bring you the drives," I said through teeth clenched so tightly my jaw ached to the bone. "I'll make sure the file is clean. But if your committee puts one finger on Kiyomi’s academic record, Vance, I walk off this campus, and I take every scout in the Northeast with me."
I turned on my heel and walked out, slamming the heavy oak door so hard the glass partition shuddered in its frame.
* * *
The February wind off Casco Bay whipped across the private players' parking lot like broken glass.
I stormed down the concrete corridor toward the north exit, my truck keys clutched so tightly in my fist that the brass teeth bit deep into the meat of my palm. My breath tore from my throat in ragged, burning gasps, my mind a war zone of cold fury and desperate calculation.
I hit the push-bar of the heavy steel exit door, stepping out into the freezing dusk.
She was standing by the brick pillar near the security gate.
Kiyomi was bundled in her charcoal wool coat, a dark scarf wrapped thick around her neck, her hands tucked deep inside her pockets. The cold wind ruffled the dark curls escaping her knit hat, tossing them across her pale cheeks.
She looked small. Fragile.
Her posture wasn't that fierce, combative line she used in the arena. She stood with her shoulders slightly hunched, her head tilted down, her right hand resting flat, protective, and unmoving over her lower abdomen beneath the wool.
The blinding red rage inside my skull vanished in an instant.
The pressure of the media, the threat of the NCAA suspension, the shadow of Julian Cross—all of it dissolved into thin air. There was only the woman standing in the snow, shivering in the freezing wind, carrying a silence that felt heavier than anything I had ever faced on the ice.
I covered the distance between us in four long, unhurried strides.
"Kiyomi," I rasped.
She looked up, her honey-brown eyes wide, dark, and shadowed with an exhaustion that made my chest ache with violent, protective weight.
I didn't ask what was wrong. I didn't mention Vance, and I didn't mention the compliance file.
My left hand reached out, taking the heavy strap of her satchel and tossing it into the bed of my truck. My right arm swept around her waist, lifting her boots off the salt-crusted pavement.
I pulled her straight into the passenger side of the cab, climbing in after her, slamming the heavy door shut against the howling gale.
The heater roared to life, blowing dry, scorching air across our knees, but I didn't touch the gearshift.
I gathered her into my arms, hauling her slender frame across the center console until she was seated squarely in my lap, her legs draped over my thighs, her face buried into the curve of my neck.
I wrapped my massive arms around her, locking my hands at the small of her back, crushing her against my chest with desperate, immovable strength.
She smelled of almond, clean rain, and the faint, sweet warmth of her skin.
A ragged, shuddering breath tore from my throat as I buried my mouth into her dark hair, my heart hammering against her ribs like a sledgehammer.
"Stay right here," I murmured, my voice breaking on a low, ruined rumble against her ear. "Good girl. Just let me hold you. I've got you, Kiyomi."
She didn't speak. She curled her small fingers into the wool of my jacket over my shoulder blades, her forehead resting against my collarbone, her breath coming in soft, hitched sighs that warmed my throat.
Her body was trembling, a faint, fragile tremor that registered through every millimeter of my chest.
I held her in the quiet dark of the cab, my eyes fixed on the frozen arena glass in the rearview mirror, my jaw setting into an iron, unbreakable resolve.
The web was closing in around us.
Cross was coming for our lives, but as I pressed my lips to the crown of her head, feeling her pulse beat against mine, the vow carved itself into my soul:
I would tear the world to ash before I let them touch a single hair on her head.