14. Lucy #2
Neither would I. Not long ago, I had been worrying about finding my next job. Now, I was preparing to end someone else's career.
I wasn't sure when my responsibilities had become this big. Or when people had started trusting me with them.
Dad closed the folder with deliberate care before sliding it toward me. "I'll be present if you need me."
I looked up immediately. "You won't be."
A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. "No." It wasn't a question.
Because if I was going to lead people, I had to be willing to have the hard conversations too.
"I'll have HR coordinate everything," I said quietly, more to myself than anyone else.
Sarah gave a single approving nod. "I'll have the paperwork ready and on your desk first thing in the morning."
Dad looked between the two of us before exhaling slowly. "Good."
The room fell quiet again.
Then his attention shifted to Bea. "Now," he said, his tone softening almost imperceptibly. "Let's talk about where we go from here."
Bea straightened immediately. It was subtle.
The slight adjustment of her shoulders. The way her fingers released the mug she had been holding onto since I walked into the room.
The quiet shift from a woman who had spent the last several hours having her personal life ripped apart publicly back into the professional who was already preparing for the next problem.
Beatriz Ribeiro did not know how to stop working.
I recognized it because apparently, neither did I.
"Dad," I started carefully. "Before we make any decisions about restructuring, we need to evaluate exactly what Charlotte handled. Her workload, her contacts, sponsor relationships, media obligations—"
"Already done," he said.
I stopped. "What?"
His gaze moved toward Sarah.
She tapped once against her tablet. "Charlotte's responsibilities have been under review since November."
My eyebrows pulled together. "November?"
"Yes," Sarah answered.
"You've been reviewing the department for two months?" I asked.
Dad leaned back in his chair. "We've been reviewing every department for two months."
The answer was so simple. So obvious. While I had been treating every day like an emergency, like one more temporary problem I needed to solve before handing it back to someone else, everyone around me had been building something permanent.
"The organization changed this season," Dad continued. "It had to." His gaze shifted briefly toward Alois. "We spent too long reacting. To losses. To bad press. To outside opinions about what this team was supposed to be."
The room stayed quiet. He was right. The Frosthawks weren't fixed. But they weren't falling apart anymore either.
"Charlotte was very good at managing perception," Dad continued.
"For a long time, that's what this organization thought it needed, but perception only matters if there's something real underneath it.
" A small crease formed between Bea's brows.
Then my father looked directly at her. "And you reminded us of that. "
Bea blinked.
"Dad—"
"This isn't personal, Bea."
That stopped her. Because it was exactly what she would have argued. That she was too close. That this was complicated. That everything that happened tonight somehow disqualified her instead of proving exactly why she belonged.
"You handled one of the worst organizational crises we've had in years," he continued. "Not because you controlled the story." His expression softened. "Because you protected the people inside it."
The smallest movement happened beside her. Alois's hand shifted. Just enough that his fingers brushed hers beneath the table. Just reminding her he was there.
My throat tightened unexpectedly.
Dad pushed a folder across the table. "The Director of Communications position is yours."
Bea didn't touch it. For once, she didn't have an immediate answer,which was the strangest thing that had happened all night.
"I…” she stammered.
"Take a breath, Ribeiro," Alois murmured.
She shot him a look. "I am breathing."
"No." His mouth barely moved. "You're calculating."
A laugh almost slipped out of me.
Bea looked annoyed. "I don't know if this is the right time," she finally muttered.
Dad tilted his head. "Why?"
"Because after everything tonight."
"Tonight is exactly why." The certainty in his voice ended the argument before it really started. "You earned the room before you ever had to defend your place in it."
Bea looked down at the folder. And slowly she pulled it closer.
For a second, I let myself just sit there and watch it happen.
Bea accepting what everyone else in the room had already known.
She belonged here. She had earned this. No explanation.
No justification. No proving herself beyond the work she had already done.
It was surprisingly easy to see when it was someone else.
Then my father looked at me. "And while we're discussing titles..."
No. Absolutely not.
"Dad."
He raised his eyebrows. "I didn't say anything yet."
"You have a tone."
"I have a tone?"
"You absolutely have a tone."
Sarah suddenly became very interested in her tablet.
Dad's mouth twitched. "I was only going to say I've been thinking about removing 'acting' from your job title."
All eyes darted to me and locked in with laser focus. And that was ridiculous.
Because it was just a word. Six letters. A temporary designation. A technicality.
Except suddenly it didn't feel technical at all. It felt like a door closing behind me. Or maybe opening. I wasn't sure which made me want to crawl under the table and hide.
"I was supposed to help with the transition," I whispered.
"You did."
"I was supposed to stabilize operations."
"You did."
"I was supposed to—"
"Lucy," Alois growled. The sound of my name in his low, steady voice cut straight through the list forming in my head.
I looked at him. He watched me with that same unsettling calm he had when everyone else was spiraling around him.
"You are doing the thing," he continued.
I frowned. "What thing?"
"The thing where you explain why everyone else is wrong about you."
My mouth opened. Nothing came out. Which was inconvenient. Because I loved having an argument prepared.
"I do it too, Don’t I?" Bea asked softly.
Alois looked at her. A little warmth returned to his expression.
"All the time." The room settled around that admission.
Because coming from him, it wasn't criticism.
It was recognition. "You keep waiting for someone to tell you that you belong here," he continued, looking back at me. "But everyone already has."
My eyes burned unexpectedly. I hated that. Almost as much as I hated that he was right.
"Luce." Dad's voice softened. "No pressure. No obligation. No expectation because you're my daughter."
I looked back at him.
That was the one. The thing I hadn't said.
"Your last name got you into this building," he confirmed. "But it didn't keep you here."
A sharp breath caught in my throat. The room blurred slightly at the edges.
"You did that."
For a few seconds, I couldn't look at my dad. I looked at the folder instead. The clean edge of it against the polished conference table. The Frosthawks crest embossed in the corner. The careful, official weight of something I had spent three months pretending wasn't already happening.
Director of Player Operations.
Not acting. Not temporary.
"I need to think about it," I said finally.
Dad nodded once. "Of course." No disappointment. No pressure. "If you decide this isn't what you want," he continued, "I'll support that. Fully. But if it is," he said, quieter, "I don't want you minimizing what you've built here just because you're afraid people will think I handed it to you."
I swallowed. There it was. The thing I had carried into every hallway in this building. Every meeting. Every interaction with a player who looked at me and saw ownership before they saw competence.
"I don't know how to separate it," I admitted.
Dad's expression softened in a way that made him look less like the owner of the Minnesota Frosthawks and more like the man who used to check under my bed for monsters even after I was old enough to know they weren't there.
"You don't have to separate it," he said.
"You just have to outwork the assumption. "
Alois made a low sound that might have been agreement. I glanced at him. He looked back evenly. "People will talk."
"Comforting."
"They talk anyway."
Bea's mouth twitched despite everything.
Alois leaned back slightly, one hand still close to hers on the table. "You can make yourself small and they still talk. You can do the job and they still talk." His gaze held mine. "Only one of those is useful."
That was possibly the worst thing about Alois Müller. He said very little. And then, when he finally did speak, he had an irritating habit of being impossible to argue with.
I looked back down at the folder. The title sat there, waiting.
Every day since walking into my position, I had told myself I was keeping everything organized until someone permanent stepped in. I had built systems for someone else to inherit. Learned routines so I could explain them. Solved problems so the next person wouldn't have to walk into chaos.
But there was no next person sitting in this room. There was only me. And everyone else had apparently figured that out before I had.
My fingers slid over the edge of the folder, not pulling it toward me yet. Just touching it. Testing the reality of it through paper and ink. "I don't want special treatment," I said.
Dad nodded. "Then don't accept any." His mouth curved faintly. "Accept the job."
I looked at Bea first. Her eyes were still tired.
Still red at the edges. Still carrying the weight of what had happened downstairs.
But underneath it, there was something steady now.
Something anchored by the folder in front of her and the man beside her and the truth my father had put on the table.
She belonged here. Maybe I did too.
"Okay," I said.
Dad's gaze sharpened. "Okay?"