He skates off, stick in hand, like he’s just told me to grab a drink and shake it off, but there’s weight in his tone, a warning buried under the casual words. Something that sayshe knows more than he’s letting on.
And it’s not like I’m naïve. I’ve heard the rumors about the Chicago Reapers. That the team is mafia-owned, that several of my teammates have connections.
And, shit, both Nik and Dom are Russian, and both have come in to practice with inexplicable injuries.
And both are, to be honest, shady as fuck.
I know he’s not a Browning. He’s too slick and controlled for that. And yeah, he’s not Irish, which automatically puts him in a different league.
The Brownings are clowns in leather jackets; Nik Ivanov is something else entirely.
There’s a darkness to him, a quiet kind of power that fills a room without him having to say a damn thing.
Still, even if heisconnected, what could he really do?
Out-mafia the Irish mob on my behalf?
No, not gonna happen.
He can’t just snap his fingers and make millions of dollars’ worth of debt go away.
Yeah, I think I’m on my own with this one.
However, the thought of these Irish and Russian mafia groups trying to overpower each other overmeis almost funny.
I find it oddly amusing, and so I take that rare feeling of amusement with me as I wander down the hallway and find my place on the bench.
After all the pre-game hoodoo, our starting lineup takes the ice.
Minus me.
The horn sounds, the puck drops, and we win the faceoff clean.
The Reapers charge forward fast, skates cutting into the ice, the whole arena buzzing with energy.
The noise is deafening—sticks hitting, blades scraping, the crowd roaring louder with every pass.
Three minutes in, Dom snags a rebound off the boards, spins, and fires. It’s a monster of a slapshot, launched from a brutal angle no sane man would attempt.
The puck whistles through the air, slicing past a diving goalie and snapping into the top right corner of the net.
The red light flares. The horn screams.
The placeerupts.
Fans are on their feet, fists pounding the glass. Dom throws up his arms, and the guys mob him, gloves slapping helmets, sticks banging against the boards.
The sound is pure adrenaline.
I sit on the bench, jaw tight, pretending it doesn’t bother me to watch instead of play.
My replacement, Penn Markham, skates past me on his next shift, grinning like he owns the place.
He’s big and fast, the kind of guy who makes defenders think twice before getting in his way. Bright too, an Ivy League brain in a fighter’s body.
But Penn’s got a short fuse temper. He loves to fight more than he loves to score, and that kind of hunger can wreck a game if he’s not careful.
Either way, he’s been solid tonight, really good, and Connor wastes no time reminding me of it the second he plops down beside me after serving a two-minute high-sticking penalty.
