“I don’t know yet. I’ve got a phone call with Hugh in an hour. He’ll be under investigation as well.”
Hugh is Teddy’s absentee brother, a tech billionaire who supposedly owns the other twenty percent of our franchise. I’ve never seen him at a game.
“What do you want me to tell the guys?” Already, my phone is vibrating intermittently in my pocket; the much-loathed sign of a group chat firing off.
“We’re working on it. The league has dealt with this kind of bullshit before,” he replies, though he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than me. I’ve certainly never heard of a scandal like this.
“Fyfan,” I drag my hand through my hair again. What the fuck. Briefly glancing at my phone, I see seventeen unread messages and promptly shove it back in my pocket. My contract is up this year, and we haven’t made the playoffs in a decade. I’ll be a free agent soon, with nothing but my name and record to lean on.
“As captain, they’ll be looking to you for leadership. Especially the rookies. Don’t let any of that rumor shit spread. I don’t want any ofyou believing anything unless you hear it from me or the league. Got it?”
I force a nod, still feeling like I’ve taken a puck to the solar plexus. “Understood.”
How could anyone be so selfish?
“Good. Get back to lifting and try not to think about it. I’ll be in touch with details later this evening.”
I feel like punching a hole through a wall. Or better yet, through Teddy Hearst’s face. So much for my Swedish pacifism.
Chapter 3
Freddie
I’ve been doomscrolling for two hours by the time the bus drops me off near my family’s Manhattan Beach home. My nerves spike when my parents’ house comes into view, though my father’s Rolls Royce is missing from the driveway and I pray to the Cenobites he’s away on business. I don’t want to see him, especially not now. His mere presence is suffocating—my family’s ownPoltergeist. I rub my temples, then tuck my dark, chin-length hair behind my ears before heading inside.
The house is silent, and the immaculate wood floors, imported antique furniture and thoughtful design of my childhood home give no indication that my family’s life might be overturned in a heartbeat. Sunlight pours in through floor to ceiling windows, and down the hill from our house I see the peaceful shimmer of the ocean beneath a blue, cloudless sky.
Elle is sitting at the kitchen banquette when I turn the corner. She looks up—obviously surprised to see me home, then her face settles into something haughty as she looks me over. She’s home from Yale for the summer, and at twenty-one years old with more job prospects than I have already, she’s the picture-perfect heiress my parents intended meto be. Her dark, glossy hair falls to the middle of her back, and with our father’s blue eyes and a bone structure like a bird, she’s always been considered the pretty one.
Not that I would ever trade places. The corporate world she’s headed for with all of its ruthless bloodletting and ritual human sacrifice isn’t the kind of horror I enjoy.
“Mom’s upstairs,” she says. Nothing about being happy to see me, but I’m not surprised. We’ve never gotten along, and we have less in common than ever now that she’s pursuing a career on Wall Street. The brain rotting chatter about the stock market I hear emanating from her laptop gives me the heebie jeebies, but Elle is definitely our father’s daughter. My family has always been well-off, but our father and his brother got away with highway robbery that made them billions during the Dot Com Bubble, and now he’s influenced Elle to seek out her own pound of flesh. As if her trust fund weren’t plenty already.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being raised in this world, it’s that it’s never enough.
I find my mother on the third floor balcony, phone to her ear and her mouth moving, though the closed French doors prevent me from making out her words. I tap on the glass, waving when she looks up at me. My mother utters something and hangs up the phone, attempting to push a pack of cigarettes out of sight. Unlike her, I’ve mostly kicked my cigarette habit—and unlike me, she’s never been good at hiding things. It makes me sad, the way she’s always looking over her shoulder, but that’s what living with my father does to people, and at this point, I no longer pity her. She chooses to stay.
“Where have you been?” she says like I’m sixteen again and not a grown twenty-four year old woman. Her mousy hair is twisted into a neat chignon. I’ve never seen her wear it any other way. She crossesher slender arms over her chest and levels me with a green-eyed glare, looking more like a lawyer or a politician in her cream, sleeveless dress than the housewife she’s been my whole life.
“I was in a meeting across town.”
“With who?”
“A potential employer.”
She fidgets, and I know she’s worrying about what my father will think of that. He’s been on an extra short fuse with me ever since I dropped out of business school and got barred from the family trust. Bringing up the whole independent artist career thing to them is like dumping gasoline on a California wildfire.
“Where’s Dad?”
My mother goes to the minibar to pour herself a generous glass of sauvignon blanc. When she offers me one, I take it. I should really lay off, but I’ll need it if I’m gonna be around my family.
“I’m sure you’ve seen by now,” she says.
“A little.”
“He’s with the authorities.”
“Jesus,” I say.
