That’s the appeal. Not the jawline or the scar. The certainty of a man who’s competent on the ice… and maybe in a few other areas…
Fine.
If this is the fight, they want to give me, I'll win it.
I've spent my career proving people wrong. Proving I belonged in rooms I wasn't invited into. Proving that rejection letters and closed doors don't define what I can become.
Carey Von thinks she's finally going to watch me fail, but she's wrong.
I flip the folder closed, stuff it in my laptop bag, and pull up the search engine on my laptop. I type in, flights to Seattle leaving tomorrow.
Time to get to work.
All right, Luka. Give me your best shot.
Chapter Three
NATALIA
Seattle greets me the way it always does. With gray skies, damp roads, and a cold that seeps into your bones in the dead of January.
The condo is warm, at least. Too warm, if I’m being honest. My mom keeps the heat cranked like she’s waging a personal war against winter, which I appreciate even as I shrug out of my coat and boots by the door.
"Your bedroom is all made up," she calls from somewhere deeper inside.
I smile because, of course, she made sure it was ready before I arrived. Though she didn’t need to go to the effort, I could have done it myself.
My old room is average size, the bed is already made with crisp white linens and a folded navy duvet blanket at the foot. A single abstract painting above the dresser. No ghosts of my past staring back at me.
I set my suitcase on the bed and unzip it. The rhythm of unpacking into my old room grounds me in this space. Work attire and blazers get hung up first. Sweaters I didn’t need in Scottsdale but suddenly feel wildly underprepared without get unpacked next. A stack of notebooks and my laptop end up on my old homework desk.
It’s all temporary, I remind myself. At twenty-six years old, I’m back in my old bedroom. At least it feels more comforting than I thought it would.
I hang my heavy coat in the closet- the one I bought years ago and barely used, and shut the door like that’s enough to keep the cold contained.
From downstairs, a smell drifts up that stops me mid-motion.
When I head downstairs, the smell of marinara hits me the second I step into the kitchen. Garlic and basil and that warmth of my mom’s homemade cooking that pulls me straight back to being eight years old and safe.
Mom sets a plate in front of me as if she hasn’t been waiting all day to feed me.
"So," she says casually as she takes her seat across from me, "your new client plays for the Hawkeyes?"
"Yes," I say, forking a bite of pasta. Comfort food at its finest, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I needed this to prepare for what’s coming up next. "Luka Popovich. One of their left-wingers."
Mom's eyebrows lift slightly as she twirls linguine around her fork. "I know that name. He’s a big deal for the Hawkeyes. Everyone around town seems to love him."
"You’re keeping up on professional hockey all of a sudden?" I ask, pausing before taking my next bite because this was surprising.
"It’s very popular around here, and one of my friends from work has season tickets. He’s mentioned the team before, and he has a Popovich jersey he wears to work on game days." She doesn’t look up when she says it, a little pink forming on her cheeks.
"A friend from work?" I ask with a lifted brow.
"This isn’t about that. Back to your client," she argues. "So he’s in some kind of trouble?"
If I weren’t so stuck in my head about this new client, I would press her on her new work friend, but I selfishly need her ear to make me feel better about this whole situation.
"It’s enough that the Olympic Committee could strip him of his medals," I say.
