“You are going into our family business?”
Our family business. I saw red. Launching myself upright, I shoved against his chest. “There’s no fucking ‘our.’ Your syndicate may have helped with the funds, but my dad paid for that a hundred times over. I seem to remember him saving your uncle’s life a few years ago when he was fucking bleeding out all over the clinic floor. Remember that?”
His icy eyes glittered dangerously as he pushed his chest into mine, and I was reminded that this was a man who would have absolutely no problems with killing in cold blood and disposing of the body. Fuck. “Poshel nahui,” he growled, ripping off his goalie mask to bare his teeth at me, and I didn’t need to know Russian to understand the insult. “Do not push me, Attwood. You will not like the consequences.”
“No?” There was a voice inside me telling me to calm down, but I was too angry for rationality.
“Terrorising your teammate? That’s a new low for you, Volkov.”
Breathing hard, we both pushed away from each other to find Vincenzo Fontana leaning against the boards with his helmet dangling from his hand. Volkov’s lip curled.
“This is Cranham’s ice time, not Whelford’s, so go back to whatever hole you crawled from.”
“No can do.” He tapped his stick on the ice. “If you look at the schedule, you’ll see this hour is allocated for stick time. We have just as much right to practice here as you.”
Another figure appeared at the other side of the rink, and I groaned internally when I realised it was Lincoln Bellingham. Fucking great. At least Dan wasn’t here to antagonise his rival.
“Volkov,” I hissed. He’d forgotten about me, too busy having a metaphorical dick-measuring contest with the Flames’ captain. Personally, I had no issue with Enzo, other than the fact that he was on a rival team, but I knew there was some bad blood between the Fontanas and the Volkovs. I needed to defuse this situation, fast.
“Hey, Attwood. No Hoyton today? Too busy swindling innocent people out of their money?”
I replied to Bellingham with my middle finger before pointedly turning my back to him. Pulling on my glove, I retrieved my stick. When I had it, I skated back to Volkov, stopping in front of him to block his view of Enzo.
I swallowed hard, trying to remind myself that this dislike of Volkov was irrational. He was my teammate, and that was the only thing that mattered right now. “Volkov. Let’s practice. Coach is expecting us to improve.”
His gaze slid to mine, and a smirk tugged at his lips. “Expecting you to improve.”
“There’s always room for improvement, even for you.”
“Maybe so.” He studied me for a moment, the rage in his eyes fading away to be replaced with amusement. “We will make it interesting. A wager.”
“A wager…” I repeated slowly.
“Yes. If you can score eight times before our hour is up, you can have one dance at my engagement party.”
Jerking back in shock, I stared at him. “What?”
“You.” He pointed at me. “Score eight times.”
“Yeah…”
“Then I will allow you to dance with my beautiful fiancée at our engagement party.” He moved closer, lowering his voice. “I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
Fuckfuckfuck. My stomach churned, bile rising in my throat. “You bastard,” I whispered.
“Yes. Do we have a deal?”
“Fine,” I managed. What else was I supposed to say? Spinning around to face Enzo, I raised my voice, using every trick I knew to keep it steady and my face free of emotion. Another two Whelford players had joined Bellingham and Fontana on the ice, doing warm-up stretches. “You stay in your zone, and we’ll stay in ours. No crossing the centre line.”
Enzo rolled his eyes but nodded. With another jerk of his head, he sent his teammates skating down the other end of the rink and finally turned his back to us and left to join them.
When Volkov was back in front of the goal, I lined up a series of pucks and hit them one after another as fast as I could, skating up and down, putting everything I had into getting them inside the net.Although I was doing all I could to push everything aside and focus on the ice, alarm bells were blaring.
He knew.
He fuckingknew.
When our allotted hour was up, Volkov beckoned me over. Both of us were breathing hard and sweating from the exertion.
