Glancing over at Ryker as we filed into the Whelford rink with our teammates, I steeled myself. He wouldn’t want to talk about it—he never did, but I had to try.
“How are you doing? Really?”
He stared straight ahead, refusing to look at me. “Good.”
“What happened with the guy?” Ry had left me with Dan after my dad had checked him over, refusing to let anyone else handle the process of getting information from the guy. All I knew was that he was definitely involved with the Volkovs.
“Not here.” A muscle ticked in his jaw.
Glancing around us, I beckoned him closer. “Come with me.” Instead of following the rest of the team to the locker rooms, I headed to the left, where stairs led to a mezzanine floor with a large seating area and a stand selling pizza and hot dogs. The stand opened an hour before face-off, so right now, we shouldn’t be disturbed.
I wasn’t sure if Ryker was even going to follow me, but I heard the soft tread of his footsteps on the metal stairs as Imade my way up to the mezzanine. When I pulled out one of the chairs at the little bistro-style tables, he dropped onto the seat opposite me.
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what happened.” He’d been quiet and withdrawn all day, the dark circles beneath his eyes even more pronounced than usual, taking on a bluish tinge. If there were a way I could help lighten his burden, I would. It was difficult without Dan here. I guess I’d taken for granted just how much his upbeat personality lifted all our moods. But since he was on bed rest today at my dad’s recommendation, it was down to me to do what I could for Ryker.
“I did what I had to,” Ryker said eventually. “You want the gory details?”
“I want to know how I can help.”
He huffed out a breath. “You’re not my fucking therapist, and you have your own shit to deal with.”
“Keeping everything to yourself isn’t working because you look like shit,” I snapped.Fuck. That was not the way to get through to him. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “Sorry, mate. I just want to help you out. You know, you’ve been helping me out investigating all this stuff for my family. Let me help you out.”
“I don’t need any help,” he ground out. “I’m gonna be the leader of the syndicate one day, and like my dad always tells me, you can’t rely on anyone else. You can’t trust anyone else to know what to do. When you’re the head of the operation, you have to get used to making the hard decisions, to know what’s best for you and for everyone else. You can’t pass shit on to other people just because you’re having a bit of a hard time dealing with some aspects of the job.”
If that was what Ryker truly thought, then Guillotine Graham was an asshole.
“Yeah, but Desmond’s his right-hand man, so he’s not making the decisions on his own.”
Ryker rapped his knuckles on the table, making it judder beneath my elbows. “No. He’ll listen to Des, but if he doesn’t agree with him, there’s nothing anyone can do to change his mind.”
“You’re not your dad,” I pointed out. “You don’t have to be the same way as him.”
He laughed humourlessly. “Try telling him that.”
We fell silent, and I shifted in my seat, trying to think of a way I could get him to confide in me. “Ryker. Just talk to me. If you don’t want any advice, that’s fine. Just don’t keep it all inside.” The silence stretched. I watched him as he stared down at the table, his body a stiff, hostile line. “Please. C’mon, Ry.”
I held my position, waiting him out, and eventually, it paid off. “Fucking fine. I’ll talk if it gets you off my fucking back,” he muttered. “Look. I did what I had to do to get the man to talk. Did I like the methods I had to use? No. Do I wanna talk about them? Fuck, no. Just know I took a leaf out of Daddy Thorpe’s playbook, like a good little son. Our captive refused to speak until I employed some of the tools from the Thorpe arsenal.” For the first time today, the emptiness in his eyes was replaced with a spark of…something. Surely not enjoyment? My mind flashed back to the dinner at Thorpe Manor, when he’d chopped that traitor’s finger off without hesitation.
“That doesn’t explain everything,” I said, pushing that disturbing thought aside. “You’ve been stressed, and I know you’ve been dealing with all that shit at the port?—”
“It’s not just that, okay? We’ve had lorries sabotaged.Someone’s targeting us, and I don’t know who or why. It makes no sense that it would be the Volkovs, because everything connected to the sabotage involves Volkov products. According to my dad, the Volkovs are starting to get suspicious of us, thinking we’re purposely sabotaging their shit. That makes no sense, either. Why the fuck would we do that, when we’ve been working on a deal with them for so long?” He took a breath, his fists clenching and unclenching on the table. “And I fucking hate that I can’t do anything for Nova. I did everything I could, fucking threw myself at my dad’s mercy, and the only thing I could get him to agree to was the option for a divorce after she gives Anton a Volkov heir. It’s not enough.”
My stomach churned. “Yeah…it’s not. I hate it. I wish we could do something else. How did you even manage to persuade your dad to amend the contract in the first place?”
He shut down. Instantly. His entire body went unnaturally still, his face a blank mask. “I did what I had to,” he said in a toneless voice. “Talking about it is a hard limit.”
Fucking hell. “Okay, okay. I won’t. Look, going back to the other stuff you’ve said. Let’s think about how we can deal with that. The meeting tonight might give us some answers. If not, I promise I’ll help you work something out, okay? Me and Dan both will. You’re not on your own in this.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
I opened my mouth to reassure him again, but the sound of feet on the stairs cut me off. We exchanged glances in wordless communication, rising to our feet. It was time to rejoin our teammates.
As we reached the top of the stairs, one of the rink employees appeared, followed by Lincoln Bellingham, of all people, carrying a set of cardboard boxes stacked precariously on top of each other.
When he saw us, his eyes narrowed.“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the game?”
