Page 53 of Diary of a Mafia Princess

I squinted at Luca. “Okay, genius. You just fired the coaches. Now what the hell are you going to do?”

“Hire new ones.”

“Great plan! Who?”

He turned to me. “I was thinking you, actually.”

Nyah’s eyebrows shot up so high they were practically in her hairline.

I suspected mine were the same. I laughed. “You want me to coach your hockey team?”

Luca looked me dead in the eye. “I did a bit of research after you said you used to play. Took me a bit, because you didn’t go by Lynx back then. But it was easy enough to find your legal name since you’re on my father’s payroll.” He winked at me. “I’d go by Lynx too, if my name was Torin Cross, by the way.”

I flipped him the bird. “Fuck you.”

He ignored me like I hadn’t even spoken. “Turns out that back in the day, you were quite the hockey superstar. Destined for the pros, they said. You had sponsorship deals on the table and recruiters up your ass until…”

Until I’d fucked the entire thing up.

I didn’t need reminding. “And then I spent ten years in prison and haven’t touched a puck since.” That wasn’t quite true, but knocking around a puck in the Slayers’ parking lot hardly counted as getting back in the game. “And even if I had, even if I was still well practiced, what the fuck do I know about coaching?”

“More than I do,” Luca said, without so much as a waver in his voice. “More than those two chumps who couldn’t even coach the team out of a paper bag.”

I shook my head. “I already have a job. So thanks, but no thanks.”

But Luca was staring at me like he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “So now you have two jobs. Work it out.”

I shook my head.

Luca’s brown-eyed gaze didn’t falter. “Are you seriously telling me that I’m offering you this team on a silver fucking platter, and you’re going to turn it down?”

“You’re only offering it because you’re desperate.”

Luca took a step closer. We were almost identical heights, though I was a hell of a lot bulkier than he was. Not that he wasn’t fit, he was just leaner than I was. I was all too aware of exactly how his body looked in that suit because I’d barely stopped staring at him all day.

And he knew it. “Or maybe I’m offering it to you because I think you have the skills to be good at it. Do you know how much hockey Coach Buckle has played?”

I didn’t say anything because we both knew I didn’t.

Luca answered for me. “None. He coached his kid’s team twenty years ago and then just kept coaching, even when the kid quit playing. Got decent enough at it to turn it into a job. But he can’t even skate, from what my sources told me.”

Well, that was pretty fucking sad. But not entirely surprising either. Saint View didn’t exactly attract a ton of talent. Anyone who had even a scrap of it got the hell out as early as they could.

“Just because I played, doesn’t mean I can teach,” I protested.

Luca’s gaze felt like it pierced right into my fucking soul when he said, “If you don’t want to try, I’ll hire someone else.”

And I found myself blurting out, “No. I’ll do it.”

Luca grinned and slapped me on the back. “Thought you might. Let’s go meet our new team, shall we?”

He strode away, clapping his hands to get the attention of the players on the ice.

I glanced over at Nyah. “Why do I feel like I just got played?”

She laughed and tucked her arm into mine. “You probably did. Or…”

“Or what?”