Page 270 of Slashed Bonds

Two hours on ice nobody had skated, at nine in the morning with the building dark above the boards, and Cassian did what Cassian does. Three laps with his blade dragging. Then three more. Then he stood at center with his stick across his thighs and read the whole sheet like a face, and by ten he had a page in the book that was nothing but the building. The east end goes soft first, by the benches, where the heating duct runs under the stands. The boards behind the west net give too much, a dead spot you’ll lose a hard rim in. The glass in the far corner has a seam at shoulder height that a man could get hurt on.

Nikolai stood in both creases for twenty minutes each and said the west one’s shallower than regulation by a hair, which nobody else on the planet would’ve noticed and which means he’ll want the west end in the third period when it matters.

And I skated to the weak-side dot in both ends and stood there with my eyes shut and found it by feel. Twelve strides from the bench door. Eleven from the far one. Tomorrow I won’t have to look.

Killian spent his two hours at the blue lines. Both of them. Skating the line from board to board at the speed a man chases a lost draw, and stopping, and skating it again, finding the exact place where the ice meets the boards at an angle a shoulder can use. He didn’t say what he was doing. He didn’t have to. By the end he had a mark in his head on the east line, eight feet in from the glass, and when Nikolai asked him what he’d found he’d said a wall, and gone to shower.

Tomorrow’s lineup went up on the whiteboard in Cassian’s room Monday night. Cash, Mori, Dubois. Killian and Okonkwo. Nikolai. Second line the twins and Greenie. And a note under it in red: First draw, Theo breathes through his nose. Second draw, his mouth. Dubois taps on the second. Not the first.

I’m beside Cassian.

His hand’s around my waist, flat on the open part of the dress, warm, and I’m nestled into his side the way I’ve learned to nestle, which is a word I’d have laughed at two months ago. We’re having a conversation of our own. Low, about nothing, about whether the mocktail’s worse than the one at the bar at the Civic, and he’s telling me the one at the Civic was made by a man who hated us personally, and I’m laughing into my glass, and then I feel him change.

Here we go.

His aura. The whole shape of the air around him going from warm to carved in the time it takes a man to cross a ballroom, and I know before I look that someone’s walking toward us whom Cassian knows and wishes he didn’t.

I don’t look.

I stay relaxed. Loose at the shoulders, glass at my lips, borderline nonchalant, because I’ve learned from the best how to be a woman who isn’t paying attention to a room she’s reading. I sip and I watch the man arrive in the edge of my vision.

Older. Sixty, with the kind of tan that comes from a boat. Silver hair, a suit that fits him the way suits fit men who’ve never bought one off a rack, a watch I could’ve sold for the shed. And a face I’ve seen on a plaque in a lobby at Halbrook, bronze, under a name.

“Cassian Vane.”

Warm. The voice of a man who’s used it to close rooms.

“I hope you still remember me. It’s been quite a few years, hasn’t it? I don’t think I’ve seen you since you were a teenager.”

Vance. Naomi’s father. The empire with a subsidiary bleeding out and a daughter who talks to accountants in changing rooms.

“Mr. Vance.”

Cassian says it the way he’d say a score. Professional. Nothing in it a man could hang a complaint on.

I pretend not to follow. I look at the room, at the chandeliers, at Maddie across it in a pink gown she had made to match a color that doesn’t exist in nature, with Greenie beside her in a suit he’s wearing like he lost a bet. I let Vance talk.

And he talks. Investments. Expansion. How his group’s opening up to new sponsors and collaborative partnerships this season, how he’s heard the Vanes are expanding into sports holdings, how intriguing it would be, with the two programs about to meet as rivals on the ice tomorrow, to form a connection off it. Neutral competitors. Hoping to expand and conquer as a unit.

Conquer. He used the word conquer. To the son of the man who put four men in the ground one at a time.

Cassian lets him finish.

Lets him get all the way to the end of the pitch, the whole shape of it, so that there’s nothing left to say, and then he says it.

“Not interested.”

Two words. The way he says hold the lane.

Vance’s smile doesn’t drop. It stiffens, which is worse. He tries again. The advantages. The portfolio. Top of the industry for years, three generations, and now that his daughter’s married to three of the most promising heirs in their respective sectors, the Vane group’s missing a once-in-a-decade opportunity to⁠—

Married. It’s done, then. Viper said they’d be married by the gala and they’re married by the gala. The ink’s dry. She can start.

Something arrives behind me.

Two somethings. On my left, a step back, and I don’t turn my head because I don’t have to. Iron and cold. Rink ice and salt. The two of them standing behind me in suits with actual ties, because Roz said actual ties, close enough that I can feel the heat off both of them on the open part of my back.

And the tension in the circle goes up a full register.