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Chapter 74 — The Price of Loyalty

مؤلف: Rovelt Vell
last update تاريخ النشر: 2026-09-06 00:17:26

SKY’S POV

Reyes called with an update on Marty two days later, frustration in his voice that told me before he said anything that the trail wasn’t moving in the direction we’d hoped.

“Talked to a contact in HR,” he said. “Marty’s access request checked out on paper. Said he was cross-referencing old road trip costs for a budget review. There’s actually a budget review happening. It’s real.”

“So the message I saw could have been about something else entirely.”

“Could have been. Or could hav
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  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 88 — The File

    SKY’S POV Amira stared at the scanned page for a long time after the initial shock passed, her clinical instincts visibly reasserting themselves even through the fear. “This is confidential material,” she said finally, her voice steadier than her hands. “Internal case documentation. This specific page never should have existed outside the original organization’s secure files.” “Who would have had access to it?” “A small circle. My direct supervisor at the time. The HR director who oversaw the internal review. Legal counsel involved in the investigation. Beyond that, almost nobody.” She turned the phone over in her hands, studying it like it might reveal something new on a second look. “This isn’t something anyone could simply find. Someone had to actually go looking for it, specifically, years after it stopped being relevant to anything.” • “Could Marcus have obtained this?” I asked. “Through some connection to your old organization?” “I don’t know. I don’t want to accuse him

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 87 — Why She Was Afraid of Sky

    SKY’S POV “I need to tell you something else,” Amira said, a few nights after the conversation about her old case, the two of us sitting together on my balcony again, the city quiet below us in a way that felt, briefly, unconnected to everything threatening us. “About why I was so afraid of this. Of us. From the very beginning.” “I thought we’d covered that. The old case, the risk to your career.” “That’s part of it. There’s a piece underneath it I haven’t said out loud yet, not even to myself in quite these words.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, small and unguarded in the posture. “I was afraid of becoming attached to you specifically, Sky. Not because I didn’t care. Because I cared too much, too fast, in a way that terrified me more than any professional risk ever could.” • “What do you mean?” “You reminded me of Daniel,” she said. “Not in obvious ways. In the specific shape of how you carried your pain, how carefully you’d learned to hide it, how much effort went int

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 86 — The Betrayal

    SKY’S POV Amira brought it up again the next evening, unprompted, something clearly still sitting unfinished in her from the previous night’s conversation. “I don’t think I told you everything,” she said, settling onto my couch, a folder in her hands I hadn’t seen before. “About how they actually built the case against me. I gave you the outline. I don’t think I gave you the mechanics.” “You don’t owe me every detail.” “I know. I want you to have them anyway. I think it matters, given everything we’re currently facing.” She opened the folder, revealing printed pages, some clearly old, yellowed slightly at the edges. “I kept copies. Everything I submitted, everything they used against me. I’ve never shown anyone outside June.” • She walked me through it carefully, page by page, the actual mechanics of what had happened laid out with the same precision she brought to everything else. “Here,” she said, pointing to a memo dated months before the athlete’s public breakdown. “My ini

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 85 — The Athlete Before Sky

    SKY’S POV “There’s one more thing,” Amira said, almost a week later, the two of us back on my balcony, something different in her posture that told me before she spoke that this conversation would cost her more than the previous ones combined. “The case. The one I’ve mentioned before, in passing, without ever actually telling you what happened.” “You don’t have to tell me if it’s still too raw.” “I want to. Especially now, given everything else we’ve already shared.” She wrapped her hands around her mug, steadying herself. “You deserve to understand exactly what shaped my caution, before either of us started this. Why I fought so hard against what was developing between us, even after I knew I’d already lost that particular fight.” • “Several years ago,” she began, “before I joined your organization, I worked with a different athlete. Extremely talented. Football, not hockey, but the pressures translate similarly across most elite sports. He was young, early in a promising caree

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 84 — Why She Became a Psychologist

    SKY’S POV “I want to tell you how I actually became a psychologist,” Amira said, a few nights later, the two of us in her apartment this time, dinner finished, the dishes still sitting unwashed in the sink because neither of us wanted to interrupt whatever this conversation was becoming. “I thought Daniel was the answer to that.” “He’s the beginning of the answer. There’s more underneath it, though. The specific shape my career actually took, once I understood what I wanted to spend my life doing.” • She told me about university, about choosing psychology almost by instinct, without a fully formed plan yet for what specialty she might eventually pursue. “I took a sports psychology elective almost by accident,” she said. “Figured it might help me understand what had happened to Daniel, even years later. I didn’t expect it to become the entire direction of my career.” “What changed?” “I started reading case studies. Athletes who’d been praised for exactly the kind of composure

  • Behind the Ice Wall    Chapter 83 — The Dream He Lost

    SKY’S POV She continued the story two nights later, unprompted, the two of us sitting on my balcony with the city lights spread out below us, the open air making the conversation feel less confined than it might have inside. “I keep thinking about what you asked me,” she said. “About Daniel’s career, and how it actually ended. I don’t think I gave you the full picture. Just the outline.” “You don’t have to fill in every detail if it’s too much.” “I want to, actually. I think I’ve spent so long summarizing that story to myself that I’ve forgotten how much it actually cost, watching it happen in real time.” • She told me about the year after the tournament that broke him, the slow unraveling that followed rather than any single dramatic ending. “Coaches kept pushing,” she said. “Told him he needed to toughen up, told him other athletes managed pressure without falling apart the way he had. My father agreed with all of it. Reinforced it, actually, every time Daniel came home from

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