Chapter 4

Niko's POV

The next day…..

I wore the grey suit because Dmitri begged me to and I was trying, in small ways, to be a person who picked his battles.

Dmitri was waiting outside the building when I pulled up, standing in the cold with his hands in his pockets and he looked like someone who had been sentenced to at least fifty years in prison for being a close associate.

"What are they saying?”

"Patterson is there. Hargrove from disciplinary. League counsel." He fell into step beside me. "And your father."

I stopped walking.

A woman behind me muttered something and went around us.

"How?” I gritted my teeth in anger. “He has no business being here so why the fuck is he here?!”

He had no clue. "I don't know. I found out an hour ago. I tried to call you—"

"I was driving." I looked at the building. Fourteen floors of glass and clean lines and people who made decisions about other people's lives from behind desks. "He called someone on the board."

"We don't know that—"

"Dmitri." I looked at him. "He called someone on the board."

Dmitri said nothing because Dmitri knew I was right and we both knew it and there was nothing useful to add to it.

I straightened my jacket and walked in, preparing myself for this little reunion after a year or two.

The meeting room was on the twelfth floor. There was a long table, a jug of water that was there for decoration and four people who were not happy. and it had the particular quality of a

Patterson sat at the head. Counsel to his left, a woman I didn't know with a laptop open and her fingers already poised. Hargrove at the far end with a folder that had my name on the tab, visible from across the room, which I was certain was intentional.

My father stood at the window, backing me. Viktor Volkov did not sit in rooms until he had established that he owned them. He stood at windows and looked out at cities and waited for people to notice him, and people always noticed him, and he had never once in sixty-one years had to work for that.

He turned when I walked in.

"Nikolai."

"Patterson." I sat down. "Let's get started."

My father moved from the window to the chair beside Hargrove, which put him directly in my eyeline, which was also intentional.

Patterson opened, walking everyone through the clause, the specific language, the footage, the timeline. Counsel read two sections aloud in the flat voice of someone billing by the hour. Hargrove asked whether I had been aware of the filming at the time.

“No, I was too drunk to even know what I was doing.”

He made a note. Patterson asked about the nature of the event, whether it was a sanctioned team function. I said no. Another note.

All this while, my father kept glaring at me and I stared right into his eyes. I wasn't that boy he used to abuse back in the days.

Then my father cleared his throat. "If I may," he said.

Patterson looked at him. "Mr. Volkov."

"I think it's important that the board understands the full context here. My son is an exceptional athlete. His record speaks to that. What the record doesn't reflect is that he has been operating, by choice, without the kind of support structure that would have prevented a situation like this from developing."

"The support structure is sitting next to me," I chipped in. "His name is Dmitri."

My father didn't look at me. "I mean family counsel. The kind of guidance that understands not just the career but the name attached to it. The Volkov name carries weight in this industry and with that comes a responsibility that requires—"

"The Volkov name," I said, "is not what's under review today."

Now he looked at me. "It is always under review, Nikolai. That is something you have never been willing to understand."

"Or something you've never been willing to accept that I don't care about."

Patterson shifted in his seat. My father's expression didn't change but something behind it did, something small and tight. "You should care. The doors that name opened for you—"

"I didn't walk through those doors." I looked at him directly. "I went around the building and found my own."

"And look where that's gotten you." He said it lightly, gesturing at the room. "Sitting in a disciplinary meeting at twenty nine years old because there was no one around you who could tell you when to be careful."

"There were people around me."

"The right people?" He tilted his head. "The people I offered you? The counsel, the management structure, the—"

"The leash," I retorted, the calmness leaving my body. "You offered me a leash. I didn't want it then and I don't want it now."

"Nikolai—"

"I built this." My voice came out louder than I intended. The mere sight of him made me go mad with rage. "Everything in that folder with my name on it, I built. Every contract, every endorsement, every relationship in this league — I went through the proper channels, I took the right meetings, I put in the work and I did not call in a single favor from you or anyone connected to you because I needed it to be mine." I paused. "It is mine. And you sitting in this room does not change that."

"Your sentimentality about independence is very moving," my father said, dry and precise. "It doesn't change the fact that forty-three seconds of footage is currently threatening to undo it."

"Which I am handling."

"You are sitting in a disciplinary hearing."

"Which I would have been sitting in whether you were here or not. The difference is that without you here I would be handling it." I looked at Patterson. "With him here I am managing two problems simultaneously which is not an efficient use of anyone's time."

Patterson opened his mouth. My father stood up.

"I came here because someone on this board had the decency to inform me that my son's career was in jeopardy. I came here because whatever you think of me, Nikolai, I am still your father and I will not sit at home while—"

"While what?" I stood up. "While I handle my own situation? While I sit in a room full of adults and navigate a professional problem like a professional?" I could feel Dmitri beside me going very still. "Or while you use my crisis to walk back into a narrative you've been trying to control since I was eighteen years old?"

"I am trying to help you—"

"You are trying to help yourself." It came out harder than I intended and I didn't take it back. "You have been trying to help yourself since the day I signed my first contract without you. Every time something goes wrong in my career you appear and you call it concern and it has never once been a concern, it has always been an opportunity." I put both hands flat on the table. "So tell me honestly, in this room, in front of these people — are you here for me or are you here because the Volkov name is attached to a headline and you cannot stand that you don't control what happens next?"

The room was absolutely silent.

My father looked at me, I looked back.

Sixty-one years old, silver haired, the most controlled man I had ever known in my life.

"I," he said, very carefully, "have sacrificed more for this family than you will ever have the maturity to appreciate."

"I know you believe that."

"Sit down." Patterson's voice was sharp and final. "Both of you. Now."

Neither of us moved for a moment then I sat and my father grumbled before taking his seat.

Patterson looked between us. "The review period is thirty days," he announced, "During that time we expect demonstrated stability. Public image, conduct, associations. At the end of thirty days this board reconvenes and makes a final determination on the contract." He paused. "Termination remains on the table. I want that to be clear."

"It's clear," I said.

"Good." He stood. "We'll be in touch through your representative." He looked at Dmitri, pointedly, and not at my father.

I shook Patterson's hand, nodded at Hargrove, picked up my jacket and left.

My father said my name in the corridor.

I kept walking until I got into the elevator and the doors closed. Dmitri stood beside me in silence for two floors and then said, very quietly, "For what it's worth. You were right."

I said nothing.

"About all of it," he said. "He had no business being in that room."

The elevator opened onto the lobby.

"Thirty days," I said. "I'm going to fix it."

I walked out into the cold and called no one and drove home in silence and when I got there I sat in the parking garage for five minutes just breathing.

Then I went upstairs.

---

She was in the hallway when I walked in, back to me, phone to her ear, voice low and careful.

"Don't worry about the money Mum. I'm going to sort it. I promise."

She hung up and stood there with her hand flat against the wall and didn't know I was there yet.

I went to the counter and waited.

She turned around and saw me and her face closed like a door.

"Your mum," I said.

"Is fine."

"How much does she need."

She stared at me. "You were listening—"

"How much Zaria."

She told me. Not willingly. But she told me.

I nodded once and reached behind me and slid the folded paper across the counter.

"Read it," I said. "All of it."

She looked at the paper. Looked at me.

Picked it up.