LOGINElena Brooks gave five years of her life to Damien Volkov — the golden king of professional hockey, the man the world worshipped, and the husband who never truly loved her back. But the night she catches Damien in bed with the woman he claimed was his cousin, something inside Elena finally breaks. Heartbroken and secretly pregnant with his child, she walks away from her marriage with one vow: no more hockey players. No more love. No more chances to be destroyed by a man who only knows how to hurt her. Then Alexander St. James crashes into her life. Cold. Ruthless. Intimidatingly powerful. As the captain of the New York Blades — and Damien’s biggest rival on the ice — Alexander is everything Elena should avoid. But when he saves her from a dangerous attack, he offers her a deal that feels impossible to refuse: Pretend to be his fiancée, and in return, he’ll help her make Damien regret betraying her. It was supposed to be simple. Fake smiles. Public kisses. A calculated revenge plan. Until Alexander starts looking at her like she’s something precious. Until his touch begins to feel dangerously real. Until Elena discovers the heartbreaking reason he needed a fake fiancée in the first place. And just when she begins falling for the one man she promised herself she’d never want… Damien discovers she’s carrying his baby. Now the husband who neglected her for years is ready to burn the world down to get her back. Caught between a possessive ex-husband and the man slowly stealing her heart, Elena must decide if love is worth risking everything for again — or if some hockey players are destined to break her forever.
View MoreElena's POV
I sat in the quiet room of the hospital, the strong smell of antiseptic filling my nostrils as I clutched the paper in my hands. My heart pounded against my chest as I stared at the results.
The test I had taken a few days ago when I peed on the stick, had confirmed it, but seeing the doctor's official confirmation made it all real.
I was pregnant. The doctor said I was really four weeks gone.
A mixture of emotions twisted inside me— excitement, happiness, and relief. I ran my hand over my flat stomach, a life was really growing inside me. I was carrying Damien's baby.
Damien Volkov. The captain of Boston Wolves. Hockey's golden boy. One of the nation's most loved hockey stars.
And I was now the mother of his child. The thought made my heart swell with joy. This news could change everything.
If he found out that his child was growing inside me, maybe Damien would finally look at me. Maybe he would finally love me as his wife Maybe he would finally be proud enough to show me off to the public as NHL's Damien Volkov's wife.
I imagined his reaction when I told him the news. His eyes would light up happily. He would touch my stomach with so much love in his eyes. He would be so proud that he, one of the most talented hockey stars NHL had ever produced, was about to be a father.
And I was the one giving him that gift.
For the first time in weeks, I smiled genuinely and happily.
As I left the hospital, the weather felt warm and beautiful. Things were finally going my way. I had been worried about our marriage, the way things had turned upside down since Georgina returned.
But this baby would change everything. And I couldn't wait to tell him.
By the time I walked through the door of our luxurious mansion, a hockey game replay was showing on TV. Damien was sitting by the bar in the living room, his back facing me as he remained deep in a conversation on the phone. His voice was so low that I could barely hear what he was saying, but it seemed serious.
I approached with a soft smile on my face, my hand was already inside my handbag, ready to bring out the envelope.
"Damien?" I called softly.
He held up a hand, signaling for me to wait without sparing me a glance. "Let me call you back," he muttered into the phone. He hung up and finally turned toward me, the expression on his face cold.
"What is it, Elena? Can't you see I'm on an important call?"
I wavered for a moment, my excitement reducing slightly. But I summoned my courage and stepped closer.
"I have some news to share with you," I said quietly.
He frowned, his gaze faltering to my hand fidgeting inside my bag. "Okay?"
Just as I opened my mouth to tell Damien that I was four weeks pregnant, his phone rang again, drowning out my voice. He glanced at the screen. And I saw his face light up. He stood abruptly and without a word to me, he grabbed his phone and started heading out.
I stood there, confused for a second before calling after him. "Damien, I said I have news for you. Just give me a minute to—"
"I have somewhere important to be right now, Elena," he managed to say without looking back at me.
Frustration was already bubbling inside me. "Where are you going?" I asked weakly.
But he didn't answer. He didn't even ask why I wanted to talk. He just left.
I stood there, the envelope containing my pregnancy test result already out of my handbag and clutched tightly in my hand. My chest tightened with the familiar feeling of being ignored.
This had been going on for years. Yet somehow, I still couldn't get used to it.
I couldn't even get to tell him he was going to be a father because he left me standing there like a fool. But I knew where he had gone. Or rather, who he had gone to.
Georgina. It was no other than Georgina.
She had relocated from Toronto a few months ago, and my life had never remained the same. My husband went from saying a few words to me to not even coming home for days.
First, she always needed help with one thing or another because she was "new" here. Then suddenly she started falling sick. Georgina had suffered one illness per week over the past month.
She took over our lives with her presence, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had no choice but to be accommodating because Damien said she was his cousin.
I sat down on the couch defeatedly. This pregnancy news was supposed to be the best news for Damien and me. I was supposed to be happy. I was supposed to be excited. But how could I be when my husband wouldn't even spare me a moment of his time?
An hour passed. Then two. Then three hours and I sat in silence, waiting for him to come back. Waiting for a chance to finally share the news. Waiting for the moment he would look at me and see me.
But he never returned. The house remained painfully quiet.
The television continued playing in the background, but I wasn't really watching it. My mind kept replaying the moment his face lit up when he saw whoever was calling him. The way he looked excited, the urgency on his face. The way he had immediately left. But he would never do that for me.
I couldn't recall the last time he looked at me with any other look, except from his usual blank, bored expression.
I lowered my gaze to the envelope still resting in my hands. Only a few hours ago, I had walked out of the hospital feeling like the luckiest woman in the world. I had imagined Damien smiling, hugging me and finally choosing me.
The happiness I had felt earlier slowly faded, replaced by a familiar ache. The same ache I had carried throughout our marriage, the ache of never being enough.
But still, I waited, because that's what I always did. I waited for Damien, his attention, his affection. I waited for him to choose me.
But instead, my phone suddenly buzzed inside my handbag. I quickly pulled it out and unlocked the screen. My heart sank the second I saw the message from Damien.
"It's Georgina. Come to the hospital now!"
My stomach turned violently. Georgina again.
Elena's POV I woke up to sunlight and Alexander's arm across my waist and the smell of coffee already brewing somewhere in the apartment. For a moment I just lay there. No phone. No Patricia. No court filings or league reviews or anonymous messages or the particular tight anxiety that had been the first thing I felt every morning for longer than I wanted to count. Just sunlight. His arm. Coffee. I could hear him breathing, slow and even, still asleep, which was rare enough that I did not move. Alexander did not sleep easily or deeply or for long. I had learned that early. So I stayed still and watched the light move across the ceiling and listened to the city starting its morning outside the window and felt, with a completeness that was almost startling, entirely at peace. His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He was awake before the second buzz, the way he always was, some internal alarm that never fully switched off even in sleep. He reached for it without sitting up, read the
Elena's POV He walked through the bakery door at six fifteen and I knew immediately that the league office had not been kind. Not because he looked broken. Alexander never looked broken. It was subtler than that. The way he carried himself was the same as always, straight and controlled, but something behind his eyes was doing the work of holding everything together that his posture usually did automatically, and after months of learning the private version of his face I could see exactly what it was costing him. I did not say anything. I just looked at him from behind the counter and let him come in. Miss Clara appeared from the kitchen, read the room in approximately one second, untied her apron, hung it on the hook by the door, picked up her bag, and said, "I will see you both tomorrow," without breaking stride. The front door closed behind her with a soft click. Just like that it was only the two of us. "Sit down," I said. "I am fine." "I did not ask if you were fine," I
Elena's POV The news broke on a Thursday morning. I was behind the counter at Clara's, elbow deep in the second batch of cinnamon rolls, when Miss Clara turned up the small television she kept in the back office during busy mornings and called out to me in a voice that had lost all of its usual warmth. "Elena. Come here." I came around the counter still dusting flour from my hands. On the screen, a sports journalist I vaguely recognized was reading from a prepared statement, the ticker at the bottom scrolling the same words over and over. DAMIEN VOLKOV FILES FORMAL COMPLAINT AGAINST ALEXANDER ST. JAMES. ALLEGES MATCH FIXING AND BRIBERY OF LEAGUE OFFICIALS. I stood there and read it three times. "That is a lie," I said. My voice came out flat. "I know it is a lie," Miss Clara said, very quietly. I reached for my phone. Alexander had already texted, one message, sent four minutes ago. "I know. Do not panic. I am handling it." I typed back immediately. "Where are you?" "Lea
Damien's POV I got the call on a Tuesday. Not from Pavel. Not from my lawyers. From a number I did not recognize, which I should not have answered, and which I answered anyway because something in me already knew who it was. "They have a name," the masked voice said. No greeting. No preamble. My chest tightened. "What name?" "Victor Rowe. St. James's people identified him yesterday. They are running a full trace on his finances as we speak." I said nothing for a moment. The name meant nothing to me. But the fact that the figure knew exactly what St. James's security team was doing, in real time, meant something very significant. "How do you know what his team is running?" I asked. A pause. The deliberate kind. "That is not your concern," the voice said. "It absolutely is my concern," I said. "If you have a source inside his operation—" "I said it is not your concern." The flatness of it stopped me cold. There was something different tonight. Less of the careful, patient c
Elena's POVI said no.I went home that night, lay on my thin mattress in my small Millbrook apartment, stared at the water-stained ceiling, and talked myself out of it.Because it was crazy. The whole thing was crazy. Pretending to be engaged to Alexander St. James? A man I didn't know? A man whos
Elena's POVHe caught me before I hit the ground.One second I was standing, the next my knees folded completely and his arm came around me so fast it barely felt real. He steadied me against the wall with a firm but careful grip, and then he just held me there, not saying anything, not rushing me,
Elena's povThree days.That was how long I stayed in that house after I asked for a divorce. Three of the longest, most suffocating days of my life.Damien and I didn't speak. We moved around each other like strangers who happened to share the same walls. He left early. He came back late. Sometime
Elena's POVThe word hung in the air between us.Divorce.I had said it. Actually said it. Out loud to his face.And for a long, terrifying second, Damien just stared at me. Like the word didn't compute. Like his brain needed extra time to process the fact that his quiet, patient, always-waiting wi












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