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CHAPTER 31

Auteur: Anna Stac
last update Date de publication: 2026-06-25 00:47:52

Elena's POV

Alexander did not come to the bakery that evening. He had a late practice that ran longer than usual, something about the coach adding extra drills before an important game, and he had texted me twice already to apologize for it, the second message including a small, slightly awkward attempt at a joke about the coach that did not quite land but that I appreciated anyway for the effort behind it.

Miss Clara left at six, the way she always did, calling out a cheerful goodnight a
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  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 37

    Elena's POV I saw him during the second intermission. The entire arena seemed to tilt slightly around the fact of it before I had even fully processed what I was looking at. Damien was sitting in a private box on the far side of the arena, the kind reserved for sponsors and league officials, a glass of something amber in his hand. His attention apparently fixed on the ice below even though play had stopped. He was not looking at me. He did not appear to be looking at anything in particular except the empty rink. But something about the deliberate stillness of him, the way he held himself in that box like he wanted to be noticed without seeming to want anything at all, told me he knew exactly where I was sitting. My smile, which had been easy and unguarded only seconds earlier while Jemima recapped the last goal in exhaustive detail, disappeared so quickly I felt it go. Jemima noticed first, glancing at my face and then following my gaze across the arena. "Oh," she said quie

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 36

    Alexander's POV Carter caught me checking my phone for the third time in the locker room before warmups even started, and he did not bother pretending he had not noticed. "She is not here yet," he said. "The game does not start for another forty minutes. You can stop checking." "I am not checking anything." "You are absolutely checking something." He pulled his jersey over his head, voice muffled for a second before emerging clearer. "You know you have looked at Section 112 six times already since we walked out for warmups." "I have not." "You just did it again." I had not realized I was doing it until he said it out loud. The particular automatic pull of my eyes toward the section where Jemima had told me, with great confidence, that the seats were the best in the building. It was still mostly empty, the arena filling slowly the way it always did before a big game, ushers moving through the aisles, vendors calling out over the rising noise. "It is a big game," I sai

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 35

    Elena's POV Marcus came to the bakery himself the next morning, before Miss Clara had even arrived, and instead of telling me what the new security plan was going to be. He sat down across the small table by the window and asked me what I wanted it to look like. "I want to understand your daily rhythm," he said, notebook open but pen still resting on the page. "Not so I can tell you how to change it. So I can build protection around the life you actually want to keep living." I looked at him for a moment, a little thrown by the question itself, by the simple fact that someone in this entire arrangement was asking rather than deciding. "I want to keep opening at six," I said slowly, testing the words. "I do not want someone standing visibly outside the door all day. It would frighten the customers, and it would make this place feel like something it is not supposed to feel like." "That is fair," Marcus said, writing it down. "We can keep the visible presence light during op

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 34

    Damien's POV Pavel called me a little after nine that night, and the first thing I noticed, before he had even said a full sentence, was the careful neutrality in his voice, the particular flatness of a man delivering news he already knew would not be well received. "It did not go as planned," he said. "What does that mean?" "My man approached her successfully. Delivered the message exactly as discussed. No physical contact, nothing that crosses any line we agreed on." A pause. "But St. James's security responded faster than we accounted for. They had someone at her location within minutes. And St. James himself arrived shortly after that." "So she is frightened," I said. "That was the point." "She is frightened," Pavel agreed. "She is also, as of tonight, surrounded by a security response that has clearly been completely overhauled. My contact inside their rotation tells me the gap we identified no longer exists. They closed it within hours." I sat with that for a mom

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 33

    Elena's POV We did not talk in the car. Alexander said he wanted to tell me everything properly, sitting down, not rushed, not half explained in the back of a security vehicle with Marcus politely pretending not to listen from the front seat. We went to his apartment instead, and he made tea, the same careful, deliberate gesture he had made the night of the envelope. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table while the city settled into its late evening quiet outside the window. "Two nights ago," he said, "Marcus told me Damien met with someone privately. The person was wearing a mask. Not a disguise. An actual mask, plain, featureless, deliberate. Whoever it is wanted to stay completely unknown, even to the people being paid to keep secrets." I sat very still, my tea going untouched in my hands. "I did not tell you," he continued, "because I did not have anything solid yet. A mask and a feeling, nothing more. I told myself there was no point frightening you over s

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 32

    Alexander's POV I was still on the ice, going through the last set of drills before the coach finally called practice, when my phone buzzed against the bench where I had left it. Three missed calls already stacked up by the time I reached it. Elena. I called back before I had even finished pulling off my gloves, my heart already moving faster than the skating had managed to make it. She answered on the first ring, her voice shaking in a way I had not heard from her in weeks, not since the night of the envelope on her pillow. "Elena. What happened?" "A man," she said, the words coming out fast and a little broken. "On the street, near the bakery. He knew my name. He said Damien sent him. He knew about the security gap, Alexander. He knew exactly when no one is watching." My blood went cold, the rink and the locker room and everything else falling away entirely. "Are you hurt?" I asked, already moving, already grabbing my bag, skates still on, not caring how strange I

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 14

    Elena's POV I did not touch it for a full minute. I just stood at the edge of the bed and stared at the white envelope, my name written in dark precise ink. The neat handwriting I had spent five years watching sign documents and leave notes and scrawl reminders on the kitchen calendar. Someone

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   Chapter 13

    Elena's POV I did not sleep just lay in the dark with the city glowing faintly through the curtains and I turned Alexander's words over and over in my mind until they stopped sounding like words and started sounding like the ground shifting beneath everything I thought I understood. His brother D

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 12

    Alexander's POV I saw the photo at six fifty-three in the evening. Elena forwarded it to me without a message attached, just the image, and I looked at it for exactly three seconds before I called Marcus. Marcus picked up on the second ring, which meant he had been expecting my call. "I a

  • My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc   CHAPTER 11

    Elena's POVThe photos were everywhere by Monday morning.I saw them first on my phone when I woke up at six and made the mistake of opening the news app I had downloaded out of habit. There we were, Alexander and I, splashed across every entertainment and sports page in the country. Some shots were

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