Chapter 3: The King's Shadow

POV: Sloane

I could keep hearing the sound of the deadbolt long after Roman had gone out of my office. My hands were shaking. I hated it. I flattened my palms on the chill metal desk, and made my breathing so slow and regular: One, two, thirty. I was a professional. I had dealt with senators who would be charged with manslaughter and CEOs who made millions embezzled. I never broke.

But Roman Thorne was neither a politician. He was a landslide.

I put my hand into my leather tote bag, drew my laptop out, and got my fingers flat. I had work to do. To get the Thorne syndicate dismantled, I did not only require the level of gut feeling and leaked videos. I needed the digital trail.

The next thing I did was to install the mirrored server which I would use to replicate the hard drives in the athletic department. Formally, I was to do PR leaks monitoring of the player communications. I was, in fact, looking after the ledger which attached the ticket sale of the Ice Devils to offshore accounts of the Thorne family.

There was a rhythmic thudding in the passage and it was sharp. Thump. Thump. Thump. It was as though a big bag were being kicked--or a body.

I got to my feet with my heart slowly scuttling back up into my throat, and opened my office door. It was a dark corridor with used industrial lamps. The rink was directed by sound.

The arena ought to have been deserted. The rest of the team was clearing out at my direction, yet Roman failed to do so. He wore no more than his hockey pants, and a thin grey compression shirt, which clasped on the sticky sweaty muscles of his back like a second skin.

He wasn’t running drills. He was venting.

He threw a puck into the goal where no one was; his ball had a dreadful velocity; it struck the back board with a report like a gun firing. Crack. He didn’t stop. He got another puck and twisted around and fired another slap-shot. Crack again.

He was a robot of sheer aggression without any mix.

I ought to have returned into the house. I would have shut the door and concentrated my code. I was walking in the direction of the glass, however, attracted by the violence of his movements. His movements were as unnaturally gracious as in a man of his bulk, an animal, a fighter who was perfectly familiar with the amount of effort required to break a man.

He was paralyzed with a stiffening of the shoulders. He did not turn but his presence was there in the room.

It was late, Ms. Mercer, you are working late, he shouted. His voice was light and easily transported to the starving open arena.

There is plenty of mess that I have to clean up, I said, going to the glass.

Roman swiveled round, puffing; a fine mist of sweat surged up of his flesh to the cold air. Skating to the boards, he literally sank in the ice, his skates cutting deep, till he was just in front of me, with only the hard acrylic pane between us.

He was glancing at the bag of the laptop that was hanging on my shoulder. His eyes were glittering and dark and knowing.

You mean by it that, said he, as leaning on his stick. “Cleaning?”

That is what the university works me hard on.

And why do I pay you, Sloane?

The application of my first name was felt as touching. I adjusted my blazer, repossessed my mask. “You don’t pay me at all, Roman. You are simply my liability that I have to deal with.

He chuckled, a low, dry sound. He grabbed him by the hand, which was in a glove, and battered the glass directly over my face.

The liabilities tend to be swept under the carpet. In the shadows, in a place where they can do no harm to the brand, he said. He even leaned forward and his dark hair swept over his forehead. “But you keep looking at me. When your mind is telling me that you do not see me. You are in lust over the monster, are you?

I hissed I was studying a client. “There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

He thrust his stick over the boards, leaped over the glass in one sweeping, strong movement. He fell on the concrete next to me, and it was the skates that glamour. and he was a foot taller than I, and his shadow gulp my whole.

I again recoiled at his smell, which was breaths of ice, sweat and black mint.

He moved nearer pushing me against the glass that was cold. It was appalling the difference between my prim and costly wool coat and his hot and radiating chest. His physical presence was an assault although he did not use his hands. His mouth was half an inch away, his mouth brushing the delicate skin just over my neck.

You are so clean, Sloane, said the voice in his whisper, and I knew that it was the voice I heard in my bones. “So untouchable. I wonder what it would be to make you scream. To have that pretty little mask of yours break in bits a thousand.

My breath hitched. I was a maniac with a heart in a cage. I should have pushed him away. I ought to have threatened him an action. But the overwhelming strength of him was keeping me there.

You are overdoing it, Roman, I managed to tell him, but my voice was not as strong as usual.

You have not even begun, he croaked. His thick, taped fingers were reaching out, and slowly rolling along the line of my throat, just above the collar of my blouse, as he came to rest. It was a light touch, however, in foreshadowing a violence with which I was not certain I could try. “You want to play the hero? You wish you should save the girls of Briarwood, out of the big, ugly Devils?

He moved closer still one more time, and the lips touched the shell of my ear.

Flee when thou exporest have sweetheart, run. Because if you stay... I will find out all the dark, dirty secrets you have in store, and then I will possess you.

He leaned back sharp and the chill air swatched over the spot he had filled. He didn't wait for a reply. Then he passed me and was headed to the locker room, his skates clacking rhythmically and violently against the concrete floor.

I was standing too long and it was cold in the arena and at last it came through my clothing. I glanced at my cell phone, and found a text message sent by one of my personal contacts in the Organized Crime Task Force.

The contact informs that Thorne family is coming in with a shipment at midnight through the loading dock of the arena. Can you keep an eye on it?

I looked around at the ice that was left, and turned around to where Roman had buried into the forest. I could still feel him humming against my body- a traitorious response that I was not ready to admit.

The stream of this game was shifting, and was soon to guide me to know how deep the water really was.

Roman is establishing his ground yet Sloane is still in possession of the knife. Who will draw the first blood?