Hockey Hazard: When Desire Crosses the Ice의 모든 챕터: 챕터 91 - 챕터 96

The man from the stands was in the hallway outside Chase’s room the next morning, pretending to read his phone.Chase walked past him without a word. He took the back stairs, crossed the kitchen and went out through the garden door, and when he checked the reflection in the glass, the man was ten paces behind him. Adrian had stopped being subtle. That was almost a relief.It meant the work was reaching something.For two weeks Chase had done what his father had trained him to do his whole life, only in reverse. Follow the money. Every shipment had a payment trail, every payment a shell, every shell a name on a document in some county office. He started with the Voss Foundation and its one patient, protected payment, the same amount every month for nine years, signed off by Adrian himself. He pulled at it at night on a laptop Adrian didn’t know existed. A frozen account here. A misrouted invoice there. Small cuts, none traceable, each leaving a little less of the structure standing.He

Chase didn’t knock.He pushed the study door open hard enough that it struck the stop and shivered back, and he crossed the room before the sound had finished. The lamp was on. The leather folder from the other night lay closed on the desk, and Adrian sat behind it with a glass in his hand, looking at nothing.“You knew where you were sending him.”Adrian didn’t look up. “If you’re here to complain about another assignment, you’re wasting your breath.”“East of Mack. Castellan’s.” Chase’s voice shook, and he hated that it did. He had spent the last eleven minutes in the hall deciding not to shout, and the effort was costing him. “Two guards. Two. You know what that neighborhood is. You know what that crew does to anyone who walks in without an army.”“I’m aware.”“Then you’re doing this deliberately. You’re sending him places you know he can’t survive, just to punish me.”Adrian swirled the whiskey and watched it settle. “You’re giving yourself too much importance.”“Then why make sur

Chase didn’t get up.He sat in the gravel with his back against the car door, one knee drawn up, and watched the place where Noah had been. The drive was empty now. The gates stood open at the far end, and past them there was only dark road and the hum of the trees. His face throbbed in a dozen places. He could taste blood, and he could feel a tooth that wasn’t quite where it had been. None of it registered. He was listening for footsteps and there weren’t any.For the first time, he didn’t look back.He had thought, somewhere in the last couple of months, that he knew what it would feel like to lose Noah. He had been wrong. He’d imagined something loud, a slammed door, a last cruel sentence. He hadn’t imagined the quiet.The front door opened behind him. He heard it the way you hear a thing you’ve been waiting for, and he didn’t turn.His father came down the steps without hurry. The light from the hall fell across the gravel and put a long, tidy shadow across Chase’s lap. For a whil