All Chapters of Playing Pretend With The Mafia Hockey Star : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

58 Chapters

011: NDA

Yara’s POVA sharp, rhythmic knocking pulled me out of a heavy, dreamless sleep.I blinked against the sudden glare of morning sunlight pouring through the floor to ceiling windows. For a fleeting five seconds, my mind was completely blank. I felt strangely refreshed. My body didn't ache, the sheets beneath me were impossibly soft, and the crushing weight that had been sitting on my chest for the last twenty four hours seemed to have vanished.Then I saw the gray stone walls, the minimalist black furniture, and the two plastic trash bags sitting by the door.The reality of the previous night hit me like a physical blow to the stomach. The ballroom. Jeriah’s betrayal. The parking lot. The blood on the asphalt. Mikhail Volkov looking at me like I was a cockroach under his expensive leather shoe.I groaned loudly, burying my face back into the oversized pillow. I stretched my limbs, my muscles tight from sleeping in a strange bed.The knocking came again, louder this time.“Hey...law gir

012: PAPARAZZI PT 2

YARA POVTen minutes later, I was sitting in the back of the heavy black SUV again. The drive through Manhattan was tense. Kieran sat on the opposite side of the leather seat, staring at his phone, completely ignoring my presence. When the vehicle pulled up to the private VIP entrance of the hockey facility, he finally looked at me.“Two hours, Yara,” he warned, his voice low and dangerous. “If you play games, Pavel will drag you back here by your hair.”“I’m not an idiot, Volkov,” I snapped.He let out a short, dry sound that might have been a laugh, then stepped out of the SUV, slamming the door behind him. Pavel immediately pulled away from the curb, navigating through the heavy city traffic toward Tessa’s small apartment building in Queens.The moment Pavel parked on the narrow street, I practically ran out of the car and up the concrete steps to Tessa’s second floor unit.When she opened the door, she looked like she hadn't slept at all. Her hair was a messy knot, and she was clu

013: A PLUS SIZE NOBODY!!

Yara’s POVThe silence inside the car was suffocating. Kieran didn't ease his foot off the gas until we hit the expressway, weaving through the traffic with a cold, aggressive precision. His jaw remained locked, a hard muscle twitching near his ear.I clamped my hands around the seatbelt strap, my fingers still shaking from the camera flashes. My vision was swimming with purple spots.“Where was Pavel?” I demanded, turning my head to face him. My voice sounded thin, scraped raw by the panic. “You said he would be waiting outside the building. He wasn't there. If he had been outside like you promised, those vultures wouldn't have cornered me like that.”Kieran didn't look at me instead he kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, his large hands guiding the car with dangerous speed. “Pavel doesn't miss appointments..something must have happened.”He reached over to the dashboard console, tapping a button on the integrated screen. The call connected instantly on the first ring, filling the

014: WORK WORK WORK

Yara’s POVKieran didn't wait for Jeriah to respond. He tapped the red icon on the screen, cutting the line instantly, and tossed my phone back onto the mattress…The silence that returned to the guest room was completely different from before. It was heavy, suffocating, and packed with the remnants of Jeriah’s venomous insults.Kieran stood tall in the center of the small space, his massive frame blocking the light from the hallway. He looked down at me, his icy blue eyes fixed entirely on my face. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders rigid under his black shirt.“Why did you let him talk to you like that?” he asked, his voice flat, completely devoid of any softness. “You stood there holding the phone to your ear while he called you a bitch and threatened your career. You signed a contract with the Volkov family this morning Yara... You are under my roof, allowing a low level athlete to scream at you makes you look weak, which means it makes me look weak.”The co

015: SNEAKY GRAVES

Yara's POV"Is that really her?"The whisper wasn't even subtle. It came from the front reception desk the exact second the glass doors clicked shut behind me.I kept my eyes straight ahead, my grip tightening on the strap of my handbag as I walked into the lobby of Greystone Legal Associates. Usually..I was entirely invisible in this building. I was the assistant who arrived early, made the coffee, carried the heavy boxes of old case files, and spent eight hours typing up transcripts for seventy dollars a day.Today, the entire floor had stopped moving.Chloe, the receptionist who usually didn't look up from her TikTok feed long enough to acknowledge my existence, was staring at me with her mouth slightly open, two junior associates standing by the water cooler stopped mid sentence, their eyes tracking me as I walked past."Look at her face," someone whispered from a cubicle to my left. "It’s definitely the girl from the Daily Dirt.""How did she land Kieran Volkov? I thought she was

016: HER

Kieran's POV"You're late," Alex Cowell said the second I walked into the locker room.He was sitting on the wooden bench, his hockey skates already laced up, adjusting the tape around the handle of his stick. Alex had been my teammate for six years and my best friend since we were training in the minor leagues…he is practical, loyal, and the only person outside of my family who knew exactly how much blood was on the Volkov name. He didn't care about the mafia side of my life, but he cared deeply about the hockey side.I didn't answer him. I walked over to my locker, pulling off my sports sweater and tossing it onto the bench."The coach was throwing a fit during the strategy meeting," Alex continued, his tone conversational but his eyes sharp as he watched me. "He said the captain missing the final twenty minutes of a defensive review is a bad look for the rookies. Especially with the season opener coming up soon.""I had an important issue to handle," I said flatly, pulling my pads

017: TEAM DINNER

Yara's POV By five thirty in the evening, my head was spinning from looking at financial statements. Adrian Graves had given me three boxes of files relating to Donovan Holdings…I had spent the last hours sitting at my small desk in the basement office, running routing numbers through the corporate database. My legal assistant skills made me good with details, but what I was seeing in these files didn't look like standard sports investments. There were massive, multi-million dollar wire transfers moving from Donovan accounts into smaller, independent logistics companies based out of the Brooklyn. The language in the contracts was intentionally vague—listed as "equipment consulting services"—but the numbers didn't balance. Every three months, the exact same amount of money was moved, then immediately withdrawn in cash from local branch offices. It looked exactly like hidden laundering routes. I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my aching temples. The Donovan family was tied to

018: JERIAH AND TALIA

Yara's POVThe entrance to the Volkov Sports Country Club wasn't designed to be welcoming…it was designed to show you exactly where you stood on the social chain.It was located on a secluded stretch of prime real estate just past the outer edges of the city, the estate loomed behind massive, wrought-iron gates bearing the stylized Volkov crest—a soaring falcon gripping an intertwined laurel and blade. Massive, centuries old looking oaks tree lined the cobblestone driveway, their branches casting shadows under the floodlights. The main clubhouse looked more like a European manor than an athletic facility..as Pavel brought the car to a smooth halt at the valet station, the blinding flash of cameras immediately painted the tinted glass windows in strobing bursts of white."They're thicker than usual tonight," Pavel remarked from the front seat, his voice entirely devoid of emotion as he glanced at the rearview mirror. "The Daily Dirt’s morning piece has driven up the bidding price for a

019: PERMANENTLY?!

Kieran's POVThe dinner was a tedious display of corporate posturing, but Yara handled it with a sharp dignity that caught me off guard.She sat directly to my right at the owners table, surrounded by the oldest, most cynical money in New York. Throughout the three course meal, she didn't fumble her cutlery, she didn't flinch when the older partners tried to trap her with complex legal questions about sports liability, and she didn't look at me for reassurance. She used her legal mind like a scalpel, answering their probing questions with a calculated precision that left several senior executives nodding in genuine appreciation.She was heavy, she was soft, and she was entirely outside the standard mold of the hollow, high society women who usually occupied these chairs. But as I watched her navigate the conversation, her emerald dress catching the light, I realized she possessed a stubborn resilience that made her a highly effective shield for the narrative we were building."She's a

020: SELENE OSLOV

YARA POV"If you don't answer that phone, I'm going to throw it over the balcony," Kieran said, his deep tone cutting through the quiet of the kitchen.I blinked against the early morning light flooding the floor-to-ceiling windows, my fingers tightening around my travel mug. It was barely seven in the morning. I had barely finished my first cup of black coffee, and already my phone was vibrating against the counter like a live wire.I looked down at the screen. TESSAI hadn't spoken to her since the nightmare outside her apartment building in Queens when the paparazzi cornered me. I slid my thumb across the glass and lifted the phone to my ear. "Tess?""Yara! Oh my god, you actually picked up," Tessa gasped, her voice completely breathless. "I've been trying to call you for a while now Are you okay? Is he keeping you locked up in there because of what happened? I saw the videos online of Kieran tearing down the street in that sports car to come get you.""I'm fine, Tessa," I said qui

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