Semua Bab My Ex-Husband's Enemy Loved Me better: A Hockey Rival Romanc: Bab 31 - Bab 40

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 as she pulled the door shut behind her, leaving me alone in the warm, quiet space to finish the closing routine I had grown to genuinely enjoy. Wiping down the counters. Checking the ovens were fully cooled. Counting the register slowly, the small satisfaction of an honest day's work settling into my shoulders. I did not think much about being alone. It had become ordinary by now, these last thirty or forty minutes most evenings, just me and the quiet hum of the refrigerator and the soft orange

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

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

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

Alexander's POV Marcus found me at the practice facility two days after the game, waiting by my car in the players' lot with the particular patient stillness of a man who had something worth waiting for. "I have something on the holding company," he said, without preamble. "The one that owned the property where Damien met the masked figure." "Tell me." "It took weeks to trace properly because of how many layers were built into the structure. Four shell companies, like I told you originally. But the fifth one, the one underneath all of them, the actual entity that ultimately owns the property, is registered to a charitable foundation." That was not what I expected. "A charity." "A small one. Focused on youth athletics, scholarship funding, that kind of thing. Respectable on its face, the sort of organization that sponsors junior league tournaments and gets a polite mention in local papers once a year." Marcus paused. "I would not have thought twice about it, except for one detai