Todos os capítulos de Behind the Ice Wall : Capítulo 41 - Capítulo 50

SKY’S POV The new psychologist’s name was Dr. Whitfield. He had a firm handshake, a leather notebook, and an office that had been a spare conference room before someone decided the team needed continuity of care while Amira’s leave played out. “Sky. Good to meet you.” He gestured at the chair across from his desk. Not the low armchair Amira used. A regular office chair, the kind you’d get called into for a performance review. “I’ve read your file. I want you to know I’m not here to replace anyone. Just to help however I can during this transition.” “Sure,” I said, and sat down, and felt the wrongness of the room before he’d said another word. • He started with breathing exercises, the same basic ones I’d learned years ago before Amira ever taught me anything real. Box breathing. Four counts in, four held, four out. I did it because refusing seemed like more trouble than it was worth, but my chest stayed tight the whole time, like my body knew this wasn’t the same conversation ev

SKY’S POV I called Reyes before practice, too early for it to be a casual conversation, and he must have understood that from the tone of my voice because he told me to come straight to his office instead of the locker room. “You read the article,” he said, not a question. “Somebody close to the organization. That’s a pretty small circle, Reyes. Who has access to whether my sessions got discontinued?” “HR. Legal. Marcus’s office. Damian, obviously.” He rubbed his forehead. “That’s still six or seven people minimum, and that’s assuming nobody talked to somebody who talked to somebody else.” “It’s not random anymore. First it was a photo. Then rumors. Now specific details about my therapy sessions that only people inside this building would know.” I sat down across from him. “This isn’t bad luck. Somebody’s doing this on purpose.” “I agree with you,” he said, quieter than I expected. “I’ve thought that for a while now. I just didn’t have anything solid enough to say it out loud.”

SKY’S POV Reyes shut the door behind us and set a single sheet of paper on his desk instead of just telling me the name outright, like he wanted me to see it in writing before either of us said it out loud. I looked down. Read it twice. Damian Baron. Records request submitted March 14th. Reason listed: “HR compliance review.” “He requested it himself,” I said. “Not through someone else. His own name, right there.” “His own name,” Reyes confirmed. “Which either means he didn’t think anyone would ever check, or he didn’t care if they did.” “Why wouldn’t he care?” “Because up until now, nobody has.” Reyes leaned back against his desk. “This is the kind of request that gets buried in a system nobody audits unless somebody specifically goes looking. I only found it because the IT staffer mentioned it in passing. If she hadn’t, this stays invisible.” • I stared at the sheet a long moment, feeling something settle into place that had been circling for weeks without ever quite landi

SKY’S POV The photo went up online sometime before six the next morning, and by the time I saw it my phone already had eleven missed calls and a string of texts I didn’t have the stomach to read in order. It wasn’t damning, exactly. Just the two of us in a parking lot, her hand on her car door, me a few feet away, nothing in the image itself that proved anything beyond two people talking somewhere they probably shouldn’t have been talking, days before a hearing that depended on both of us staying visibly apart. The headline didn’t need proof. It just needed a caption. Ice Wall’s Secret Meeting: Sky Wilson Spotted With Psychologist at Center of HR Investigation, Days Before Hearing. • Reyes called before I’d finished reading the first article. “You need to see me. Now. Before practice.” “I know what this looks like.” “I don’t care what it looks like right now. I care what Marcus is going to say once he sees it, and based on the three calls I’ve already gotten this morning, he

SKY’S POV I found out the details three days later, not from Amira, but from Reyes, who’d pieced together what he could from front office gossip and a sympathetic contact in HR who still believed the whole situation had been handled badly from the start. “She didn’t just resign,” he told me, sitting across from me in his office, door closed. “She released a statement. Short. Professional. Said she was stepping away to protect the integrity of the organization and the well-being of the players she’d worked with, and that she wouldn’t be commenting further.” “That’s it? No mention of Damian? No mention of any of it?” “Nothing about him. Nothing about you, either, by name. She kept it clean, Sky. Deliberately clean, so nobody could point to anything in it and claim it proved what they’d been trying to prove.” I sat with that a moment, understanding the shape of what she’d done even before I fully felt the weight of it. She hadn’t just resigned. She’d taken the fall in a way that pr