Todos os capítulos de Behind the Ice Wall : Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 60

SKY’S POV Game one of the first round felt different than any playoff opener I’d played before, and it took me most of the first period to understand exactly why. I wasn’t nervous. That surprised me more than anything else — no tightness building behind my ribs, no old fear circling the edges of my focus the way it usually did under this kind of pressure. Just a clean, steady kind of anger that had nowhere else to go except directly into the game in front of me. I stopped thirty-one shots that night. Shut them out completely, the kind of performance that used to define the version of myself before any of this season happened, and when the final horn sounded, Reyes met me at the bench with a look close to disbelief. “That’s the best you’ve looked all year,” he said. “Didn’t feel like effort. Just felt like the only thing I had left to give it.” • The pattern held through the second game, and the third. Something had shifted in me since Amira’s message, some redirection of every

SKY’S POV Round two started the day after June’s disappearance, and I walked into game one carrying two versions of myself that had nothing to do with each other — the goalie who needed to focus on nothing but pucks and angles, and the man who couldn’t stop turning over exactly how far Damian was willing to go to protect himself. I played well anyway. Twenty-eight saves, a win on the road, the kind of performance that used to feel impossible under this much weight and now just felt like the only outlet I had left for everything I couldn’t do anything about directly. Reyes met me in the tunnel afterward, quieter than the win deserved. “Good game,” he said. “You’re compartmentalizing better than I expected, given everything.” “Doesn’t mean I’ve stopped thinking about it. Just means I’ve gotten better at putting it somewhere else for sixty minutes.” • I started keeping a private list after that — not written down anywhere, just held in my head, every small inconsistency, every co

SKY’S POV Conference Finals opened on the road, the loudest building I’d played in all season, and I stood in the tunnel before warm-ups running through the same simple checklist Amira had taught me months earlier, before any of this had spiraled into something neither of us could have predicted. Breathe. Ground yourself. Trust what you already know. I reached into my bag before pulling on my pads and found the bracelet, small, simple, the one she’d given me back when our sessions were still just sessions, before either of us had let ourselves acknowledge what was actually happening between us. I slipped it under my wristband, hidden from view but close enough to feel, and something in my chest steadied the moment it settled against my skin. • The game itself tested every part of what I’d built over the past several months. Their top line came at me hard from the opening shift, three shots in the first two minutes alone, the crowd behind them roaring loud enough that I felt it i

SKY’S POV Damian didn’t go quietly. I hadn’t expected him to, not after the press conference, not after weeks of watching him deflect every piece of evidence that closed in around him, but the speed of what came next still caught me off guard. Reyes called me before I’d finished my morning coffee, voice tight. “He’s making a move,” he said. “Preemptive. He’s going to management with a story of his own before the facial recognition findings get formally submitted.” “What kind of story?” “That you and Amira orchestrated this whole investigation against him. That the evidence was manufactured, that Reyes and I built a narrative to protect a relationship that violated ethics policy from the start, and that he’s the one being scapegoated for simply doing his job.” I sat there a long moment, feeling a cold weight settle where the earlier relief had briefly lived. “That’s absurd.” “It’s absurd,” Reyes agreed. “It’s also exactly the kind of story that muddies things long enough to bu

SKY’S POV The League’s findings became public on a Thursday morning, released in a formal statement that used careful, procedural language to describe what amounted to a complete collapse of everything Damian had spent months trying to construct. Following a thorough investigation, the League has determined that Damian Baron violated multiple provisions of organizational conduct policy, including the fabrication of evidence, coercion of a witness, and interference with an official ethics review. Mr. Baron has been placed on indefinite suspension pending further proceedings. I read it twice at my kitchen table, coffee going cold beside me, feeling an enormous weight finally settle after months of circling. • Reyes called within the hour, his voice carrying a weight I hadn’t heard from him before — not quite triumph, closer to exhausted relief. “It’s out,” he said. “Everywhere. Every outlet that covered the original scandal is covering this now.” “How’s Marcus handling it?” “Ro