All Chapters of Accidentally Dating Hockey’s Ice King : Chapter 21 - Chapter 29

POV: BEATRIXMy hands wouldn't stop shaking.It didn’t matter if I was in the car, in the elevator, or even sitting here in the penthouse—safe, home, with nothing to be scared of. I couldn’t get them to stop. The adrenaline just didn’t care. I kept seeing it all—his grip on my wrist, the sound of Julian crashing into the wall, that thick, shocked silence where even the air seemed too stunned to move.None of it felt real yet, standing in the silence of a penthouse that had nothing to do with what had just happened three floors below street level in a different building entirely.Usually, when nights ended like this, Nikolai disappeared behind his office door. He worked through things his own way, quiet, untouchable. I expected that. I didn’t even t

POV: BEATRIXThe call came in at ten in the morning, while I was still finishing my coffee at the kitchen counter. Ivy was already at school, and the apartment had that particular quiet it only gets in the middle of a weekday, too big for the few of us actually there.I almost didn't answer. Seeing my mother's name on the screen usually meant bracing myself for something, a guilt trip, a demand, or some fresh performance designed to get exactly what she wanted from me.I let it ring twice before picking up, already tired. I answered anyway, because some childhood habits never fully go away, the reflex to pick up no matter how much you've told yourself you wouldn't."Beatrix." Her voice cracked on my name before she'd even finished saying it. "Beatrix, please, I need your help."This didn't sound like her usual crying. Her usual crying had a rhythm to it, practiced, building at exactly the right moments for maximum effect. This was messier. Ragged. The crying that happens when someone

POV: BEATRIXThe café on Fifth hadn’t changed in years. The same chipped tables, the same bell above the door, and the same faint smell of burnt coffee that never quite faded, no matter how often they cleaned the machines.A different waitress was behind the counter now, someone I didn’t recognize, though the same faded photographs of the neighborhood still hung crooked on the wall beside the register.My mother and I used to come here when I was little, back before either of us knew what the other would become. I remembered sitting in this same booth once, maybe when I was eight, sharing a slice of cake because we could not afford two. That felt like a different lifetime now, a different version of both of us.She was already seated when I arrived, a folder pressed flat against the table in front of her, both hands resting on it as if she were afraid it might blow away. She looked smaller than I remembered, dressed plainly, without the careful styling she usually wore whenever she w

POV: NIKOLAII didn’t have my security team pull the footage. I went straight to the server room myself, late at night, and sat down at the terminal to watch it with my own eyes.By 11 p.m., the building felt empty. Most residents were asleep; hallways quiet except for the occasional porter’s footsteps somewhere above.My head of security offered twice to handle it in the morning, spare me the trouble, and summarize the findings in a report I could read over coffee.I declined both times. Some things didn’t belong in a summary written by someone else. This was one of them.I had built my entire career on delegating whatever I could, trusting my team to handle problems so I could focus on the ones only I could solve. This did not feel like a problem I was willing to hand to anyone else, not with Beatrix sitting beside me, waiting for an answer.She kept her arms wrapped around herself against the chill of the server room, silent and focused like she always gets when she’s bracing for s