The Rival Between Us

Chapter Nine

Marcus Hale's office occupied a corner of the Titans' front office suite with a view of the ice below, a deliberate architectural choice that let him watch practices from above like a man surveying an investment. He was reviewing salary cap projections when his assistant knocked and informed him that Viktor Volkov was there to see him, unscheduled.

Marcus didn't like unscheduled visits. He liked them even less when they came from Viktor, whose usual composure was, on this particular afternoon, noticeably absent.

"Close the door," Viktor said, before Marcus had even fully gestured him toward a chair.

"Something wrong?"

"Roman's asking questions." Viktor remained standing, arms crossed, a coiled tension in his posture that Marcus recognized as genuine alarm. "About Elena. About what happened five years ago. He hired an investigator, Marcus. Two years ago. He's had information sitting in a file this whole time - a bank transfer, a burner phone. He's starting to put it together."

Marcus set down his pen with deliberate calm, though something behind his eyes sharpened. "How much does he actually know?"

"Not enough. Not yet. But he's not going to stop asking, and now that reporter is back in his orbit every single day, and I could see it on his face at lunch - he's going to figure it out eventually. Or she is. She's smart, Marcus. Smarter than either of us gave her credit for five years ago."

"Nothing connects back to us specifically. The transfer went through three shell accounts. The phone was purchased in cash under a name that doesn't exist."

"That's not the point." Viktor's voice rose slightly before he caught himself and lowered it again, glancing instinctively at the closed door. "The point is that Roman is going to keep pulling that thread until it unravels something, and when it does, I need you to remember that this was your plan, not mine. I went along with it because you convinced me it would save my brother's career. I didn't understand, back then, what it would actually cost him."

"His career is worth eight figures a year now," Marcus said flatly. "I'd call that a fairly successful outcome."

"He's miserable, Marcus. He has been for five years. Do you understand that? My brother has spent half a decade convinced the woman he loved abandoned him, and it's turned him into someone I barely recognize sometimes - someone who doesn't trust anyone, who can't let anyone close, who throws himself into hockey because it's the only thing he lets himself feel anything about anymore. That's not success. That's a man I helped break."

Marcus regarded Viktor with the cool, assessing look he reserved for negotiations that weren't going his way. "You came to me five years ago, Viktor. I remember the conversation clearly. You were worried your brother was going to walk away from a rival organization's offer and stay with a woman instead of signing the contract that made this franchise millions of dollars. You asked me for help."

"I asked for help keeping him focused. I didn't ask you to fabricate photographs. I didn't ask you to send messages pretending to be some anonymous threat. That was your plan, and I let it happen because I was scared and you made it sound reasonable, and I have spent every single day since then regretting it."

"It won't." Marcus's voice was flat, final, the tone of a man who had spent a career making problems disappear through careful, ruthless management. "Elena Hart is a journalist covering a hockey team, not an investigator. Your brother has a file full of dead ends. There's nothing here that connects back to either of us unless someone talks, and I don't intend to, and I strongly suggest you don't either, given how much you personally have to lose if this comes out. Your reputation. Your relationship with your brother. Possibly your career, depending on how creatively a prosecutor wanted to interpret wire fraud statutes around that bank transfer."

The threat landed exactly as Marcus intended, and Viktor's face went pale.

"I need you to leave it alone," Marcus continued, more gently now, the practiced tone of a man who knew when to soften a threat into reassurance. "Let Roman ask his questions. Let the reporter dig around. There's nothing to find. And in a few months, once the season's over and the story's moved on, this will all be ancient history again, exactly like it's been for five years."

Viktor left the office without responding, and Marcus watched him go with the mild irritation of a man managing an asset that had grown more unpredictable than expected. He turned back to his salary cap projections, but his mind lingered on the conversation a moment longer, running through contingencies, calculating exposure, doing the quiet mental math of a man who had built an entire career on making sure nothing ever traced back far enough to touch him.

He did not, in that moment, consider the possibility that Elena Hart had already found a photograph with his face in the background of it, sitting in an archived blog post from five years ago, waiting patiently to be noticed.

After Viktor left his office, Marcus sat alone for a long while, turning his pen over in his fingers, running through the calculus of exposure and risk with the same cold precision he applied to every roster decision. Viktor's loyalty had always been the foundation the entire arrangement rested on - a foundation that suddenly felt considerably less stable than it had five years ago.

He opened his laptop and began, quietly, reviewing which financial records might need additional scrubbing, which accounts might warrant closer attention before anyone else came looking. It was, he told himself, simply prudent housekeeping. Nothing more.