Luka
Beside me,Aleksy Volkov leaned closer, his voice pitched low enough that it disappeared beneath the hum of the conference room.
“This feels very subdued for a team everyone suddenly cares about.”
I let out a short breath that almost passed for amusement. “Everyone?”
“The skating world, then.” Aleksy tipped his chin toward the paused broadcast on the screen at the front of the room. “Though apparently that now includes half the media in Europe.”
The image showed Mila suspended above me mid-lift. It was the kind of photograph federations loved. Strong lines, clean positions, a partnership that looked unquestionable.
Aleksy folded his arms. “You see my point.”
I barely glanced at the screen. What stayed lodged in my head was a still image pulled from a clipped video, reposted, repeated.
Dean Foster, seated in a café. Not alone.
The angle wasn’t clear enough—or close enough—to identify her, but it didn’t matter. The comments had filled in the gaps quickly enough.
Girlfriend?
I closed it immediately. That didn’t help. It didn’t stop my chest from constricting either.
Where should your focus be now?
I shifted my attention back to the room.
Around us, chairs scraped against the floor while the rest of the team shifted into place. Marek Iliev sat ramrod straight beside Anya Zalinska, both of them visibly tense beneath the weight of Olympic expectations. Across from us, Irina Markova rested her elbows on the table, fingers pressed tightly together while Aleksy lounged beside her with studied indifference that fooled nobody who knew him well.
Mila remained motionless at my right. Most people would have missed the tension in her completely.
I didn’t.
After six years skating together, I recognized even the smallest changes in her mood—the tightening around her mouth, the stillness that became sharper whenever she sensed trouble approaching before the rest of us caught up.
Which meant she already disliked where this meeting was heading.
A throat cleared near the front of the room, and I straightened.
Sokolov watched me for a couple of seconds before smoothing his expression back into neutrality. Beside him, Director Vasiliev closed a folder and gestured toward the frozen broadcast image.
“You are being interpreted,” he said.
Nobody answered. The room settled deeper into silence.
Vasiliev’s gaze swept slowly across the six of us before returning to the screen. “People are deciding what this team represents before you have even stepped onto Olympic ice.”
Aleksy spoke without lifting his head. “They still don’t expect us to win.”
“No,” Vasiliev agreed. “They expect you to justify why winning remains possible.”
That earned a faint reaction around the table: small posture adjustments, lowered eyes, restrained tension tightening across shoulders already carrying too much pressure.
The clip restarted.
Mila and I rotated through the lift again beneath bright replay graphics while commentators dissected our timing and technical scores with clinical enthusiasm. Every angle highlighted polish, discipline, reliability. We had become evidence for a narrative Velkarya desperately wanted sold to the international press.
I stopped listening after a few seconds.
