She turns.
“It was worth it,” I say. “All of it. Whatever tonight looks like. Worth it.”
Her throat moves. The wall holds. Her eyes don’t.
She turns and walks away, and I watch her go. My chest aches with the profound helplessness of a man who has vowed to give someone nothing tonight, yet every instinct he has says give her everything.
I see Frank Amato for the first time at four fifty-three p.m. He comes through the facility entrance in his street clothes. A charcoal coat, collared shirt, the unhurried stride of a man who has entered more arenas than he can count and has never once beenuncertain of his standing in any of them. Tall. Her height lives in him, I clock it immediately. Facial features too.
He is exactly what she described, moving through the lobby without registering the plaques or the trophy cases, or the championship banners. He finds what he is looking for at the far end of the corridor.
Toni.
She is waiting for him. Blazer. Badge. Hair up. Each layer of her professionalism present and load-bearing. She crosses toward him; he opens his arms, and she embraces him, her spine still straight even in his arms. He whispers into her hair. She pulls back.
He looks up.
He finds me across the lobby with the precision of a man who has been watching players his entire professional life and does not require a long look to form a complete opinion.
Frank Amato looks at me. He doesn’t raise an eyebrow. Doesn’t change his expression. Doesn’t signal anything to the room. He holds my gaze for three seconds with the particular quality of a referee who has already made the call and is informing me of it.
He looks at his daughter. Puts a hand on her shoulder and guides her toward the administrative corridor. She glances at me, one look, too fast, too much, disappearing immediately. Because looking at me is the one thing that costs her emotions she can’t afford to spend in this hallway right now. I understand why.
I watch her walk beside her father withher posture guarded, head up, every inch of her the thing she built herself into after Rockford and before this morning. I watch until the corridor door closes behind them.
The lobby is exactly as it was. Equipment rolling past. Staff on radios. The normal machinery of a game day.
Whatever it costs. She is worth it.
Once the game is over, the calls are accurate, and Amato has no grounds for complaint, I will make that point in a manner that requires no visual aid, caption, or interpretation.
Tonight, I play clean.
Chapter Thirty
Toni Amato
This is how it always is with my father, his hands flat on the table, the stillness already filling every corner before I've taken my coat off. I’ve been walking into rooms he already owns since I was four years old.
I close the door. “Sit down, Antonia.” I sit.
He doesn’t look at the phone on the table between us. He doesn’t look at the photo.
“Tell me what I’m looking at,” he says.
His voice is what it has always been, measured, never once raised above conversation level even in front of eighteen thousand screaming fans.
“In the back corridor between the training room and the ice, there was nowhere else to go safely when the alarm sounded. Three of us were there originally: Dave, Max, and I.Dave directed us towards the rear emergency exit, indicating that it was our designated area. We proceeded to exit, but Dave abruptly returned to retrieve his medical kit, causing the door to lock behind him. My keycard was useless during an active alarm. Max, who had just taken a shower, was caught in the hallway while searching for tape. He had been wrapped in a towel. The alarm rang, prompting an immediate evacuation. It was a complete coincidence that I was there as well. Dave can confirm the timeline and the facility logged the alarm. Nothing in the photograph is what the caption says.”
He listens. All the way through. He doesn’t interrupt. When I finish, there is a pause that lasts exactly long enough for me to feel the weight of everything I haven’t said. “The photograph,” he says, “is the smallest part of what I’m concerned about.” My hands are still in my lap. I keep them still. “You’ve been meeting with this player outside of scheduled sessions.”
“The assignment was?—“
“The assignment closed three weeks ago.” His eyes meet mine, a striking green that mirrors my own. There’s a precision in them that I’ve dedicated my entire career to mastering. “You stayed.”
I hold his gaze. “Yes.”
“Why?”
