“I will.”
Matt grunted, pulling his pillow over his head. Within a minute, his soft, oblivious snoring started up again.
My brain refused to shut down. The memory of everything that happened at practice kept looping in my head: Aleksey stepping into my space, the grip of his hand, the clear threat in his voice.
I dragged a yellow highlighter across a random paragraph, using the busywork to burn off the lingering adrenaline. It wasn’t working. His raw intensity had bypassed my usual polite defenses, and I hated it. Caring this much about someone who actively despised me felt pathetic.
A low voice drifted through the thin drywall separating my room from Aleksey’s. He was on the phone. My highlighter hit the desk with a soft clatter as I went still. The excuse that the noise was annoying fell flat; understanding what was actually going on with him mattered more than it should.
He spoke rapid, hushed Russian. The words sounded frantic and strained. A sudden pause followed.
“I know, Mama,” Aleksey said.
The English slipped out rough and unguarded.
“Net, ya skazal. I know.”
His voice cracked on the last word. But not by much. Then silence, and a long breath that dragged through the drywall as if he’d been holding it for hours.
He wasn’t yelling or throwing threats. He just sounded incredibly tired.
Sitting frozen in my chair, the image of the broad enforcer who drove me into the glass cracked down the center. The scarred jaw and the dead-calm threats were still there, but now they sat on top of something else entirely.
The scholarship psycho my brother had warned me about wasn’t a monster. He was someone’s son, and whoever was on the other end of that call mattered enough to strip him bare.
The cold air of the room suddenly felt sharp against my skin when my hand flipped my textbook closed.
Climbing into bed, the blankets came up to my chin. I let my gaze trace the lines of the slanted ceiling. Across the room, Matt’s oblivious snoring filled the air. But I wasn’t listening to him.
A quiet rustle came from the other side of the wall. Aleksey was still awake.
The hollowness I’d been carrying since my father shipped me off to that prep school cracked open, replaced by something sharper. A hook I couldn’t ignore.
I wanted to know exactly what made Aleksey Zotov so desperate to survive here.
Chapter 4 - Aleksey
Coach Corby slid an open folder across his desk. And my entire future narrowed down to the one name printed in black ink on the top sheet.
My legs still ached from evening practice as I stood in his cramped office.
“Sit down, Zotov,” Coach said, sighing as he took off his cap and ran a hand over his thinning hair before putting it right back on.
The empty chair held no appeal. Crossing my arms, I leaned against the doorframe and kept my face blank. “I’m fine standing.”
Dropping his pen on the desk, Corby met my gaze. “You’re in the red. Your GPA is sitting at 2.3. You know the minimum for your scholarship is a 2.5. Academic advising wants to suspend your eligibility today.”
The air in the tiny office suddenly felt too thin to breathe. A 2.3 meant immediate suspension. No hockey. No scholarship. And a one-way bus ticket back to Detroit and a lifetime of midnight shifts working at places like the Food Mart.
Swallowing hard, I forced the feeling of panic down before it could reach my face.
“I have a plan to fix it,” I said, keeping my voice level. “I’ll ask my professors for extra credit.”
“It’s past extra credit,” Coach said. “Academic advising wanted to suspend you today.”
I shoved off the doorframe, my muscles coiling. “You can’t let them do that. The team needs me on the penalty kill.”
“Let me finish.” Coach held up a hand to stop me. “You miss the showcase, and you’re off the roster for good.”
