“Coach? Alek?” A warm hand pressed against my back, steady and grounding. I straightened slowly, the movement sending fresh waves of pain through my damaged knee.
Tristan stood beside me, his golden eyes worried but calm. “I’m fine,” I rasped, the lie scraping my throat raw.
He waved to the rest of the team, who watched their coach have a breakdown on the sidewalk with fascination and concern.
“I got this,” he called to them. “I’ll follow in a bit.”
As the cars drove away, I tried to pull myself together, but the magnitude of my mistake made it impossible to stand straight.
“I’m going to send some text messages over here on the corner,” Tristan said quietly. “Make sure she’s got everything she needs for the next few days.” Never had I appreciated his social skills more. The polite lie would allow me space while he kept an eye on me.
He was worried.
Warmth pressed inside my chest, battling with bone-deep self-loathing as I realized Tristan still cared enough to make this easier on me.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him, my voice still rough. He smiled, bright teeth flashing against full lips, and waved me off, pulling the hood of his winter jacket up as he walked to the corner and studied his phone.
Me
Did you know?
My phone rang immediately.“Did I know what?” Dmitri asked in Russian, his voice sharp with concern.
“Did you know Jackson took the hit on me to pay for Eva’s surgery?” I demanded in the same language.
He was silent for a long moment. I waited for him to tell me yes, that I’d been a fool, that he’d saved me from myself sixteen years ago when I wanted to murder the man who’dended my career. “I did not,” he said instead, his voice whisper-soft. “I’d assumed it was professional jealousy.”
“Someone paid him to do it,” I growled. “Enough to cover a surgery that would have cost over two hundred grand.”
Understanding took my breath away. He’d have borrowed money for her second surgery too, and when he couldn’t pay it back—blackmail.
And I’d taken advantage of her. I’d taught her to submit without any of the consent I should have sought—no negotiation, no safewords, no hard fucking limits.
I couldn’t shake the memory of her between my thighs, naked in my office, her glorious tits swaying as she lapped at me, rubbing her thighs together to relieve the ache in her cunt because submitting to me turned her on.
“Can you find out whom?” I asked quietly.
“Alek,” Dmitri warned. “My terms haven’t changed. If you want to use me as an instrument of revenge, you have to come back to the brotherhood. I can’t—” He stopped, his voice turning rough. “Nikolai won’t use the bratva to commit violence for someone who won’t do the same for it.”
A pit opened beneath me, a yawning maw that threatened to swallow me whole as I wiped away sixteen years of my self-identity and my need for revenge in an instant.
“Understood.” Unlike sixteen years ago, I did. “But I need to know.”
I hung up the phone before letting loose a long string of curses, still in Russian.
Tristan looked up from his phone for a moment, his eyes widening, before he looked back down, still pretending to ignore me.
I cleared my throat. “Thank you, Baptiste, for checking on me.”
He looked at me for a long moment, golden eyes on me, before sauntering over with his characteristic confidence. “My friends call me Tristan.”
“Alek,” I said, holding out my hand for him to shake.
He took it, and undeserved hope, elusive, wound its way through my chest once again.
“Want to go back in?” he asked quietly, but when I knocked on the door, Conrad Jackson shook his head.
“She’s tired,” he said, blocking my view of the interior of the house.