Chapter 8

Luca

I was in the middle of a passing drill when Marcus appeared at the boards and held up two fingers. That was our signal. Someone was waiting who could not be made to wait.

I skated off and handed my stick to the equipment manager and followed Marcus down the corridor without asking who it was. I already knew the walk. The particular way Marcus moved when he was delivering news he did not want to deliver, shoulders slightly forward, eyes ahead.

Diane Marsh was standing in my office.

Not sitting. Standing, which meant she had not been there long enough to get comfortable and also meant she did not intend to be comfortable. She was in a charcoal blazer with her dark hair pulled back and a leather folder under one arm, and she was looking at my wall of team photographs with the expression of someone who had already decided how the next thirty minutes were going to go.

"Diane," I said. "You could have called."

"I did call." She turned from the wall. "Twice. You didn't pick up."

I pulled off my gloves and dropped them on the desk. "I was on the ice."

"I know where you were." She set the leather folder on the desk and opened it without ceremony. "Sit down, Luca."

I sat…

She laid three printed pages in front of me. The first was a screenshot collection, fan accounts and sports commentary, all circling the same exhibition game footage I had been trying to stop thinking about for four days. The second was a social media analytics report with certain sections highlighted in yellow. The third was an article from a mid-tier sports culture site with the headline underlined in red pen: *Devereaux and Calloway: Hockey Rivalry or Something Else?*

I looked at the pages without touching them.

"How bad?" I asked.

"The article has been shared sixty thousand times." She sat across from me and folded her hands on the desk. "The comment sections are not subtle. Three major sponsors have reached out to our office in the past seventy-two hours asking for reassurance. Not demanding anything yet. Just asking." She paused. "When sponsors start asking questions, Luca, they are already halfway to a decision."

The room felt smaller than usual.

"It was a collision against the boards," I said. "It was a game."

"I know what it was." Her voice was not unkind. That was the thing about Diane that I had always respected and occasionally resented. She never treated me like I was stupid. "I also know what it looked like. And in our industry, what something looks like is sometimes more important than what it is."

I said nothing. She reached into the folder and produced one more page. A photograph, professional quality, bright smile, warm eyes. A woman standing in what looked like a sunlit kitchen holding a coffee mug, effortlessly put together in the way that took significant effort.

"Her name is Sienna Vale," Diane said. "Lifestyle content, family-friendly platform, two million followers across her channels. She's partnered with three brands that overlap directly with your sponsorship portfolio. She's agreed to attend two upcoming events with you. The Harmon Foundation gala next Friday and the league's community outreach lunch the following week."

I looked at the photograph.

"You want me to be photographed with her."

"I want the narrative to have somewhere else to go," Diane said. "Right now the only story people are telling about you involves Calloway. I want to give them a different story. Something clean, something simple." She pressed her finger lightly on the edge of Sienna's photo. "Two appearances. No romantic requirement. Just proximity. Just the optics."

I kept my eyes on the photograph. Sienna Vale had an easy, open face. The kind of face that photographed as trustworthy. I could see exactly why Diane had chosen her, exactly how the images would look, exactly how the narrative would pivot. I understood the logic of it completely.

And somewhere underneath the logic, something in me went flat. Like a sound getting cut off mid-note. Like a light switched off in a room I had not fully walked into yet.

"Does she know what this is?" I asked.

"She's a professional. She understands the arrangement."

"That's not what I asked."

Diane met my eyes steadily. "She knows it's a public appearance strategy. She agreed to it with full information."

I picked up the photograph. Held it for a moment. Put it back down.

"And you think this works," I said. "Two appearances and the story goes away."

"I think two appearances and the story has competition," she said. "Which is all I need. Once the commentary has something else to chew on, the Calloway angle loses oxygen. These things don't survive when they stop being fed."

The word landed somewhere specific. Fed. Like what existed between me and Ronan was something that only lived because people were paying attention to it.

I thought about the tunnel. About the lights coming on. About the figure disappearing into the dark.

I thought about Danny Cole and the social media printout sitting in Victor's hands right now.

"I'll think about it," I said.

Diane closed the folder and stood. She was already reaching for her bag when she stopped and looked at me with the particular expression she reserved for moments when she was going to say the thing she had actually come to say.

"Luca." Her voice was quieter now. "I have managed your image for nine years. I have kept things clean through a knee injury, through your father's resurfaced coverage, through three contract negotiations that should have been messier than they were." She held my gaze. "I'm not asking you to be someone you're not. I'm asking you to give me something to work with before I have nothing left to work with."

She left.

I sat in the empty office and looked at Sienna Vale's photograph on the desk. The smile. The coffee mug. The clean uncomplicated story she represented.

Forty-eight hours..I turned the photograph face down..