Page 75 of The Pucking Player

I help Mom and Erin clean up for a while longer, gathering sheet music and sweeping up glass until the numbers on my phone blur into nonsense. It’s pushing two. Practice starts in less than eight hours, and Coach isn’t exactly known for his sympathy toward players who show up dragging. Tomorrow, I’ll be mainlining espresso shots likethey’re going extinct. Between the Russian mob, the lack of sleep, and Coach’s infamous drills, I’ll need all the help I can get.

I head to what used to be my room, now transformed into Mom’s meditation space. My old Rangers posters and hockey trophies have made way for Tibetan tapestries and a Himalayan salt lamp that bathes the room in a soft pink glow. The familiar scent of sandalwood incense lingers in the air—the same kind Mom used to burn when she first taught me about mindfulness and visualization.

Home sweet Zen.

The bed’s still here, though now it’s layered with meditation cushions in soothing shades of purple and blue. I smile at the “Breathe” pillow propped against the headboard, Mom’s gentle reminder that sometimes the simplest solutions are the best ones.

Erin follows me in, perching on the windowsill while I flop onto the bed, sending a decorative pillow with “Namaste” embroidered on it flying to the floor. She catches it with the kind of reflexes that remind me she grew up dodging hockey pucks on the playground.

“You’re calling Kieran now?” she whispers as she sees me pulling out my phone, hugging the pillow to her chest. “You promised we’d wait until after his game.”

“No, not Kieran. Dimitri,” I say as I’m pulling out his number. “A teammate. He’ll know something.”

She watches me intently with questions in her eyes.

The phone rings four times before a groggy “Da?” answers.

“Sokolov. I need you awake for this.”

“O’Connor?” He sounds like he’s trying to remember how to speak English. “What time is it? Am I late for practice?”

“It’s two a.m. And it’s much worse than that, Dima. I think the Mafia goons that were crowding you a while back broke into my mother’s place.”

The sound of rustling sheets, then suddenly he’s alert. “What?”

Erin gasps, her eyes widening like saucers. I put a finger to my mouth, gesturing for her to stay silent.

I put the call on speaker and run through it—the destroyed cello, the highlighted sheet music, the scattered papers. With each detail, Dmitri’s breath gets sharper.

“Blyad,” he mutters, then switches to rapid-fire Russian that doesn’t sound like poetry.

“English, Dima. Some of us didn’t grow up with Dostojewski.”

“This is Volkov’s signature,” Dmitri says, all traces of sleep gone. “The precision, the psychological element—exactly his style.”

“How sure are you?” I sit up straighter, as Erin comes closer and sits down on my bed.

“Remember that friend I mentioned? The one who’s good with numbers?”

“Your forensic accountant buddy?”

“Da. He works for one of the big banks now, in their fraud detection unit. Been monitoring suspicious betting patterns since the PEDs scandal broke.” There’s rustling on his end, like he’s getting out of bed. “Found a series of offshore accounts, shell companies, all showing massive bets against us after the scandal hit the news.”

“That could be anyone with half a brain and Google, Dima.”

“Yes, but...” He mumbles something in Russian, conceivably a curse, then catches himself. “Important part is that these accounts follow the same patterns we saw back inRussia when Volkov tried this with my old team. Same shell companies, same payment structures.”

“And this connects to Volkov how?”

“Bank’s fraud detection software picked up similar patterns from when he pulled this shit in the Russian hockey league. Not enough for court, but...”

“But enough to know it’s him.”

“Da.And now this break-in? This is escalation. He’s worried about something.”

I glance at Erin, sitting cross legged on my bed. “About what?”

“You and Sophie, I think. Good PR is bad for his plan. Happy hockey captain in love doesn’t fit narrative of team in crisis.”

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