Page 112 of Hooked On Them

I was already reaching for my phone. “We need to call Dom before he sees this somewhere else.”

As if on cue, the front door slammed open. Heavy footsteps thundered through the entryway before Dominic stepped into the living room, his face a storm of fury and pain.

“Have you seen it?” His voice was dangerously quiet, his body vibrating with tension.

One look at our faces gave him the answer.

“That fucking bastard.” He started pacing in front of the coffee table, fists balled at his side. “He couldn’t stand that I was happy and ignoring him. That I was making this work without him. So he had to burn it all down.”

He stopped suddenly, his eyes falling on Nora, and his demeanor completely changed. “Baby, are you okay?” He dropped to his knees in front of her and wrapped his arms around her, placing his cheek against her belly.

Nora nodded wordlessly, her fingers threading into Dominic’s hair, her other hand still gripping mine. I saw the tears she was trying to blink back, the way her jaw clenched like she was holding everything together by force of will alone.

“I should’ve known,” Dominic murmured against her stomach. “This is what he does. He sees something he can’t control, and he tries to destroy it.”

“We’re not destroyed.” Nora was already rallying and pulling herself together. “We’re pissed off, but we’re not destroyed.”

Dominic lifted his head, eyes locking with hers. “I’m not going to let him twist this. I’ll handle it.”

“Dom,” she started, but he shook his head.

“No more hiding. No more playing nice. He wants to turn this into a scandal?” He stood, his face hard with purpose. “Then I’ll face it head-on.”

“Are you sure?” I already knew the answer.

He nodded, his jaw set with a determination I knew all too well from the rink; an unshakable resolve that made him such a formidable competitor. The muscles in his neck bunched under the collar of his shirt as he squared his shoulders.

“If he wants a war, he picked the wrong damn family.”

Something fierce and protective surged in my chest at his words. Because that’s what we were now—a family—unconventional as hell and currently under siege, but a family nonetheless. I’d faced down enforcers twice my size without flinching, but the raw emotion in Dominic’s voice hit me harder than any body check ever could.

Dominic’s father had pucked around, and he was about to find out.

Chapter36

Game Face On

Dominic

Iwas surprised my knuckles didn’t crack from the grip I had on my steering wheel. The sun was barely awake, but I’d been up for hours. Sleep was a joke after watching my father try to dismantle my life from a podcast set last night. It still seemed unreal, but honestly, I wasn’t that surprised he’d done something like that.

I pulled into the facility parking lot, my phone buzzing for the hundredth time since I’d started driving. This time it was Kessler reminding me we had a damage control meeting at eight.

Facing the firing squad was just what I wanted to deal with before what was sure to be a tense team meeting and a light practice later. We didn’t have Game Two until the following evening, so thankfully I didn’t havethatadded stress.

I headed to Carter’s office first since he’d had to get to the facility extra early for a pre-meeting emergency meeting. He was sitting at his desk with a cup of coffee, looking completely out of place.

Over the past months, I’d come to realize that Carter really didn’t have any desire to embrace corporate life. It was written all over him, from the way his expensive suits always looked like they were holding him hostage to how he fidgeted through meetings like a kid counting down the minutes until recess.

The man had bought into the team, sure, but watching him try to act like a businessman was like seeing someone attempt to stuff a square peg into a round hole while using a sledgehammer and pure optimism.

Not that I could entirely blame him. The boardroom wasn’t exactly my happy place either, but at least I’d made peace with that part of my responsibilities. Carter, on the other hand, looked like he’d prefer to be somewhere that he could throw paint at a canvas.

He looked up from his phone. “You look like shit.”

I dropped into the chair across from him. “Thanks. I’ve been working on this look all night. How bad is it?”

Carter grimaced, sliding his phone across the desk to me. My father’s interview had gone viral overnight. The NHL subreddit was aflame, and social media feeds were cesspools of hot takes and speculation. Sports blogs were already publishing articles with headlines like“Dynasty Drama: Hockey Legend Claims the Stanley Cup Finals Are Compromised.”

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