Page 207 of Slashed Bonds

Her phone rings.

It cuts the look between us like a blade. She flinches at it, the first unguarded thing she’s done since the door, and fumbles in the bag, and I watch the screen come up in her hand. One word in white.

ACCOUNTANT.

She huffs. Looks at the screen. Looks at me. Decides, I can see her decide, that the phone is the thing she’d rather be dealing with.

“Something slashed and disfigured on the inside and out doesn’t deserve an ounce of fame.” Up, down, the look again, trying to get her feet back under her. “But go ahead. Keep trying to be frightening. I’m not afraid of trash.”

She leaves.

Not out the door. Toward the back, toward the changing rooms past the stick wall, with the phone already at her ear, and Viper’s still got Maddie by the chest because Maddie’s trying to go after her for her hair.

“Let me GO, I’m going to pull that blowout out by the ROOT⁠—“

Viper puts a finger to her own lips.

Not Maddie’s. Her own. Black-lipsticked, held there, and her eyes go from Maddie to me and back, and then she lifts the finger off her mouth and makes a small curling gesture with it. Follow.

Maddie and I look at each other.

We follow.

Down the side aisle, between the pads and the practice jerseys, quiet, the way three women who grew up in a facility know how to be quiet. Ahead, at the end, Naomi’s heels click into a changing room and the door shuts.

Viper stops us.

Beside the door, against a rack of sticks, out of its line of sight. And she reaches into the inside of the leather jacket, where the Amex came from, and pulls out something small, black, oblong.

A recorder.

A voice recorder. She rode here with a voice recorder in her jacket. Who the fuck carries⁠—

Naturally. Viper carries everything.

She’s grinning. I’ve seen Viper grin maybe four times, and this is the fourth. Her thumb finds a button, and the small red light comes on, and she holds it toward the slat in the changing room door.

“Be quick. What?”

Naomi. Through the door. The bright-bored register gone, something harder under it.

“Listen. We can’t have any financial mess-ups right now. We absolutely cannot be bought out. You know how bad that looks before the biggest fucking gala of the year, right before semis. We cannot have the empire dealing with liquidating the sports-performance subsidiary before the arena interest and the property and the sponsorship company and all that extra shit. My dad’s hiding it. Obviously. That’s what he’s for.”

Liquidating. A subsidiary. Her father’s hiding it.

Something in my chest goes quiet and attentive, the way it goes on a dot before the drop.

Arena interest. There’s a plaque in the lobby at Halbrook with her father’s name on it. Killian found it. Cassian has a black square on an iPad with a V in it. They’ve been circling this for two weeks and she’s handed us the map through a changing room door.

And the photoshoot. They want me on the ice. Not a player. A face. The Vance name draped over a sheet of ice at a gala in front of the people whose money the subsidiary needs, a socialite in articulated gloves she’s never going to take a hit in, posing in front of a net she’s never going to defend. A brand holding itself up by the elbows.

“Plus I marry those fuckers before the semifinal, so that secures me with their assets and they can’t pull out. There’s nobody in the market right now who can afford to buy us out or overthrow us in this department. We’re safe.”

A pause. The accountant, saying something.

“Once the gala happens, plenty of people will sponsor us. Especially when we’re guaranteed to reach semis. We already paid off the other teams. They’ll show up and entertain, but we’re guaranteed the win.”

Paid off. The other teams. Paid.