Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Claimed by the Rival Hockey God novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Drunk at the Door

Cillian's POV

I opened the door and said nothing for a full minute.

Dario Marchetti stood in my hall with one hand on the frame, and the whole corridor smelled of whiskey.

His eyes were red, and his hair stuck up on one side.

A few weeks ago I had put him against a tunnel wall.

My hands remembered it, and they stayed at my sides.

"Is she here?" he said.

"Yes."

"Can I see her?"

"No."

He nodded.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Then can I say it to you?"

I stepped out into the hall and pulled the door shut behind me.

Annette was in the kitchen with the lights on, and I could feel her through two inches of wood.

"You've got a minute," I said.

"I was twenty-one."

"I've read the slips."

"My trainer sent an invoice to the house, and I didn't know what it was. I asked Ma." He wiped his nose on his wrist. "She sat me down at the kitchen table. She said, Annette will never miss it. She said, if we asked, Annette would give it to us. She said it was a gift she hadn't gotten around to making."

"And you believed her."

"It was true," Dario said, and his face crumpled. "That's the worst part. She would have given it to me. If I'd asked her, she'd have said yes."

"You didn't ask."

"I was scared she'd look at me the way she looked at me at that gala."

I said nothing.

He reached into his jacket and took out his phone and held it out.

"My agent made me record every call I had with Ma about money, after my first contract. In case somebody sued. I never deleted them."

"What's on it?"

"The kitchen table. I took a call from her the week I turned twenty-two, and I kept it." His voice cracked. "She says it plain. I couldn't say it myself. I thought maybe she could."

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