Chapter 2

The next morning, I went to the school to submit the East Coast Ice Trials paperwork.

I was halfway down the corridor when I saw them, Dante with Bianca on his arm.

Bianca saw me first. She flinched and ducked behind his shoulder.

"Dante, I'm scared."

He stepped in front of her like a wall.

"Valentina. Don't start."

I tried to walk around him. He caught my wrist.

"What is wrong with you? Bianca didn't do anything to you. None of this was her decision, so why do you have to make a scene?"

I yanked my arm back. "Let me go."

People in the corridor started looking over: uniformed heirs of family lines, girls wearing diamonds, the young heir who had just finished combat training, and the security guards pretending not to hear..

Bianca's eyes filled with tears right on cue. She slipped out from behind Dante and took one step toward me.

"Valentina, I'm really, really sorry. I never wanted any of this to happen. If hitting someone is the only way you can vent, then hit me. I deserve it."

She came closer with her chin lifted, and Dante wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her back against his chest.

"Look at her," he said to me, his voice low and furious. "Look at what you're doing to her. I never thought you could be this cruel, Valentina."

The whispers started.

"That's her, right? The poor girl stuck in the elite school?"

"Wait, isn't she the one who lost the national grant?"

"Lost it to Bianca. Honestly, look at her face. No expression at all. Any man would go cold looking at that. No wonder Dante moved on."

"Bianca is literally an angel. I'd choose her too."

I didn't look at any of them. My eyes stayed on Dante.

"I said, let me go."

He didn't let go. Instead, he shoved me.

I stumbled back and hit the row of steel lockers behind me, my shoulder blades cracking against the metal.

For a second, I stayed there with my back against the lockers, looking up at him.

He looked right back at me. There was nothing on his face, no flicker, nothing at all.

We grew up together. When he was ten, the Romano family was in a bloody feud with another mafia family, and to keep him safe, they threw him into our small town.

During his first week there, he picked a fight with three older boys behind the rink and was getting his teeth kicked in when I came around the corner.

I held up a sharpened skate blade. They ran.

After that, he followed me everywhere. When a boy at the training school bullied me, Dante put him on the ground and beat him hard enough that nobody forgot it.

Back then, he would say, "Valentina, I've got you. Always."

"We're getting out of this town. Both of us. National team, international competitions, the whole thing. You and me."

And now he was standing in front of me with another girl pressed against his side, after he had just shoved me into a wall.

Bianca cried even harder.

"Dante, please, let's just go. It's my fault. All of this is my fault."

He turned his head and kissed her hair.

"It's not your fault. Not any of it."

He gave me one last warning look, then led her past me and away.

I stayed against the steel lockers until I could breathe again.

The administration office was at the end of the corridor. On the way there, I passed the Featured Athletes wall.

Bianca's photo was in the center, bigger than everyone else's. Beneath it, in clean black letters, it read:

A promising young talent moving forward through hardship. A story of resilience.

I looked at it for one second and laughed bitterly.

I remembered one night after a late training session, when I came back to the rink equipment shop.

My father was waiting in the parking lot. I could smell the whiskey on him from ten feet away.

"Where's the money?"

I didn't answer. I tried to get around him and reach the door.

He grabbed my hair and slammed my face into the side of the building.

"I'm talking to you. Are both your ears deaf now?"

"There isn't any money."

"Bullshit. That Romano kid throws cash around like water, and you're stuck to him twenty-four hours a day. You're telling me you can't squeeze a few hundred out of him for your old man?"

He slapped me across the face.

"You hiding it? Where is it? Huh?"

He started searching me, yanking at my pockets, and I shoved him away.

That was the wrong move. He kicked me in the stomach so hard I went down on the asphalt.

"You ungrateful bitch. You're just like your mother. Trash, both of you."

He went looking for something heavier, a tire iron or a piece of pipe. I didn't see clearly.

That was when Dante's car pulled into the parking lot.

The engine hadn't even stopped before he got out. In two moves, he put my father on the ground, then pulled me up from the asphalt.

His hands moved over my face, my arms, my ribs, checking.

"Where did he hit you, Valentina. Where."

I couldn't answer. He took off his own coat and put it around my shoulders.

"It's okay. I'm here. I've got you."

He didn't go home that night. He sat on the broken couch in the back of the shop until morning.

The next day, he walked into the precinct and did not leave until they had my father in a holding cell.

When he came back, he sat down beside me and said,

"From now on, I'm taking care of you. You don't have to worry about anything. Ever."

I had actually believed him.