Chapter 33 Chapter 33

Chapter 33 Chapter 33
Reid's POV

Six months had passed since we fled the Swiss Alps under the cover of a shattered windshield and a stolen hard drive, but as I stood on the steps of the Dirksen Federal Building, it felt like a lifetime.
The sidewalk was a chaotic sea of camera lenses, microphones, and protestors. Some held signs that read JUSTICE FOR THE GHOSTS, while others—the lingering remnants of the "Ice and Fire" obsession—simply wanted a glimpse of the man who had burned down the most prestigious skating institute in the world.
I adjusted the knot of my tie, my knuckles brushing against the small, jagged scar I’d earned on a Swiss filing cabinet. I wasn't wearing a jersey. I wasn't "The Golden Boy." I was just Reid Carter, a guy who was five minutes away from watching a monster get what he deserved.
"Reid."
I turned. Iris was stepping out of the black town car, her father holding the door. She wasn't using a cane anymore. She was wearing a structured navy dress and heels—modest ones, but heels nonetheless. She walked with a slight, almost imperceptible hitch in her stride, a rhythmic reminder of the metal pins and the haptic shocks, but she moved with a dignity that silenced the nearest row of reporters.
I met her at the base of the steps, sliding my hand into hers. Her fingers were cold, but her grip was like iron.
"You ready?" I whispered.
"I’ve been ready since the hospital in Geneva," she said, her voice clear and resonant. "Let’s finish this."
The courtroom was a cathedral of dark wood and stifling formality. Nikolai Volkov sat at the defense table, flanked by four lawyers who looked like they were made of sharkskin and cold calculations. He didn't look like a king anymore. He looked like a tired old man in a suit that was suddenly too big for him. But when our eyes met, that same Siberian chill flickered in his pupils—the look of a man who still believed he was the only one in the room who understood the cost of greatness.
The trial hadn't just been about the assault on Iris. It had become a class-action reckoning. Mila was there, sitting in the front row of the gallery, her hand resting on the shoulder of another former skater who had flown in from Seoul. The "Ghosts" had finally found their voices.
For four hours, the prosecution laid out the digital evidence I’d retrieved. They played the audio logs. They showed the biometric spikes. They displayed the photos of the localized burns on the athletes' skin. Each piece of evidence was a nail in the coffin of the Volkov legacy.
Then, it was Iris’s turn.
I watched her walk to the stand. I watched the way she took the oath, her voice steady, her eyes never leaving Nikolai’s face. She told the story of the Swiss fortress not as a victim, but as an expert witness to her own destruction. She explained the calculus of the triple-Axel, the way the shocks had bypassed her brain's warning signals, and the exact moment she felt her future shatter on the ice.
"He told me that pain was a lie," Iris said, looking directly at the jury. "He told me that to be a god, I had to stop being a human. But the truth is, the ice doesn't want gods. It wants people who are brave enough to fall and keep going. Nikolai Volkov didn't teach me how to skate. He taught me how to break."
When she finished, the silence in the courtroom was absolute. Even Nikolai’s lawyers didn't have a cross-examination that could touch the raw, surgical truth of her testimony.
We retreated to a small side room during the jury's deliberation. It was a cramped space filled with discarded coffee cups and the hum of a flickering fluorescent light.
"You were incredible," I said, pulling her into my arms.
Iris leaned her head against my chest, her shoulders finally dropping an inch. "I just wanted it to be over, Reid. I wanted to say the words out loud so they didn't have to live inside me anymore."
"It is over," I promised. "No matter what they decide, the world knows. He can't hurt anyone else."
A knock at the door interrupted us. It wasn't the bailiff. It was Dr. Aris, the orthopedic surgeon who had been managing Iris’s recovery since our return to Chicago. He was holding a manila folder, his expression unreadable.
"Doctor?" Iris asked, her voice tightening. "Is something wrong? The scans from yesterday..."
Dr. Aris stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. He looked at me, then at Iris. "I told you I wouldn't have the final analysis until this afternoon. I know the timing is... intense, given the trial."
"Just tell me," Iris said. "Am I done? Do I need another surgery?"
I held my breath. This was the real verdict. The jury could send Nikolai to prison, but they couldn't give Iris her life back. Only the bone could do that.
Dr. Aris opened the folder and pulled out a series of X-rays. He pointed to the spot where the pins met the patella, where six months ago there had been nothing but shadows and structural failure.
"The Swiss injury was a blessing in a very dark disguise," the doctor began. "When the pins shifted, they actually created a compression point that stimulated a massive amount of secondary bone growth. It’s a phenomenon we see in high-impact trauma—the body overcompensates to protect the site."
He looked up, a small, genuine smile breaking through his clinical mask.
"The bone has fully fused, Iris. The density is higher than it was before the initial attack. The ligaments have scarred over in a way that provides more stability than the original structure."
Iris gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white. "What does that mean? In plain English, Doctor."
"It means you are cleared," Dr. Aris said. "Not just for walking. Not just for coaching. You are medically cleared for full-impact training. If you want to skate—if you want to jump—the bone will hold."
Iris didn't scream. She didn't cry. She just stopped breathing for a second, her eyes widening as she stared at the X-ray. I felt a surge of joy so sharp it was almost painful. I picked her up, spinning her around in the small, cramped room, laughing into the crook of her neck.
"You're back!" I shouted. "Iris, you're back!"
She pulled back, her face radiant, tears finally spilling over her lashes. "I can skate, Reid. I can actually skate."
"You can do whatever you want," I said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "The Olympics, the World Championships... or just skating for us. It's your choice now. No contracts. No pressure. Just you."
The jury returned thirty minutes later.
Guilty on all counts.
The sentencing would come later, but as the bailiffs led Nikolai Volkov out of the courtroom in handcuffs, he stopped one last time. He looked at Iris, and for the first time, the Siberian chill was gone. There was only the hollow, flickering realization of a man who had lost everything.
Iris didn't look away. She didn't flinch. She just stood there, her hand in mine, a woman who had survived the frost and found her way back to the sun.
We walked out of the courthouse an hour later. The media was still there, but they felt small now. Insignificant.
"Where to?" I asked as we reached the car.
Iris looked at the Chicago skyline, the Sears Tower glinting in the late afternoon light. She looked at her feet, at the way her shoes hit the pavement with a steady, confident rhythm.
"Take me to the rink, Reid," she said.
"The United Center? Or the community one?"
She smiled, a mischievous, beautiful look that I hadn't seen in a long time. "Neither. Take me to the pond. The one where we had that first fake date. I want to see if the ice remembers me."
We drove in silence, the city melting away into the suburbs. When we reached the park, the pond was frozen solid, a mirror of grey and white under the winter sky. It wasn't the perfect, Zamboni-cleared ice of the Institute. It was rough, wild, and real.
I grabbed our skates from the trunk. I knelt down on the frozen grass and laced hers first, my fingers moving with a practiced ease. Then I laced mine.
We stepped onto the ice together.
There were no monitors. No sensors. No haptic shocks. There was only the wind, the sound of the blades, and the weight of our hands joined between us.
Iris took a few slow glides, testing her edges. She looked like she was relearning a language she had thought was lost forever. Then, she let go of my hand.
She picked up speed. She moved into a spiral, her leg extending behind her with a grace that made my heart stop. She wasn't an "Ice Queen" and she wasn't a "Ghost." She was just a girl on a pond, rediscoverng the magic of the slide.
She skated back to me, her face flushed with the cold, her eyes bright with a fire that Nikolai could never have understood.
"I’m not going to Switzerland, Reid," she said, her breath hitching. "And I’m not going back to the Russian school."
"Then what are you going to do?"
She looked at the empty pond, then back at me. "I’m going to start my own school. Right here in Chicago. For the girls like Mila. For the skaters who want to win without losing themselves. And I want you to be the one who teaches them how to take a hit and keep going."
I laughed, pulling her into a kiss that tasted like the winter and the future. "Coach Reid and Coach Iris? The media is going to have a field day."
"Let them," she said, leaning her head against my shoulder. "We’ve survived the fire and the ice. I think we can handle a few headlines."
We skated until the sun went down, two shadows moving across the frozen pond, finally in rhythm, finally free. The Golden Boy was dead. The Ice Queen was gone. But as we left the ice that night, I realized that we had found something much better.
We had found the truth. And the truth was the only thing that had ever been worth the fall.