Chapter 252 Chapter 252: Author's POV

Chapter 252 Chapter 252: Author's POV
Chapter 252: Author's POV
The arena was loud. Really loud. The type of sound that made your chest vibrate.
The Jumbotron kept cutting to the tunnel. To him. Helmet on, visor down, gloves laced tight. Twenty minutes straight of commentators saying his name like it was the only word they knew.
"Zane! Zane! Zane!"
He didn't look up at the sound because he didn't need to. Under the visor, his mouth twitched, almost a smile. Forty thousand people screaming a name that wasn't his.
The gate opened, and he skated out into the arena like he owned the place.

In the warehouse, the TV light flickered across Olive's face.
She wasn't watching. She told herself that. But she couldn't stop herself from watching, and she watched anyway, eyes locked on the number on his jersey, on the way he used his left edge to come out of a turn.
For a second, she thought this was wrong; he doesn't turn like that.
She'd watched so many of his games, the past ones, every playing ones, and somehow she knew, or maybe she was overthinking it.
"He always chooses them," Simon said. He wasn't even looking at her. Just the screen. Calm. Like this was a different circumstance for him, not having people's lives at his fingertips.
"He chose them before. He'll choose them again."
Olive said nothing.
Beside her, Ruby had gone quiet too. Watching the game, horror etched on her face, sweat formed on her forehead. Cole kept yanking at the tape on his wrists every time the crowd roared, like noise alone could cut through it.
"Stop it," Olive snapped at him. "You're only making it tighter."
"Oh, sorry, Olive, let me just relax while we're kidnapped," Cole shot back. "Great idea."

Three hundred miles away, Alonso sat in a private box with a clean view of the center ice and watched like a man finally getting to solve a problem he'd been chewing on for years.
Years of planning this. Scouting reports. Standing close enough at galas to watch the man he hated breathe.
The hatred he had for him burned through him so that he wanted everyone close to him to feel it.
Zane was the only friend he had, yet he had betrayed him without thinking, and now, he will make him suffer.
The first shift started with a clean zone entry. There was a hard hit on the boards, hard enough to put a winger flat on his back, then came a drop pass that should've been a turnover and somehow became a scoring chance.
Alonso smiled to himself. There it is.
The game took him months to figure out the perfect way to make Zane suffer while he chose, and he wondered, why not beat him at his own game?
Since he loved winning, why not make every win a pain in his ass?
A win that determines the future of the family he loved, or the woman he loves, playing, staying. Choosing this over a woman tied to a chair across the city.
Exactly how Simon said it would go.

By the second period, the commentators had stopped pretending to be neutral.
"Mercer looks different tonight," one of them said. "More aggressive. Almost reckless."
"You see it in the hits," the other one said. "That one on Delgado in the first, you don't throw that hit if you care about your own knees."
"Whatever's in his head right now, it's working."
Back in the warehouse, Simon smiled like the line had been written just for him.
Olive watched the player take a hit into the boards hard enough to make the glass shake. She watched him get up slowly. Watched him shake it off and skate right back into the play.
Her stomach turned. She didn't know why yet.

This was a tied game. The whole arena went quiet at once, the atmosphere thick with tension.
You could sense the collective breath being held, the excitement and anxiety swirling together.
Fans shifted nervously in their seats, eyes wide, the only sounds were the skates slicing through the ice and the pounding of hearts.
It felt like every single person in the stands was completely locked into that moment, anxiously waiting to see how it would all unfold.
It was more than just a game now; it was everything.
"Zane Mercer better pull up in this third period," the commentator said.
There was a tension in his voice; everyone expected Zane to win because that was Zane, Zane always wins.
In the warehouse, Simon's smile didn't move. But something flashed in his eyes did.
Olive's hands tightened against each other without meaning to.
"Why do you care who wins?" Simon asked, watching her instead of the screen now. "You hate him right now, don't you? For choosing them over you."
"I don't hate him," Olive said. "I hate you. There's a difference."
Simon laughed, low, like she had told him a sick joke.
Ninety seconds left. Then sixty. The bench erupted in a wild noise, their cheers drowning out everything else.
And in that moment, the player saw something no one else on the ice did, a chance. He lowered his shoulder and barreled through two defenders as if they were nothing.

In front of the net, chaos ensued. A rebound bounced away, one that seemed impossible to reach. But he dove for it, managing to flick the puck into the net just before the goalie could close the gap.
The horn blared, and lights flashed while forty thousand fans jumped to their feet.
Game over.
In the private box, Alonso couldn't help but smile, a real, genuine smile for the first time in what felt like forever.
His phone buzzed, snapping him out of the moment. One simple line from one of Simon's men monitoring the family's location:
Stand down confirmed. Choice made. Operation canceled.
He read it twice, as if afraid it might vanish before his eyes.
Meanwhile, in the warehouse, Simon leaned over Ruby's shoulder, reading the same message. He chuckled, satisfaction radiating from him.
It felt like closing a long, tedious chapter he'd been writing for twelve years.
"Well," he said, glancing at Olive with a smug grin, "there it is. Just as I predicted. He chose them. Again."
Olive remained silent, her gaze fixed on the screen. She watched the player skate toward the tunnel, stick held high, helmet still on, his face shrouded in mystery.
But something felt missing. She just couldn't quite figure out what it was.

Alonso didn't wait for the elevator. He took the stairs two at a time down to the private level, phone already in his hand.
Twelve years. Over. Finally over.
He walked the service corridor toward the locker rooms, thumb already on Simon's contact, ready to hear it said out loud.
Footsteps behind him. Even. Unhurried. He didn't turn. Security walked these halls all night. Nothing about it registered.
He reached the private room at the end of the hall. Pushed the door open. Stepped in.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Before he could raise the phone halfway to his ear, a hand closed around his wrist and slammed it into the wall. The phone left his fingers, skidded across the tile, screen still lit, call still ringing into nothing.
Alonso spun around.
The player, his enemy, whom he had fought hard against in the arena, stood there in full gear. Chest heaving. Sweat dark at the collar. One hand still pinning Alonso's wrist flat against the wall.
"What are you here for? Are you here to kill me, or what...?"
Alonso chuckled, his eyes pinned towards Zane, but there was something about Zane, something he's been trying to decipher ever since the game had begun.
Zane had played this game unhurried, had not even batted an eyes towards his threats. He had been calm. And winning at the last second like he had being messing with his head.
Zane didn't respond to his question; instead, the other hand came up, pulled the helmet off like it was nothing, and tossed it on the ground unhurriedly.
Alonso stared at the face underneath.
His face was blank; this was not Zane.
For half a second, that didn't even register. Then it hit him like a second hit, harder than the first.
"You're not—" Alonso started.
"You seem too slow, for someone Zane had considered fast." The man muttered, a sinister smile curving at the corner of his lips.
Alonso stared in shock.
If this wasn't Zane, then Zane was never on that ice.
If Zane were never on that ice, the game meant nothing. The stand-down message meant nothing.
Which meant Simon didn't know where Zane actually was.
Which meant the man who was supposed to be ten steps ahead of everyone hadn't been ahead of anything tonight.
"Who the hell are you?" Alonso said, for the first time ever, his voice shook.
For the first time ever, he didn't listen to his instinct, but that wasn't what scared him, what scared him was the man standing in front of him.