"You are not just handing over the raw files, Riley."

Jenna’s voice crackled through my laptop speakers, filling the silence of my kitchen.

"The league wants an eighteen-day 'Captain Off Ice' documentary," she continued, her tone leaving no room for argument. "You are producing the content framework, and you will approve the final timeline."

I stared at the grid of faces on the video call. "Seattle management will never approve a Comets staffer doing image rehab for Vancouver's captain."

"And Vancouver hates the idea of a rival team's editor holding the final cut," Jenna fired back, adjusting her headset. "But if you walk away, we bring in a third-party agency. If we do that, Evan’s narrative about the footage being a misunderstanding gets reopened for the disciplinary committee."

My nails dug into my palms. I refused to let Evan dictate the truth of last night.

"I'll do it," I said.

A new box popped onto the screen. Declan Vale leaned back in a leather chair, reading the digital script I had just uploaded to the shared folder. He wore a grey hoodie, his bruised knuckles resting on his chin.

"Anger issues?" Declan read aloud, his voice harsh and flat. "Fan altercation? Are you planning to cut me into a talking apology template, Brooks?"

"I didn't write the PR draft," I told him.

"Then fix it. I am not reading this garbage."

Two hours later, the fluorescent lights of the neutral training facility buzzed overhead.

"Just say you lost control without good reason," Mark, the league PR representative, instructed. He tapped his clipboard, glaring at Declan. "The sponsors need you to look humbled."

Declan crossed his arms over his chest guard. "I am not using Riley getting dragged by her lanyard as an excuse, but I am not pretending I swung at a ghost, either."

"You need to show remorse," Mark insisted, stepping closer. "The video is everywhere."

"And I am not your redemption prop," I said, stepping between them.

I grabbed the clipboard from Mark's hands. Pulling a pen from my back pocket, I crossed out the entire hero narrative the league had drafted. I scribbled a single sentence in the margin and shoved the paper against Declan’s chest.

He caught the clipboard, his eyes scanning my handwriting.

"'I chose to escalate the conflict when I could have walked away. That responsibility is mine.'" Declan read the words slowly. He lifted his gaze, locking eyes with me. "Why didn't you write your boyfriend's cheating into the statement? It would buy you plenty of sympathy."

"Because that is my private wound," I told him, keeping my chin high. "It is not your PR asset."

He spun the pen between his knuckles, the plastic clicking sharply against his silver ring.

"At least we speak the same language on this," Declan said.

We recorded the short statement right there in the hallway. When it went live ten minutes later, the internet comments remained brutal, but my chest felt lighter. I wasn't lying to keep my job.

By two o'clock, the ice rink dropped the temperature in the building by ten degrees. The Zamboni had just cleared the surface, leaving a fresh, glossy sheen.

I stepped onto the rubber matting by the bench, holding the wireless mic pack. "Lift your jersey."

Declan complied, exposing a rigid stomach covered in light sweat. I clipped the wire to his collar, my fingers brushing the cold fabric of his undershirt.

"You going to splice in the audio of Mason eating ice during his first shift?" Declan asked, looking down at me.

I yanked the wire tight, securing the pack to his shoulder pads. "After your legal hit, Mason took a penalty for a retaliatory shove. I never denied my brother was in the wrong."

Declan blinked, his taunting smirk vanishing entirely.

"Sit down," I ordered, pointing my camera lens at him.

He dropped onto the wooden bench, resting his forearms on his thighs.

"Let's get this on record," I said, hitting the red record button. "Mason holds a grudge because you mocked him to the press. You push him into the hardest physical matchups every time we play. Explain the difference between competition and intentional humiliation."

Declan stared directly into the lens. He didn't fidget. He didn't look away.

"Telling the press to keep the cameras off the ice was a jab at your brother," Declan admitted, his rough voice echoing in the empty arena. "I own that. But I will never apologize for a clean hit in the defensive zone. If he wants to skate in my crease, he pays the toll."

I lowered the camera slightly. He didn't deflect the blame. He knew exactly what he was responsible for, and he knew exactly what he refused to bow to.

Later that afternoon, my phone buzzed. Jenna’s name flashed on the screen.

"Next episode requires a full day outside the team," Jenna said over the speakerphone. We stood in the empty locker room corridor, the smell of athletic tape and cold air surrounding us. "Riley gets unedited footage rights. No secondary cuts from Vancouver."

Declan unlaced his skates, his jaw setting into a hard line. "Family, personal finances, and my home address are off limits."

His tone held zero room for negotiation. It was colder than when he rejected the apology script this morning.

"Fine," I said.

I pulled up the digital contract on my tablet. I typed his boundaries into the addendum, word for word, making sure the legal phrasing was ironclad. I handed the screen over.

He signed it with his index finger, handing the tablet back without another word.

Footsteps echoed down the concrete hallway.

Grant Keller, the Comets' alternate captain, walked past the visitor's bench. He wore his Seattle track jacket, his dark hair messy from practice. In his right hand, he carried a familiar silver rectangle.

My backup drive. The one I left in the editing room last night.

Grant stopped in front of me and pressed the cold metal into my palm.

"Do you need someone to go with you to the apartment?" Grant asked, his voice low. "To pack up Evan's things?"

Declan leaned against the doorframe, a faint, sharp smile touching his mouth. "Keller does employee aftercare too?"

Grant didn't look at me. He turned his head, fixing a dead stare on Declan.

"She doesn't need aftercare," Grant said, his voice lowering. "She needs people to give her back what belongs to her."

The amusement vanished from Declan’s face.

He pushed off the doorframe, squaring his broad shoulders as Grant stepped forward, closing the distance between them until their chests nearly brushed.

"Brooks, do not cut my locker room swearing into inspirational subtitles."

The heavy wooden door to the Vancouver Breakers' locker room slammed shut right in my face. The metal hinges rattled from the force.

"Don't worry, Vale," I called out, adjusting the audio receiver strapped to my belt. "I have plenty of material without digging through your trash."

The door swung open again. Declan stepped into the corridor, fully geared up in his dark practice jersey and heavy shoulder pads. He gripped his composite hockey stick, and I noticed the fresh split in the skin between his thumb and index finger. Bright red blood welled against the white athletic tape wrapped around his lower hand. He had not lowered his training intensity at all, despite the PR team's mandate to take it easy on camera.

"Is that going to mess with your stick grip?" I asked, pointing my camera lens at his gloves.

Declan stopped walking. A mocking smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't Grant teach you not to care about the rival captain?"

I lowered the camera rig, meeting his stare. "Grant is Mason's on-ice mentor. He is also my coworker. In the three years I dated Evan, Grant never crossed a single boundary."

The amusement vanished from Declan's face. His jaw set into a hard, unforgiving line.

"Then at least he knows the rules better than your ex," Declan said.

"Evan's lack of rules is exactly why I am standing in this hallway instead of producing my own campaign," I shot back, checking the battery pack on my monitor. "So let's just stick to the schedule."

"Fine by me," he muttered, turning toward the ice.

We moved out to the practice rink. I set up my tripod on the concrete walkway, shooting through the thick, scuffed plexiglass. Declan skated a quick, aggressive circle in the defensive zone before braking sharply right in front of my lens. A massive spray of shaved ice slammed against the barrier.

"I am not asking how you plan to fix your public image," I told him, speaking into the headset microphone that fed directly into his earpiece. "I want to know why you target Mason. Every time you match up against Seattle, your physical intensity doubles."

Declan leaned his heavy forearms on the top of his stick, his skates carving slightly into the frozen surface. "The most dangerous thing for a rookie isn't a lack of skill. It is the entire league telling him he is special."

"So you hammer him into the boards as a public service?"

"I make him pay a physical toll every time he crosses the blue line," Declan countered, his rough voice coming through my headphones crisp and cold. "Because that is exactly what he will face in the playoffs. If he wants to survive April, he needs to learn how to bleed for the puck in November."

I pressed my lips together, adjusting the focus ring on my lens. He was right. It mirrored my exact frustrations regarding my brother's career. Mason spent hours watching his own highlight reels on social media, soaking up the praise, but he scrolled past every turnover and missed assignment.

"If you see it so clearly," Declan asked, tapping his gloved fingers against the carbon fiber shaft of his stick, "why do you let everyone in this league call you the rookie's sister?"

"I corrected them for a year," I said, checking the exposure levels on the monitor. "Eventually, I decided to just put my head down and do my job."

Declan lifted his stick and struck the heavy blade against the glass. The sharp thwack made me flinch backward.

"Silence isn't consent, Brooks," Declan said, his gaze piercing right through the scratched barrier. "But people will take it as consent."

My fingers tightened around the metal tripod handle. The words dug straight into the bruised part of my pride. I had stayed quiet while Evan chipped away at my confidence. I had stayed quiet while Sloane paraded my private work around the charity mixer.

"I am not staying silent anymore," I told him, hitting the stop record button. "That is why I took this assignment."

Declan nodded once, a faint trace of respect flashing in his eyes before he pushed off the boards and skated back to the center ice.

By noon, the arena emptied out for lunch. I sat on a hard plastic folding chair in the concrete corridor, transferring the morning video files to my secure backup drive. The hum of the ice chillers filled the quiet space.

A voice echoed from the corner intersecting the weight room.

"Do not put the house on the market."

Declan. His tone lacked any of the arrogant drawl he used for the cameras. It sounded strained. Urgent.

"My bonus comes in next week," he continued, pacing just out of sight. His heavy footsteps echoed off the cinderblock walls. "I will handle the Vale Family Grill payment. Just give me five days."

A long pause stretched through the hallway.

"Just don't tell my sister," he finally muttered. "I don't want her worrying about the bank."

I grabbed the side handle of my camera and swung the lens away from the corner, aiming it dead center on the empty Zamboni entrance. I did not hit the red record button. I kept my hands busy coiling an XLR cable.

Heavy footsteps rounded the corner. Declan stopped short. He still held his phone in his taped hand. His eyes darted from my face to the camera rig, his posture instantly shifting into a defensive wall. He braced himself for the inevitable questions about his family's money.

"Private finances are not in the authorization," I said, keeping my focus entirely on the laptop screen.

Declan stared at me. He searched my expression for any sign of a lie, any hint that I was going to exploit his debt to manufacture drama for the documentary. I just plugged the coiled cable into my bag and closed the zipper.

"You heard the numbers," he challenged, taking a step closer.

"I heard a private conversation that has nothing to do with your on-ice performance," I replied, finally looking up at him. "My camera was pointed at the ice."

The tension eased from his shoulders. He checked the angle of my lens, then looked back at me.

"You really didn't record it."

"No."

Declan tucked his phone into his pocket. "Then I owe you the same courtesy. If I find anything on Sloane or Evan, I send it to you. I don't turn it into gossip."

My laptop chimed before I could answer. A message from Marcus Thorne filled the corner of the screen.

Secondary Cold Front tagline confirmed in Sloane's sponsor deck. It never existed on a Seattle server. Bring your personal access logs and every backup device to Legal at eight. Someone copied the private version.

I read the message twice. Only three people had ever touched that private file: me, Evan, and whoever had taken my silver drive at the charity event.

Declan saw my face change. "What happened?"

I closed the laptop. "Tomorrow I find out exactly how much of my work was stolen."

"You gave him the password, Riley."

Marcus Thorne, head of Seattle’s legal department, tapped his pen against the printed timestamps I had just submitted.

"Evan had authorized access to your shared workspace," Marcus continued, his voice void of sympathy. "He saw the drafts. That does not prove theft. More importantly, it does not explain how Sloane acquired the secondary tagline. That file never even touched the team server."

I gripped the edge of the conference table. "She took it from my personal backup drive."

"Which you left unattended at a public charity mixer," Marcus countered.

My supervisor, David, sighed from the corner of the room. "We are pulling you off the Cold Front winter campaign. The team cannot afford a public intellectual property war with a popular creator."

"That is my concept," I argued, keeping my voice steady.

"You keep shooting the Vancouver documentary," David instructed, ignoring my protest. "But if this investigation concludes that internal team assets leaked through your private cloud authorization, we will be reviewing your professional judgment."

The door clicked shut behind me a minute later. Evan was not in the meeting, but his ghost sat right next to me, turning my own trust into a weapon. I was paying the price for mixing my career and my relationship in the same cloud account.

Two hours later, the smell of cheap floor wax and frozen water hit me inside the community rink.

"I am not signing sticks for a B-roll montage," Declan told the foundation director, adjusting his helmet strap. "Get the cameras off me. Film the kids."

I kept my lens focused on the ice. I expected the league to force a standard bad-boy-plays-nice narrative for his image rehab. Instead, Declan directed the production crew to focus entirely on the volunteer coaches and the first-time skaters wobbling on the blue line.

A small boy in oversized shoulder pads hovered near the bench, refusing to step onto the ice.

Declan skated over and crouched, his skates carving a sharp edge into the surface.

"Are you scared of hitting the ice, or scared of them watching you hit it?" Declan asked.

The boy gripped the boards. "Both."

Declan nodded. He stood up, took two strides, and threw his weight backward. He hit the ice hard, his massive frame sliding comically into the corner boards.

The entire group of kids erupted into laughter.

Declan sat up, brushing snow off his jersey. He looked at the boy and held out his massive gloved hand. The kid smiled, grabbed it, and stepped onto the ice.

I recorded the raw footage. I did not adjust the lighting to make him look softer. I did not plan to cut it with emotional acoustic music.

During the water break, Declan skated over to my position by the glass.

"Will the engagement metrics look good?" he asked, leaning on his stick.

"Doesn't matter if they look good," I told him, checking my audio levels. "At least it isn't fake."

Declan stared at me through the scuffed plexiglass. "You should save that line for yourself."

My thumb paused on the dial. He already knew about the internal investigation from Jenna. He knew my job was on the line, but he did not use the moment to ask about Evan.

Ten minutes later, Declan’s phone rang on the bench. He answered it, his posture instantly stiffening. When he returned to the ice for the shooting demonstration, his focus was completely gone. He snapped a wrist shot too high, sending the heavy rubber puck crashing into the safety netting above the glass.

I found him in the locker room corridor after the session. He sat on a metal bench, staring at his phone screen.

I stepped closer to hand him the microphone pack. My eyes caught the bright white email display on his screen.

Vale Family Grill - secured account review.

Below the subject line, I saw the name Sarah Vale and the words residence collateral.

I shifted my gaze immediately to the floor.

Declan slammed the phone face-down on the bench. The sharp crack of the plastic case echoed in the narrow hall.

"How much did you read?" he demanded, his voice turning dangerously cold.

I dropped the microphone pack onto his gym bag. "I wasn't trying to read your email."

"You were standing right over my shoulder."

I squared my stance, refusing to back up. "I cut the camera feed twice for you yesterday when you asked. I do not steal private information to get ahead."

Declan stood up. He towered over me, his chest rising and falling heavily. The hostility radiated off him, thick and suffocating. But as he searched my face, the rigid tension in his jaw slowly cracked.

"I'm used to people taking a detail and turning it into a story," he muttered. It was a terrible, jagged apology.

"Then get used to me asking to film first," I fired back.

We stood there in the concrete hallway. Neither of us walked away. For the first time, we let the conflict burn out in the space between us instead of retreating.

At eight o'clock that night, Sloane went live on her channel to officially launch the Cold Front project.

I sat at my kitchen island, watching the stream on my laptop. The details were worse than the charity mixer. The duo glove-tap challenge I had specifically designed for Mason and Grant Keller was now playing out on screen between Sloane and a random minor-league player.

My phone vibrated on the marble counter.

Grant: This isn't just overlapping ideas. She ripped the entire sequence.

A second message popped up. Declan. No text, just a link.

I clicked it. It opened an archived database of Sloane’s content from the past two years. The search parameters were already set. It proved she had never used a winter-survival concept before this week. Declan offered no comforting words, just hard evidence.

I compiled the link, the stream screenshots, and my original storyboard into a new folder. I was going to send it straight to Marcus Thorne in legal.

My phone rang.

Evan’s name flashed on the screen.

I answered it, putting him on speaker.

"You really outdid yourself with the stream, Evan," I said.

"You need to drop the IP claim, Riley," Evan replied. His tone was perfectly calm. It sounded exactly like the voice he used when asking what I wanted for dinner last week.

"She stole my work. You handed it to her."

"If you keep chasing the Cold Front campaign," Evan said, his voice dropping to a smooth, threatening pitch, "I will call Jenna Ortiz and tell her you brought Seattle’s internal media assets to Vancouver just to secure your filming access with Vale."