"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."

"I am not dropping the claim."

I slid my unlocked phone across the polished mahogany table, pushing it straight toward Marcus Thorne.

The head of Seattle’s legal department stared at the screen. Evan’s call logs glared back at him in bright white pixels, alongside the raw export data from my shared workspace.

"He threatened to tell the league I am funneling Seattle assets to Vancouver," I said, keeping my hands flat on my lap. "I want full transparency on my end. Now."

Jenna Ortiz’s voice clipped through the speakerphone in the center of the table. "Evan knows you need Seattle’s historical footage to build the rivalry angle for Declan’s documentary. If he spins this to the press, they won't care about the context. They will just see a Comets employee handing confidential files to the enemy."

"Then we lock the process down," I told her.

"Every file you export requires a second team signature," Jenna ordered, her tone leaving zero room for negotiation. "No exceptions, Riley. It is an ugly look, but it protects the league."

I nodded at the plastic speaker. I didn't need blind trust right now. I needed an audit trail. A clean, undeniable link of evidence that anyone could verify.

Two hours later, Grant Keller stood by my desk in the media room. He did not lean into my space. He did not try to offer a comforting hand on my shoulder. He just stared at the tablet in his grip.

"File 402," Grant read aloud, his voice steady and clinical. "Usage: B-roll. Export time: two fourteen."

"Matches the drive," I confirmed, hitting the copy shortcut on my keyboard.

Grant signed his name with the digital stylus. He handed the tablet back.

"Thank you for doing this," I said, taking the device.

"I am just reading numbers," he replied, sliding his hands into his track jacket pockets. "But since we are clearing the air, my offer for coffee still stands."

I stopped typing and looked up at him.

"I liked you long before Mason got drafted," Grant stated, meeting my gaze head-on. "Last year, during the community drive. You fought the sponsors to keep the kids' faces off the main broadcast. You had a boyfriend then, so I kept my distance."

"I need to get through this crisis first," I told him.

"I can do later," Grant smiled faintly. "Just do not let the drama across the border convince you that stable means boring."

He didn't mention Declan by name. He didn't list his own stats or try to prove he was the better option. That restraint carried more weight than any loud sales pitch. I appreciated the respect, but I reminded myself quietly that his decency did not obligate my affection. Accepting someone's boundaries and choosing them were two very different things.

Mason blocked the doorway to the editing bay an hour before practice.

"I am glad Keller is signing your sheets," my brother said, leaning his heavy frame against the metal frame. "At least he won't drag you into the opponent's locker room mess."

I turned away from my monitors. "Grant is a coworker, Mason. He is not a safety monitor you assigned to watch me."

"I just want someone I trust around you," Mason argued, crossing his arms over his chest guard. "I would never accept Vale."

"Why does a relationship that doesn't even exist need your approval?"

"Because Vale spends every shift trying to take my head off!" Mason shouted, his voice echoing down the empty hall.

I grabbed my mouse and clicked open the team scheduling portal. "You can hate each other on the ice. Do not draw me onto your tactical board."

I highlighted Mason’s entire social media request queue. I dragged the folder out of my directory and dropped it straight into Chloe’s inbox.

"What are you doing?" Mason asked, dropping his arms.

"Transferring your personal video schedule to Chloe," I said, hitting the final send button. "You want to dictate my personal life? I am removing myself from yours."

Mason stared at the screen, his jaw tight. He finally realized I wasn't throwing a tantrum. I was rewriting our boundaries, and it was going to change exactly how we worked together.

At seven o'clock, the Vancouver arena felt like a concrete freezer.

Declan sat in the swivel chair next to my temporary editing station. He wore his dark home jersey, still sweating from the warm-up skate. He stared at the digital transfer log on my tablet, his eyes locking onto the bottom line.

"The league finally assigned you a Seattle-approved chaperone," Declan remarked.

He tossed the tablet onto the desk. The metal casing smacked sharply against my keyboard.

"Are you jealous?" I asked, pulling the device closer.

Declan let out a harsh laugh. "Of Keller? The stable, reliable, media-friendly alternate captain? I don't need a PR badge to prove my worth."

He bit out every compliment like a curse word. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the armrests of his chair.

"Safe is not an insult," I shot back, spinning my chair to face him fully. "What is actually dangerous is a guy who packages all his worst impulses and calls it honesty."

The mocking grin vanished from Declan’s face. He leaned forward, resting his heavy forearms on his knees. The space between us shrank instantly, the air growing thick with unspoken challenges.

My phone buzzed on the desk. Jenna’s name lit up the screen.

"Read it," Declan commanded, his eyes never leaving mine.

I picked up the phone, swiping open the message. "Jenna says we have to stay in the empty arena after your game tonight. The long cut goes live tomorrow morning. We don't leave until it is rendered."

Declan stared at me, the harsh lines of his face cast in the blue glow of the monitors.

"Then tonight you better not use Keller as a comparison," Declan warned, his voice going rough and low. "I have no interest in losing the editing room to a guy who isn't even here."