Blood on the Rocks: A Slapshot Prequel (A Slapshot Prequel Trilogy Book 1)

by Myers, Heather C.

  “Can I just say something?” she asked. Seraphina couldn’t find her voice so she merely nodded. “Papa came to me to discuss this last April. I was one of his witnesses to sign everything.”

  “Wait, so you’re not mad?” Seraphina asked. “About me, getting the team over you?”

  “It was always going to go to you, Sera,” Katella reassured her sister. “Papa knew that I had my own business to worry about, and me and Matt are getting more serious. I’m the one who couldn’t handle getting the team, even if it was split between the two of us.”

  “But why me?” Seraphina said.

  “You two had discussions about the team, didn’t you?” Katella pointed out. “He valued your opinion. Sera, he believed that you could handle this. He believed that you could do this. Papa had faith in you. And you know that that means something. Look at what he gave Alan and Ryan, and those are his sons. He even made it a requirement that they get tested before they can accumulate any money. He lost faith in his own children. Just because you’re young and inexperienced doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means it’s going to take you longer to be good at it. But you will be good at it. Papa wouldn’t put you under this pressure, wouldn’t give you an entire hockey franchise if he didn’t think you’d do well.”

  “Why do you think he made it so that if I sold it, everyone got an equal amount?” The question was meek coming out of her mouth.

  Katella shrugged her shoulders and looked away. “I have no idea,” she said. “Maybe because you selling the team would be like you not having faith in yourself, and if you don’t have faith in yourself then punish Alan and Ryan doesn’t really mean anything anymore. Selling the team is a shortcut – why do you think Alan wants to sell everything right away? He just wants the fast cash. And yeah, selling this team would mean that everyone would be set for life – we wouldn’t have to work. But, I don’t know, as lame as it sounds, it means we get a boring though financially-stable life. Papa started this team. He didn’t want to sell it to get quick money. He didn’t care about that. He was comfortable. He wanted to keep his dream alive no matter what. God, I sound like an afterschool special, don’t I?”

  Seraphina chuckled, nodding her head. “Yes, you do,” she murmured. “But it’s working. Do you really I can do it?”

  Katella placed her hands on her sister’s shoulders and locked eyes with her. “In all honesty Sera, I think you can do whatever you want to do,” she answered. “And I think Papa thought the same thing.”

  Seraphina felt Katella release her, felt her eyes look at the dull concrete underneath her feet before nodding once, twice, three times, before looking up. “Okay,” she said in a quiet voice. “Okay, we can go back inside.”

  Katella followed her younger sister back into Mr. James’s office. “Well?” he inquired once the door was once again shut. Seraphina noticed the different faces looking at her. Alan looked both pissed off and hopeful that Seraphina would sell. Henry offered her a small smile, his grey eyes offering more support than she expected. She couldn’t actually read the look on Simon’s face, but he seemed indifferent despite the calm look on his face. And Ryan was looking out the window, behind Earl’s desk. Seraphina wasn’t sure if he cared about the outcome of this anymore or not.

  “I’m going to keep the team,” she said. “I don’t want to sell.” And as she spoke the words, she realized that they were true.

  Chapter 3

  Seraphina barely had time to take a sip of her heavily creamed-and-sugared coffee before the doorbell rang. It was the next morning, and Katella was in the shower, preparing for another day of work despite Seraphina’s suggestion that she take some time off to cope with Papa’s death. But Katella was weird in the way she handled her grief; maybe it had to do with the fact that she was the oldest of the two, but she seemed to prefer to bare her pain by herself, alone, and throw herself into other activities rather than allow herself a moment to be sad or ask people for support. Seraphina wished Katella didn’t try to be strong all the time.

  In merely a loose t-shirt and short shorts, Seraphina stood on her toes in order to see who was outside, calling on the sisters at such an awful seven-thirty hour. Frowning in recognition, she rolled her feet back down and opened the door with her free hand, wondering just what Detective Christopher Williams of the Newport Beach Police Department wanted.

  “Sorry for the early hour,” he said with a sheepish smile. Seraphina herself wasn’t immune to this smile, and she was certain that the thirty or so year old detective employed it for his benefit. “But I have a couple more follow up questions, if you don’t mind.” With his blue eyes, he took in the sight of Seraphina, realized his mistake, and forced them back to her face, causing both to flush. “Right, may I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  Seraphina led him to the dining room before excusing herself to change into something more appropriate. Having a crush on the police detective wasn’t exactly part of the plan, and it wasn’t as though Seraphina actually expected anything to come from it, but it was a nice distraction during those lonely moments just before she went to sleep where her eyes were closed, her body exhausted, but her mind cruel and awake, thinking and overanalyzing everything she should have, could have, would have done to save her grandfather. Though such criticisms still existed, she wasn’t as plagued by them as she had been before meeting Christopher Williams.

  For a police detective, Christopher Williams was handsome, with curly black hair and those sea-blue eyes. Whenever he smiled, a dimple popped in his left cheek, and he had this way of making whomever it was that he was talking to feel safe. Or maybe that was just Seraphina. He wasn’t too tall, barely five foot nine, and though he didn’t have that much muscle on him, he was compact, looking as though he could hold his own in a fight even if his opponent was bigger and stronger than he was. Today, he wore a blue long-sleeved shirt – just setting his blue eyes off even more than they did on their own – and grey slacks, with recently polished black loafers. Very professional, indeed.

  Seraphina figured the detective might want to talk to herself and her sister, so Seraphina coaxed Katella out of the shower, and after a few minutes of throwing on conservative clothing, the two sisters joined the detective in the dining room.

  “Would you like some coffee, Detective?” Katella asked. She had always been a good hostess, even when the two sisters were young and threw sleepovers. In fact, Katella was quite a pro at making coffee and she didn’t even drink the stuff.

  “Yes, please,” he said, nodding. His eyes rolled up to the high ceiling and then to the wall before following the hallway out and into the living room. “Nice digs you got here.”

  “Oh,” Seraphina said, taking a seat across from the detective. She felt her face flush, but this time, for a different reason. She always got uncomfortable when people noticed and mentioned the fact that she could afford to possess nicer things than women her age, feeling as though perhaps she didn’t deserve such an extravagance at such a young age. Of course, a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like her grandfather would remind her that both she and her sister had gone through more than other kids their age. “Yeah, thanks. It was a gift.”

  “Your grandfather must have really loved you guys,” Christopher said more to himself then thanked Katella once she handed him the black coffee.

  “We were all he had,” Katella said as she sat next to her sister with own glass of orange juice. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, as though she saw Christopher’s words as some sort of criticism against the sisters.

  “You both must have been close to him.”

  “We were.”

  Seraphina watched as he took a long gulp of coffee, surprised that he didn’t shrink back at the heat. Maybe he was used to drinking hot liquids and his tongue developed a blister from it or something.

  “This is some good coffee,” he said once he finished. “Wow. I’m impressed.”

  “Detective Williams” –

  “Ch
ris,” the detective corrected Katella. Seraphina watched as her sister forced a smile.

  “Chris. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to be at work soon in order to go over proposed idea for this season’s events. Is there any way we could get right to it?”

  “So the Gulls are going to play this season?” Chris asked, directing the question at Seraphina rather than Katella. “Awesome. I love the Gulls.” He looked back at the older sister and nodded his head. “Of course, Ms. Hanson. Again, I apologize for the intrusion. We’ve gone through the evidence at the office – you can actually go in it and use it or whatever you were planning to do with it, just so you know – and had a few more questions for the two of you.” He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a small flip notebook with a pen attached through the spiral. “The first is a basic question; I’m sure you’ve seen it in the crime shows on television. Did you grandfather have any enemies?”

  “No,” both sisters replied at the same time.

  “Our grandfather was tough but fair,” Katella explained.

  “People maybe didn’t agree with everything he said or every decision he made, but they respected him,” Seraphina added.

  Christopher nodded as he took notes. When he finished, he looked up at the two of them, his left hand curled into a fist, resting on his hip. “Tell me about these selling rumors,” he said.

  “I don’t understand,” Katella murmured.

  “The team,” Chris said. “There were a couple of stories that ran in the Orange County Register, a couple of interviews on ESPN, talking about how there were rumors your grandfather was planning to sell the team. Were these true?”

  Both girls were silent for a moment, both thinking if they remembered him possibly mentioning selling the team in passing.

  “He never really talked business with us,” Katella finally said.

  “Well, he would ask me my opinion about things every now and then,” corrected Seraphina, an index finger caressing the tip of her chin.

  “Really?” Chris asked. He sat up straighter, leaned in closer to Seraphina, his eyes an incredibly intense shade of blue. “What do you mean?”

  She wasn’t sure if it was because of her silly crush or if she felt uncomfortable talking about something that had been so closely guarded to herself that she would rarely even tell Katella, but Seraphina felt herself leaning back, as though trying to pull away from Chris’s orbit, in order to keep her head up from drowning.

  “Well, he never went into detail,” she explained. Seraphina didn’t want to hinder the investigation, but her secrets between she and her grandfather were the only things she had of him that nobody else possessed. Her sister didn’t even share these tidbits of stray information with him. And now she was expected to share it not only with Katella, but a stranger. “He would ask me what I would do, given a particular situation. He would give me both sides to the story, or the situation, and I would tell him what I thought. I never knew what he was going to do until he did it, and sometimes, I never learned what hypothetical we talked about turned into a reality.”

  Chris said nothing, but furiously took notes. “You inherited the team?” he asked, not looking up, still writing.

  “Uh, yes, yes I did,” Seraphina responded.

  “And you’re okay with this?” Chris asked, directing the question at Katella.

  Seraphina could tell her sister was getting annoyed with this question due to the way her lips pursed and a wrinkle formed between her brows. Before she met Matt, her patience was nearly as thin as Seraphina’s, but apparently relationships required patience and needed to acquire that patience. And she did, but there were moments, such as this one, when the threat of losing it was pressing.

  “I have my own company I need to run,” she said. Her voice was a bit shaky as it came out of her mouth, only because she was trying – and failing – to control the tone of her voice so it didn’t come out sounding snarky. “My grandfather came to me before he... died and asked me what I thought about this and I agreed that Seraphina should get the team. She should do it.”

  “Uh huh.” His voice was hard to decipher; was he just so entirely consumed with his writing or was he bored with how the interview was going? “Did either of you know that the team was losing money?” Now his eyes snapped up, probably to gage the sisters’ reactions.

  “No,” they both said once again. “He never talked about losing money,” Seraphina said.

  “Well, we have his financial books and it seems that he was losing money.” He stopped, reaching up to rub his high forhead with his fingers. “Or, I guess I should say, the franchise was losing money.”

  “Just because the team was losing money doesn’t mean Papa was going to sell the Gulls,” Katella said. Her patience was gone, Seraphina could tell, but her voice was controlled. “He created the team, put money into Sea Side so the team had a place where they could play home games. I don’t care if he was close to bankruptcy, there is no way my grandfather would have sold the team.”

  “Not even to spend more time with you guys?” Chris asked, pushing his brow up. He glanced between the two of them before looking back down at his notebook and flipping through some sheets. “I talked to Simon Spade, your grandfather’s financial advisor, and he said that Ken was considering selling the team in order to spend more time with the two of you.”

  Both sisters opened their mouths to say something, but nothing came out.

  “I mean,” Chris pressed, “could it be a possibility that he was maybe considering it and just hadn’t told you?”

  “I,” Seraphina began, but then stopped. “I guess it could be a possibility.”

  “I don’t think so,” Katella said, shaking her head. “No way. We live five, ten minutes away from him. I’m involved in coordinating the team’s charity events and dating the team’s captain, and Seraphina helps him make decisions whether she knows the details or not. He knew he could call us and we’d be over there at the drop of a hat. And we always see each other on Sundays, no matter what. He loved that team. There was no way he was going to sell it.”

  “So you’re saying Mr. Spade is wrong?” Chris asked.

  Katella opened her mouth, closed it, before finally saying, “In this case, yes, I say that he’s mistaken. Maybe he interpreted something my grandfather said in the wrong way or misheard something. But I’m sorry, I don’t believe my grandfather wanted to sell the team.”

  Chris nodded his head, rubbing his lips together as he took a few more notes. The scratch of the pen against the paper was the only sound in the quiet dining room.

  “One last set of questions, ladies,” he said, giving them a disarming smile. Seraphina felt her heart flutter at the sight of it, but from the corner of her eyes, she could tell her sister was unmoved. “Thanks again for your cooperation. We’re almost done here.” He flipped through his pages until he reached what Seraphina assumed was a blank page just waiting for him to write down their responses.

  If she was being honest, Seraphina felt herself start to get annoyed with all the questions being asked. She wasn’t sure if Katella’s attitude was rubbing off on her or if she was just getting sick of it, but not even Chris’s charm and good looks could dissuade her from starting to feel a tad frustrated.

  “Right, did either of you know of a small disagreement between your grandfather and one of his players, a Brandon Thorpe, the goaltender?” Chris asked.

  “I don’t know Brandon personally,” Katella said, and her voice took a tone of unease. “But I know of him. Obviously. Matt just mentions that he doesn’t really go out with the guys after practice or games. I never heard of a dispute.”

  “What kind of dispute?” Seraphina interrupted.

  “Financial,” Chris said and then chuckled to himself. “I apologize. It’s not funny. But really, what else of disputes are there, you know? Anyway, the people I’ve interviewed mentioned that Thorpe was supposed to sign a few weeks ago, but decided at the last minute to hold out for a bigger sa
lary, and that seemed to ruffle Ken’s feathers, so to speak.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Katella said.

  “I...” Seraphina sighed through her nose, glancing at the wooden table. “Papa called me in a couple of weeks ago to talk about a player. He never mentioned a name, but obviously I knew it was someone from the team. Basically, he talked about a player who was supposed to sign but decided to hold out for more money. He wanted to know what I would do if I was in his position – do I trade him to another team and get another player that would ultimately cost less but isn’t as good a player, or do I keep him, pay the salary, and keep the good goalie. I asked him a few questions – was there any way to compromise? Was this player really serious about wanting all this money? And he answered.” Seraphina gripped the armrests of her seat. “I don’t know what he chose to do. He didn’t tell me.”

  “Well, what advice did you give to him?” Chris asked.

  Seraphina had to think about it, her mind swimming past the strong currents of his recent death before she found what she was looking for. “My grandfather is adamant about certain things,” she began. “For example, the Gulls Girls aren’t only required to be beautiful and outgoing and have a passion for the Gulls, but if they’re students, they have to have at least a 3.0 GPA. It wasn’t a league requirement or anything, it was his. When it comes to his actual players, he wanted them to not only possess good skills on the ice, but he wanted somebody courteous and approachable off the ice. He wanted them to look at the team as a family, and wanted them to create a bond with each other, to possess a strong sense of loyalty to the team. My grandfather rarely made trades; he believed that just give it some time, encourage the guy, and have a little faith and they would get better. He only traded those guys who were – for lack of a better term – selfish assholes.”

  “Did your grandfather consider Thorpe a selfish asshole?”