Faking It With The Hockey Star

Justin’s POV

I straightened my spine, my instincts flaring. "What about him?"

"He wasn’t just some random ghost from her past."

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped animal. "He had history with my family?"

"A long, bitter business rivalry."

I stopped breathing entirely for a second. "With who?"

"Your grandfather."

I stared fixedly at the distant city lights glowing in the dark, the pieces of a generational war assembling in front of me.

"Your grandfather’s enterprise and Diane’s father’s commercial interests were locked in cutthroat competition for decades," he explained. "There were vicious legal disputes, failed land deals, high-level executives poached back and forth, and repeated covert attempts to utterly bankrupt each other."

My mouth went completely dry. "So this rot goes back even further than her."

"Yes."

"Was Diane actively involved back then?"

"Not officially."

"Officially?"

"She was the illegitimate daughter kept hidden in the shadows. But there are overwhelming indications that her side of the family possessed intimate, covert knowledge about your grandfather’s internal operations long before she ever met your father."

A sickening chill crawled up my spine, making every hair on my arms stand on end. "You’re telling me they were watching us?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Diane’s family network."

I slowly turned my head, looking through the glass doors toward the quiet interior of the house.

Suddenly, buried memories from my childhood rushed back with terrifying clarity. The lingering sensation of eyes on my back. The unmarked dark vans parked down the street. Mysterious strangers lurking near the gates of our properties. The untraceable phone calls. The threatening messages. The strange, subtle breaches in security that my grandfather had obsessively tried to fix.

I had always brushed those incidents off as the price of immense wealth and public standing.

But now? My skin prickled with cold terror.

"What about the recent surveillance?" I demanded in a low, dangerous whisper. "The threats?"

The investigator fell silent for a long beat. "Justin..."

"What about it?"

"The threatening messages and surveillance you and your inner circle have experienced recently... they weren’t all originating from the legal operatives you assumed."

My heart slammed against my ribs so violently it felt like a physical strike. "What are you saying?"

"Some of the digital footprints and physical sightings we’ve cross-referenced lead directly back to enforcers connected to Diane’s extended family."

I couldn’t speak. The vast balcony suddenly felt suffocatingly small, the night air crushing me.

"Are you certain?" I finally managed to croak out.

"No investigation is absolute until every single link is prosecuted in court," he warned sternly. "But the evidentiary connections are far too strong to ever consider a coincidence."

I stared blankly into the pitch-black night.

The stalker vans. The shadowy faces. The constant, suffocating feeling that an invisible hand had been hovering over my entire life. The cryptic messages sent to intimidate us. The endless pressure applied to break my father.

It wasn’t random. It had never been random.

It was a systematic, multi-generational obsession. Someone had been studying my mother, my grandfather, and my family for decades patiently waiting, watching, and mapping every structural weakness until they found the perfect way inside.

The investigator’s sharp voice pulled me back. "I’ve just transmitted the encrypted files to your primary address."

My phone buzzed heavily against my palm. I looked down at the screen to see several massive, password-protected documents sitting in my inbox.

"Read every single line," he instructed gravely. "Do not rely solely on the summary I’ve just given you over the phone."

"I won’t."

"And Justin?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful."

I frowned, my grip tightening on the casing. "Why?"

"Because if Diane’s bloodline has been orchestrating this for as long as the paper trail indicates, you are no longer dealing with a single rogue stepmother. You are standing in front of a legacy of hatred."

The line went dead.

I remained frozen on the balcony for several long, silent seconds, the wind whipping past my ears.

Then I turned on my heel and walked inside.

I sat down at the table, flipped open my laptop, and entered the security code. The first document decrypted and expanded across the bright screen. Then another. Then another.

I read through pages of dark history, financial fraud, and medical horror until my eyes burned and my mind felt raw.

And now, lying in the dark bedroom beside Harper, listening to the soft, rhythmic sound of her breathing, I finally understood the terrible dread that had been consuming me.

This nightmare wasn’t just about Diane’s ruthless greed.

It wasn’t just about my mother’s tragic murder.

It wasn’t even just about the stolen company.

It was a massive, monstrous web that had been woven long before I was even born a dark inheritance that had slowly, systematically reached out to wrap its suffocating tendrils around everything I loved.

My safety. My family’s legacy. Harper. The people standing beside me.

I turned my head on the pillow, watching Harper sleep so peacefully beside me, her face soft in the faint moonlight. She had no idea the depth of the darkness I had just uncovered. She had no idea what kind of monsters were lurking outside our doors.

I didn’t want to break her heart. I didn’t want to terrify her. Not yet.

But tomorrow, the passive waiting was over.

Tomorrow, I was going to hunt down the exact fault line where this corrupt machine had been allowed to feed.

Because there was no power on earth that would make me stand back and allow these people to walk away unpunished. Diane was already facing the crumbling wall of justice for what she had done to my mother. But if there were architects standing behind her in the shadows... if her family had really been haunting mine for generations...

Then I was going to unearth every last one of them.

I needed every single name. Every secret connection. Every foreign account. Every living soul who had laid a hand on my mother’s slow destruction.

I wasn’t going to wake up tomorrow overwhelmed with questions and paralyzed by fear.

I was going to wake up with one ruthless, unyielding mission:

Find the fault line, expose the monsters, and burn their shadow empire to the ground.