Chapter 2 The Ultimatum

[POV: Lanaya Roux]

The player's tunnel was a suffocating throat of concrete and shadows.

Maverick's grip on Lanaya's elbow didn't loosen. His long fingers dug through the thick fabric of her jersey, the heat of his palm seeping into her skin like a brand. An unwanted electric jolt shot straight up her arm. She hated it. She hated the immediate, traitorous way her body registered his touch.

"Let go of me," Lanaya warned. Her voice echoed off the damp walls.

"Not until you listen."

"I have nothing to say to you. And I definitely don't want to hear whatever lie you've cooked up about Crew."

She yanked her arm back hard enough to strain her injured shoulder. Maverick used her momentum against her. He stepped smoothly into her space, crowding her backward until her spine hit the rough concrete wall.

He was too big. Too close.

The heavy scent of cedar, dark musk, and pure adrenaline flooded her senses, suffocating the last remaining oxygen in the tunnel. Her breath hitched. A dark, twisted pull tightened low in her stomach, a physical awareness she violently tried to push down.

"It is not a lie." His voice was a brutal rasp. "But that is not why I stopped you."

"Then what? Did you just want to gloat about the tie?"

"Look at your phone, Lanaya."

She glared at him. Her heart was hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against her ribs, and it had nothing to do with the game. Without breaking eye contact, she dug her phone out of her gear bag.

The screen lit up the dim tunnel.

Six missed calls from Camden Roux. One forwarded email attachment from her father's assistant.

Lanaya opened it. It was a drafted press release.

Redstone Franchise Files for Bankruptcy. Crew Roux Memorial Foundation Slated for Immediate Liquidation.

The concrete wall dug painfully into her shoulder blades. The air left her lungs completely. "No. My father would never let this happen."

"He is broke, Roux." Maverick stepped a fraction closer, trapping her between his arms. The friction of his chest brushing hers sent a sickeningly hot spark straight through her. "He has been bleeding money for years. The only way to save Redstone and the foundation is a joint merger with my father."

"What does that have to do with us?"

"The board won't approve the buyout if the two star players are tearing each other apart on national television. We are a PR nightmare."

"Then I will request a trade."

"You can't."

"Watch me."

"No one will take you, Lanaya. Alexander already made sure of it."

The name came out flat. Not the way a son says a father's name with pride or resentment - something older than either of those. Something that had been worn smooth by years of learning to move inside that authority rather than against it. A weariness so settled it had become structural. For one unguarded second, she almost felt something like recognition. Then it was gone, and so was any softness in his eyes.

"He controls the league," Maverick continued, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register that vibrated against her skin. "You are locked in. We both are."

Lanaya pushed against his chest, but it was like shoving a wall of pure muscle. "What do they want from us?"

Maverick stared down at her. His eyes were storm-dark, filled with a volatile mix of rage and a starving, suffocating heat that made her pulse pound in her throat.

"An engagement."

Her blood ran ice-cold. "What?"

"They want us engaged. Publicly. By tomorrow morning."

Lanaya let out a harsh, broken laugh. "Fake engaged? To you? I would rather swallow glass."

"Do you think I want this?" He leaned down, his mouth brushing dangerously close to her ear. The sheer heat radiating off his body was unbearable. Electric. "You think I want to pretend to be in love with the girl who looks at me like I am a murderer?"

"You are a murderer."

He flinched. The muscle in his jaw ticked violently, but he didn't pull away. He stayed so close she could feel the heavy, rapid thud of his heart against her own.

"I won't do it," Lanaya whispered fiercely. "I will let the team burn before I put a ring from you on my finger."

"You will do it."

"You can't force me."

"I don't have to." Maverick pulled back just enough to lock his dead, grey-blue eyes with hers. The raw dominance in his stare made her shiver. "Because if you walk away tonight, I will buy Crew's foundation myself. And I will burn it to the ground."

Her hands curled into fists. "You wouldn't."

"Try me, Huntress." The toxic promise slid over her skin like a blade. "Say no, and see what I destroy next."

Lanaya shoved past him. She was done. Done with his voice and his heat and the way he said Crew's name like he still had the right to.

She made it ten steps down the tunnel before she stopped.

She didn't mean to. Her body just halted, the way it always did at this exact stretch of corridor, in front of the framed team photograph bolted to the concrete wall. The old Redstone junior squad, twelve years old in matching jerseys, squinting into the flash. Crew was in the center, grinning with his whole face, one arm thrown around Lanaya's shoulders and the other around Maverick's.

The three of them. Before everything.

She almost let herself remember what it had felt like to stand between them, how solid and permanent the world had seemed in that fraction of a second before the camera flashed. Almost. She turned away before the memory could finish forming, before it could show her the part that came after.

Then she made the mistake of looking back.

Maverick was not watching her anymore. He was watching the photograph. His jaw was tight, his arms loose at his sides, and his expression was something she had never once allowed herself to actually look at. Something that had no cruelty in it. Something that looked like a man standing at the edge of a wound that had never once closed.

He didn't know she was still watching.

For just that moment, neither of them was an enemy. They were just two people standing in a tunnel, staring at a boy who was never coming back.

Then Maverick's eyes shifted and found hers, and the cold slid back into place like a door being shut from the inside.

Lanaya turned away and walked out into the noise of the arena corridors and did not look back again.

But the image she carried with her, the one that followed her all the way to the parking lot and refused to let go, was not his threat.

It was his face when he thought no one was watching.