Chapter 154: Your Family Covered it Up So well

​"Kain," Reid whispered from behind me, his hand resting on the back of my chair, his knuckles white. "Who the hell did your sister just call?"

​"The kind of people who don’t exist on public records," I muttered back, my eyes fixed entirely on Edward. I knew my sister’s reach. The Evans family weren’t as influential as the McCoys or the Steins, but... Marina had spent the last decade building deep, fiercely loyal connections with the matriarchs and patriarchs of the country’s most powerful old-money syndicates.

She moved in circles where the Stein family were merely newcomers.

​For three long, agonizing minutes, a tense, suffocating silence stretched across the room. Edward kept his posture relaxed, but his eyes were hyper-focused, tracking every micro-movement Marina made.

​Then, her phone vibrated against the polished wood.

​Bzzzz.

​Marina picked it up, swiped the screen, and pressed it to her ear. She didn’t say a word. She just listened. As the seconds ticked by, the casual amusement on her face slowly withered away.

Her jaw locked, and her expression contorted into a mask of pure disgust and the temperature in the room plummeted to absolute zero.

​"I see," Marina finally said, her voice chillingly hollow. "Send the full file and the encrypted audio logs to my private server. Now."

​She cut the call and slowly lowered the device. She looked at Edward, a dark, dangerous glint in her eyes that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

​"Ah... turns out you’re sicker than I thought," she muttered, a cold sneer twisting her lips.

​Edward didn’t move, but the casual smile completely vanished from his face. "If you’re going to fabricate a scandal to protect a fraud—"

​"Edward," Marina interrupted, her voice dropping into a low, lethal register that cut him off entirely. "If you step away from my brother right now, walk out that door, and pretend you don’t know a single thing about his secret... I’ll keep a very specific piece of information to myself. I’ll keep the fact that exactly ten years ago, you violently raped an Omega girl when you were in a rut."

​The words hit the room like a physical shockwave. Behind me, Reid let out a sharp, horrified intake of breath, his frozen pine scent spiking with an immediate, toxic revulsion. I froze, my stomach violently turning as I stared at the man I had once respected.

​"And your family covered it up so well," Marina continued, her voice dripping with venom, "that absolutely no one else found out about it. Not the league, not the board, not the police."

​Edward flinched. It wasn’t a violent movement—just a sudden, microscopic jerk of his chin and a momentary widening of his pupils—but in a room full of highly trained athletes and protective instincts, it was loud enough for everyone watching to notice. The pristine, untouchable facade had officially cracked.

​"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Edward said, his voice dropping into a tight, strained rasp, his morning-dew scent turning sour and frantic. "That’s a baseless, slanderous accusation."

​"Is it?" Marina chuckled, a dark, humorless sound as she stepped around the table, closing the distance between them. "Funny. Then, let’s go into details shall we? Exactly one week after that incident, that Omega girl went missing. And she has not been found until today."

I gulped where I sat. This... isn’t this a crime? It felt like everything was turning into a movie all of a sudden.

"The Stein family bought out her entire neighborhood’s surveillance data, paid off her relatives, and buried the police report under a mountain of corporate nondisclosure agreements. But they didn’t delete the medical intake logs from the private facility your family owns, Edward. My people just pulled them."

​She leaned down, placing both hands on the armrests of Edward’s chair, trapping him in his seat as she brought her face inches from his.

​"Tell me, Edward. If I provide this proof to the media first, before you even have a chance to admit it..." she whispered, her voice a terrifying, quiet purr that vibrated through the sterile room. "Do you think you can still wash your hands clean? Do you think you can maintain that perfect, righteous persona of yours?"

​Edward’s jaw twitched, his breathing turning shallow as he stared into the eyes of a woman who could dismantle his entire life with a single keystroke.

​"You might try to retaliate," Marina whispered, leaning even closer, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. "You might expose my brother’s identity out of spite. But who do you think the public will judge then, hm? My brother—who hid his identity just to play a game of hockey? Or you—a predatory Alpha who raped an Omega and made her go missing afterwards?"

"You have no proof," Edward suddenly cut in, his voice dropping into a tight, defensive rasp.

The sheer desperation of a trapped animal finally pierced through his aristocratic veneer. He forced his gaze up, glaring at Marina through his eyelashes, his jaw locked. "You have no proof that I raped anyone, or that I made anyone go missing. It’s an ancient medical file. A ghost story. You can’t touch me with rumors."

​Marina’s lips curled into a cold, viciously sharp smile. She didn’t look offended. If anything, she looked like a prosecutor who had just watched a criminal walk right into a glaringly obvious trap.

​She slowly reached down, her manicured fingers hovering just an inch over her phone on the table.

​"Wanna see it on the platforms then?" she asked smoothly, her voice a quiet, terrifying purr. "Because my tech team is sitting on an encrypted link right now. All it takes is one press of a thumb, Edward, and those ’rumors’ will be trending worldwide on every sports, news, and social media outlet before you can even leave this parking lot. We can let the internet play detective with your family’s private clinic records. Let’s see how long your sponsors stay quiet."

​Edward’s breath hitched. His chest rose and fell in a shallow, frantic rhythm as his knuckles turned completely bloodless against the armrests. He clenched his fists so hard his entire upper body trembled, his eyes darting to the phone, then back to Marina’s unyielding face.

​He was completely paralyzed. The arrogant, untouchable captain of the Avalanche was gone, replaced by a man who knew that a single wrong word would activate his own public execution.

​"Kain," Marina said, completely dismissing the broken Alpha in front of her as she picked up her phone and slid it back into her trench coat. "Grab your things. We’re leaving."

​I didn’t need to be told twice. I stood up, my legs still a bit shaky from the residual adrenaline, but my posture was completely rigid. Reid didn’t move his glare from Edward until I reached out, wrapping my hand firmly around his wrist to pull him along.

The rigid, murderous tension in his arm slowly gave way to my touch, and he stepped back, falling into step right beside me like an unbreakable shield.

​Edward sat entirely still, his hands still tightly balled into fists as we walked past him. He didn’t look up, he didn’t call out, and he didn’t try to stop us. The terrifying, quiet finality that had filled his expression just minutes ago had completely imploded into the hollow stare of a man who realized he had just lost everything.

​But just as my hand gripped the handle of the heavy metal exit door, a strained, desperate voice cracked through the silence behind us.

​"It was an accident," Edward choked out, the words trembling with a sickening plea for absolution.

​We all froze. Reid’s entire body went rigid against my side, a dark, lethal rumble immediately vibrating in his chest, but I held him back with a firm squeeze of my hand.

​I slowly turned my head, looking back over my shoulder.

​Edward had finally lifted his gaze. The pristine, untouchable captain looked entirely hollow, his eyes wide and bloodshot as he stared at me, pleading with a desperate, pathetic urgency. "I didn’t do it because I wanted to, Kain. I was in a rut... I was completely out of control. The confusion... The fever... it took over."

​He took a shallow, shaking breath, his hands clutching the edge of the table as if begging me to understand. "Kain... I am originally not like that. You know me. You know the kind of man I am."

​Hearing him try to use his biology as a pathetic excuse, hearing him try to preserve a shred of my respect after everything he had done, made a violent wave of bile rise in the back of my throat.

His words didn’t evoke pity; they only made me sick to my core. The clean morning-dew scent radiating off him felt like a stagnant pool of rot.

​I looked him dead in the eye, my face a mask of absolute, freezing disgust.

​"Tell that to the girl you raped, asshole," I said, my voice cutting through the sterile air like a guillotine. "Even if it was a mistake, you should’ve taken responsibility for your deed. The Edward Stein I know does not run from responsibilities but... It seems I knew you wrong."

​Edward flinched as if I had physically struck him across the face, his mouth hanging slightly open, completely drained of color.