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PART ONE: ILYA
The thing about fear was that Ilya Rozanov thought he'd already experienced every version of it.
Fear of being alone in a country that wasn't his. Fear of wanting a man he was supposed to hate. Fear of a phone call in the middle of the night telling him his father was gone. Fear of saying I love you and meaning it so completely that it hollowed him out.
He had not, until this moment, experienced the fear of staring at a photograph of his husband bound to a chair with duct tape over his mouth.
The photo had arrived on his phone at 6:47 PM, while Ilya was sitting in their kitchen in Ottawa eating leftover pasta and reading a text from Rose about a terrible audition she'd just bombed. One moment, he was laughing at a voice memo she'd sent—Rose doing an impression of the casting director who'd told her she was "too famous to play an unknown"—and the next, an unknown number.
Shane. Zip-tied to a metal folding chair. Duct tape across his mouth. A bruise already forming along his jaw. His dark eyes wide, not with panic but with the careful, measured stillness that Ilya recognized from a decade of reading that face. Shane was thinking. Calculating. Even now, even terrified, his brain was working.
Next to him, similarly bound: Hayden Pike.
The text beneath the photo read: $10 million. 48 hours. Tell the police and they die. We'll send instructions.
Ilya's hands stopped shaking approximately four seconds after they started, because he made them stop. He set the phone on the kitchen counter. He pressed both palms flat against the granite. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, the way his therapist had taught him.
Then he picked the phone back up and called the last person he ever expected to call.
It rang five times. Six. Moscow was eight hours ahead—almost three in the morning there. The line clicked.
"Da?" Rough with sleep and, if Ilya had to guess, vodka.
"Alexei."
Silence. Then: "Ilya?"
"I need your help."
A pause. Ilya could hear his brother shifting in bed—in the apartment on Tverskaya Street that used to be Ilya's. The nice one, bought with his first big contract, signed over to Alexei the morning after their father's funeral with a note that said I'm never coming back. Try not to sell the place for blow. Alexei lived there now with his wife and their four-year-old daughter. A niece Ilya had met once, sleeping in rooms Ilya had furnished.
Three years of silence, and before that, a fight at a funeral dinner that Svetlana had to physically step between them to stop. Their father was in the ground six hours and his sons were in a back room screaming at each other—Alexei red-faced and weeping about the years he'd spent watching dementia erase their father one visit at a time while Ilya sent money from across an ocean, and Ilya white-lipped with the knowledge that half that money had gone up Alexei's nose or across a poker table. Both of them right. Both of them wrong. Both of them too wrecked to see it.
None of that mattered now.
"Shane has been taken," Ilya said. "Kidnapped. Along with his friend. They want ten million dollars and no police."
The pause that followed was different from the first one. Ilya could hear it—the click. The gear shift. Whatever else Alexei was, he was a cop. A real one. Moscow PD's best investigator, with a clearance rate that made his superiors overlook the gambling and the drinking and the general catastrophe of his personal life. He'd been shot last year on a drug trafficking case—bullet through the shoulder, two weeks in hospital, back at his desk on day fifteen. The man who couldn't save himself had a gift for saving everyone else.
"Send me the photo," Alexei said. His voice had changed. Clipped, efficient, the accent flattening into the professional Russian he used on cases. Ilya had heard this voice exactly once before—when Alexei had called to tell him their father had wandered out of the care facility and been found two kilometers away in his pajamas, standing in the snow outside the rink where he'd coached peewee hockey for twenty years. Alexei had found him in forty minutes. The Moscow police hadn't even finished filing the report.
Ilya sent the photo.
"Room is industrial," Alexei said, studying it. "Concrete floor. Fluorescent lighting. Warehouse, garage, storage unit. The chair is standard folding type—nothing custom. Zip ties on wrists, duct tape on mouth. This is not professional job. Professionals use flex-cuffs and don't bother with duct tape. This is movie kidnapping."
"That makes me feel worse."
"It should. Amateurs panic. But amateurs also make mistakes." A beat. Ilya heard Darya murmur in the background—Kto eto?—and Alexei's muffled response: Go back to sleep. It's my brother. Then, louder: "You said no police."
"That is what they said."
"Good. Police are slow. I have something better." Alexei's voice dropped, and what replaced it wasn't the cop voice—it was something older, something that reminded Ilya of their father before the dementia, the voice of a man who was about to fix something. "Listen to me. I know people in Toronto. Russian community. Some are connected, some are just hard men. All of them watch hockey. Viktor Petrov—you remember me telling you about Viktor? He moved to Canada eight years ago. Runs a moving company. Former army logistics. I helped his cousin with a case in Moscow, got him out of something ugly. He owes me. And his business partner Dmitri was military intelligence."
"Alexei—"
"I also know a man named Sasha who has a gold tooth and once carried a refrigerator up six flights of stairs by himself. And Pasha, who will do anything for Centaurs tickets. They are not subtle men, Ilya, but they are effective."
"You have contacts in Toronto?"
"I have contacts everywhere. This is what happens when you are a Russian cop with a gambling problem—you meet people in every city. Some of them owe you favors. Some of them owe you money. All of them answer the phone at three in the morning." Alexei paused. "I can have four men in Ottawa in two hours. Good men. Men who know how to find people and how to walk into rooms where they are not welcome."
Ilya closed his eyes. His brother was a drunk and a gambler and had snorted away thousands of dollars meant for their dying father's care. He was also the man who'd found a dementia patient standing in the snow in forty minutes. Who'd taken a bullet and gone back to work. Who'd built a network across two continents just by being the kind of cop who solved things when no one else could.
"Do it," Ilya said.
"I will call you in one hour. Do not do anything stupid."
"I am not the one who does stupid things."
"You married your rival in front of the entire world. That is either the bravest or the stupidest thing a Russian man has ever done." But there was warmth in his voice now, cracking through like spring ice. "And Ilya?"
"Yes?"
"I watched the wedding. Online. Mila asked why Uncle Ilya was kissing a boy." A beat. "I told her it was because he loved him."
Ilya couldn't speak.
"One hour," Alexei said, and the line went dead.
Ilya stood alone in the kitchen of the house he shared with Shane. Their house. Shane's investment spreadsheets were still open on his laptop on the table. His running shoes by the back door, perfectly aligned. His reading glasses on a stack of financial reports.
Four hundred and fifty million dollars. Their combined net worth, thanks to Shane's almost supernatural ability to read markets the way he read defensive formations. Ilya would burn every cent of it to get him back.
But first, he had calls to make.
---
Rose Landry picked up on the second ring, because Rose always picked up on the second ring. It was a movie star thing—she'd explained once that her agent had trained her to never seem too eager or too unavailable.
"Did you listen to my voice memo? Because I think I nailed the impression of that director's weird breathing—"
"Shane has been kidnapped."
"—thing where he kind of whistles when he— what?"
Ilya told her. All of it. The photo, the ransom, the warning about police. He heard her breathing change—quick, sharp inhales, the sound of someone recalibrating their entire reality in real time.
"I'm booking a flight," Rose said. "Right now. I can be there by—"
"You don't have to—"
"Ilya Rozanov, I have been kidnapped in four movies. Four. If anyone is qualified to handle this situation, it's me." Her voice cracked, just slightly, and Ilya heard the fear underneath the bravado. "I'm usually the one getting kidnapped. This is my area of expertise."
Despite everything, Ilya almost smiled. "In movies."
"The principle is the same. I'll be there in four hours. Do not go Full Liam Neeson without me."
"I do not know what this means."
"It means don't do anything heroic and stupid until I get there. I've seen every revenge thriller ever made. I have a very particular set of skills." She was already typing—Ilya could hear her fingers on a keyboard, probably pulling up flights. "Have you told Yuna and David?"
Ilya's stomach dropped. Shane's parents. He had not told Shane's parents.
"I will call them now."
"Do you want me to—"
"No. I will do it. They are my family."
Rose was quiet for a moment. "Yeah," she said softly. "They are. I'll text you my flight info. And Ilya?"
"Yes?"
"We're going to get him back."
Ilya hung up and sat down heavily at the kitchen table. Anya, their scruffy Australian shepherd-terrier mix, wandered in from the living room and rested her chin on his knee, sensing something wrong the way dogs always did. Ilya scratched behind her ears.
Then he called Yuna Hollander.
---
Yuna and David arrived in twenty-three minutes, which meant Yuna had driven at least forty kilometers over the speed limit. Ilya was not surprised. Yuna Hollander, née Tanaka, was a woman who had managed Shane's entire career since he was sixteen years old, had negotiated contracts with NHL general managers who thought they could intimidate a five-foot-two Japanese-Canadian woman, and had once made a TSN reporter cry for suggesting Shane's mixed heritage made him "exotic." She did not observe speed limits when her son was in danger.
David came in first, quiet and steady as always. He'd retired from the Canadian Treasury two years ago, and the calm that had served him in government finance served him now—he shook Ilya's hand, then pulled him into a hug that lasted exactly long enough to be grounding without being overwhelming.
"Show me the photo," David said.
Ilya showed him. David studied it the way he'd probably once studied fiscal reports—methodically, without visible emotion. But Ilya saw his jaw tighten.
Yuna took one look at the photo and said, "Ten million is nothing. Pay it."
"We are not paying it," Ilya said. "Not yet. If we pay, there is no guarantee—"
"Then what are we doing?" Yuna's voice was controlled, but her hands were trembling. David reached over and took one of them. "If you're not calling the police and you're not paying, what is the plan?"
Ilya told them about Alexei.
Yuna blinked. "Your brother. The one you haven't spoken to in three years."
"Yes."
"The alcoholic police officer."
"He is very good cop," Ilya said, and meant it. This was the confusing thing about Alexei—he was a mess of a human being, but he had a gift for finding people. In Moscow, his clearance rate was legendary. He could drink himself unconscious at night and track down a missing person by noon the next day. The two things apparently coexisted without contradiction.
"And these Russian men in Toronto—" David began.
"They are fans. They will help."
"For what?"
"Season passes."
David and Yuna looked at each other.
"Season passes," Yuna repeated.
"To Centaurs games. Very good seats."
David, to his credit, took this in stride. "What do they do? For work?"
"I did not ask," Ilya said. "Alexei says they are... connected. And tough."
"Connected," Yuna said flatly.
"I trust my brother." The words surprised Ilya even as he said them, because he hadn't trusted Alexei in years. But this was different. This was about Shane. And whatever else Alexei was—bitter, jealous, broken—he was also family. He was also the man who'd taught six-year-old Ilya to lace his skates. Who'd sat at their father's bedside every day when the dementia took everything else away. Who'd resented Ilya for leaving Russia but had never once told him not to go.
"Okay," Yuna said. She straightened her shoulders, and Ilya watched her transform into the woman who'd stared down general managers. "What do you need from us?"
"I need you to stay here. I need you to be here when he comes home."
"And Jackie? Does she know about Hayden?"
Ilya felt a fresh wave of nausea. He'd texted Jackie twenty minutes ago. She'd called back screaming, then gone silent, then said, in a voice so flat it frightened him more than the screaming: Tell me what I need to do.
"She knows. Hayden's mother is with the kids. Jackie is on her way here."
Yuna nodded. Then she walked to the kitchen, opened the cabinet where Shane kept his tea, and began making a pot. Because that was what Yuna did in a crisis. She made tea, she made plans, and she held everything together with the sheer force of her will.
David sat beside Ilya at the table. "You're going to find him," he said quietly.
"Yes."
"I know you are. Because that's what you do. You've been fighting for him for twelve years, Ilya. You're not going to stop now."
Ilya looked at this man—this calm, steady, decent man who had accepted Ilya into his family with a handshake and the words *Welcome home, son*—and felt something crack in his chest.
"I will bring him back," Ilya said.
David squeezed his shoulder once, then let go.
---
PART TWO: SHANE
The thing about being kidnapped was that it was extremely boring.
This was not Shane's expected takeaway from the experience, but after four hours of sitting in a metal folding chair in what appeared to be an abandoned auto body shop somewhere in the greater Ottawa metropolitan area, boredom had eclipsed fear as his primary emotion.
His wrists hurt from the zip ties. His jaw ached where someone had hit him—a clumsy, panicked punch thrown by a guy who clearly hadn't thrown many punches. The duct tape over his mouth itched.
Beside him, Hayden was handling the situation with the quiet resignation of a man who'd spent fifteen years as a professional hockey enforcer and had experienced worse physical discomfort during a Tuesday practice.
There were four kidnappers. Shane had been studying them for hours, cataloguing details with the same obsessive precision he applied to game film.
Kidnapper One was the leader, a stocky man in his fifties with a Voyageurs tattoo on his forearm and the ruddy complexion of someone who spent too much time in bars. He paced constantly and kept checking his phone.
Kidnapper Two was big—taller than Ilya, which was saying something—and mostly stood by the door looking uncomfortable. He hadn't said more than six words since they'd arrived.
Kidnapper Three was wiry and agitated, the one who'd punched Shane in the van. He had a nervous energy that made Shane deeply uneasy, because nervous people made mistakes, and mistakes in hostage situations got people killed.
Kidnapper Four was the youngest, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three. He kept glancing at Shane with an expression that wasn't quite hostility and wasn't quite sympathy but was somewhere in the awkward middle ground between the two. He was also the one who'd brought them water and apologized for the zip ties.
"Sorry about... all this," he'd muttered, peeling back Shane's duct tape just enough for him to drink. "I know this is... yeah."
Shane had said nothing, because what did you say to a polite kidnapper?
Now, four hours in, the leader was on his phone in the corner, speaking in low, angry tones to someone. Kidnapper Three was smoking near the garage door, which was cracked open just enough to let in a slash of evening light. Kidnapper Two stood sentry. And Kidnapper Four—the young one—was sitting on an overturned bucket about ten feet from Shane, methodically peeling the label off a water bottle.
The duct tape had loosened. Shane had been working it with his jaw for the last hour, the way he'd seen an actor do in one of Rose's movies—the one where she'd played a kidnapped journalist in Beirut. Always keep your jaw moving, the character had said. Moisture weakens the adhesive.
Rose would be thrilled to know her career was finally paying off in practical applications.
Shane worked the tape free enough to speak. Quietly.
"Hey."
The young kidnapper looked up, startled.
"Your friend," Shane said, nodding toward Kidnapper Three. "He's going to get someone killed."
The kid's face drained of color. "He's not—he's just nervous."
"I can see that. That's the problem."
The young kidnapper glanced toward the others, then back at Shane. His throat worked. Up close, Shane could see that his hands were shaking. This kid was in over his head. Way, way over his head.
"What's your name?" Shane asked.
"I'm not supposed to—"
"You don't have to tell me your real name."
The kid hesitated. "Marc."
"Marc. I'm Shane."
"I know who you are." Marc looked down at his hands. "I... my son is named Shane. After you. He's three."
Something sharp lodged in Shane's chest. "You named your son after me."
"You were my favorite player. Since I was a kid. You were..." Marc's voice cracked. "You were everything. The way you played. The way you were with the team. And then you—" He stopped. Swallowed hard.
"And then I came out. And married Ilya. And left Montreal."
Marc didn't look at him. "My brother is gay."
Shane waited.
"He came out two years ago. My dad... it was bad. Really bad. He kicked Patrick out. I was the only one who still talked to him." Marc was peeling the water bottle label in tiny, precise strips, a nervous habit that reminded Shane uncomfortably of his own tendency to organize things when he was stressed. "I don't care that you're gay. I'm not—this isn't about that. It's just—"
"You loved the Voyageurs."
"I loved what you were on the ice. And then you left. You left Montreal for him. For Ottawa. And Michel—" He gestured toward the leader. "He lost his bar. The Voyageurs bar, on Rue Sainte-Catherine? When you and Rozanov came out, there was all this... media stuff. Protesters. Counter-protesters. It got bad. His bar became a target because he'd been vocal about... about not liking it. The bar closed. He lost everything."
"So this is revenge."
"It's money. Michel needs the money. We all—" Marc stopped himself, seemingly aware he'd said too much. He pressed the duct tape back over Shane's mouth, but gently. Almost apologetically.
Shane looked at Hayden. Hayden, who'd listened to the entire exchange with the expression of a man who was already planning how to escape. Their eyes met, and Hayden gave an almost imperceptible nod.
When the time comes.
Shane nodded back.
---
PART THREE: ILYA
Alexei called back in forty-seven minutes, which was thirteen minutes ahead of schedule. Ilya took the call in Shane's home office, surrounded by framed photos of the two of them—at the cottage, at their wedding, at the Centaurs' home opener where they'd skated out together for the first time as teammates and the arena had shaken with noise.
"I have four men," Alexei said. "Viktor, Dmitri, Sasha, and Pasha. All former military. Viktor runs a moving company in Toronto. Dmitri owns a restaurant. They are driving to Ottawa now. Two hours."
"Who are these people?"
"Friends of friends. Russians look out for Russians, even in Canada. Especially in Canada." Alexei paused. "Also, they are big fans. Viktor has Rozanov jersey in his restaurant. The signed one."
"I have never signed a jersey for someone named Viktor."
"You signed it for his daughter. Katya. At a game in Toronto, two years ago. She waited outside the arena for two hours. You were the only player who stopped."
Ilya remembered. A teenager with a Centaurs jersey and nervous hands. He'd signed her jersey and taken a photo with her. It had taken forty-five seconds.
"Pasha wants to know about the season passes," Alexei added.
"Tell Pasha he can have whatever seats he wants."
"I already told him. He cried."
"Is tough Russian military man. Why is he crying over hockey seats?"
"Because it is hockey, Ilya. You know how we are."
Ilya almost laughed. It came out as something closer to a sob.
"I am also coming," Alexei said.
"You are in Moscow."
"I am in Moscow now. There is a flight in three hours. I will be in Ottawa by morning."
"Alexei, you don't have to—"
"I do." His brother's voice was rough, stripped of its usual sardonic edge. "I have to. I missed your wedding. I missed—everything. I missed everything because I was too proud and too angry and too—" He exhaled sharply. "I am coming. Do not argue with me."
"I am not arguing."
"Good. Because I have already bought the ticket. It was very expensive. You are paying for it."
"Fine."
"Also, I need you to wire money for my hotel. And food. Moscow police salary is not what you think."
Ilya closed his eyes and felt something shift between them—not forgiveness, not yet, but the possibility of it. The first thaw after a long winter.
"I will send you whatever you need," Ilya said.
"I know. You always did."
---
The Russians from Toronto arrived at 11 PM in a black Econoline van that had "Viktor's Premier Moving Services" stenciled on the side. Viktor was a barrel-chested man in his late forties with a handshake that could crush walnuts. Dmitri was quieter, leaner, with the watchful eyes of someone who'd seen combat. Sasha had a gold tooth and a Centaurs hat. Pasha was the youngest, maybe thirty, and he stared at Ilya like he was meeting a saint.
"Captain," Pasha said, and actually saluted.
"Please don't do that," Ilya said.
"Sorry. Is just—I watch every game. Every game since you came to Ottawa. You are reason I start watching hockey."
"I thought Russians were born watching hockey."
"I was born in Vladivostok. We watch fishing."
They set up in the living room, which now looked like a war room. Yuna had made sandwiches and coffee. David had produced a map of Ottawa from somewhere and pinned it to the wall. Jackie sat on the couch, white-faced and silent, her phone clutched in both hands.
Rose arrived at midnight, straight from the airport, still in the cashmere sweater and jeans she'd been wearing during her disastrous audition. She walked in, assessed the room full of large Russian men, looked at Ilya, and said: "I see you went full Liam Neeson without me."
"Couldn’t just sit and do nothing."
"Since when do you listen to me?" She hugged him—tight, fierce, the kind of hug she reserved for the moments when she dropped the movie star persona and was just Rose from Traverse City, Michigan. "We're getting them back. Both of them. I will personally burn this city to the ground if necessary."
"You are movie star from Michigan. How will you burn city?"
"I've done it three times on screen. I know the theory." She pulled back, and her eyes were wet but her jaw was set. "What's the plan?"
"Viktor is tracking the phone that sent the ransom text. Dmitri has contact at a telecom company who can triangulate the signal." Ilya glanced at the four men huddled around a laptop at the kitchen table. "They are surprisingly well-organized for men who are doing this for hockey tickets."
"Viktor ran logistics for the Russian army for twelve years," Pasha said. "And Dmitri was military intelligence. We've got a good team here."
Rose raised her eyebrows. "You assembled a small Russian army within hours. Impressive."
"My brother assembled them. I just—"
"You called your brother. The brother you haven't talked to in three years." Rose's expression softened. "That took guts."
"That took desperation."
"Sometimes they're the same thing."
---
At 2 AM, Viktor found the signal.
The text had originated from a cell tower in the Vanier neighborhood—a pocket of Ottawa east of the Rideau River. Cross-referencing with commercial property records that Dmitri had somehow obtained access to ("You do not want to know how," Dmitri said, and Ilya did not ask), they narrowed it down to three possible locations: a closed auto body shop on Montreal Road, a vacant warehouse on McArthur Avenue, and an abandoned restaurant on Cyrville.
"Auto body shop," Viktor said, tapping the map. "Most likely. It has vehicle access, it is isolated at night, and it is owned by a numbered company that has been delinquent on property taxes for two years. Nobody is watching this building."
"How do we confirm?" Ilya asked.
"We send Pasha to drive by. He has van with tinted windows. Very discreet."
"The van says 'Viktor's Premier Moving Services' on the side."
"Is Ottawa. Everyone is moving. Very discreet."
Pasha left and returned forty minutes later with confirmation: there were vehicles parked behind the auto body shop, including a van matching the description of the one a witness had seen in the ByWard Market. (The witness was a busboy at a restaurant on Clarence Street. Dmitri had found him through a cousin who worked at a nearby shawarma place. The Russian network in Ottawa was apparently both extensive and efficient.)
"Four men inside," Pasha reported. "I saw movement through the garage door. It was open a crack."
"Four." Ilya looked at Viktor's team. Four Russians, plus Ilya, plus—
"I'm coming," Rose said.
Everyone looked at her.
"I'm not going inside. I'm not insane. But I'm coming, and I'm staying in the van, and if anything goes wrong, I'm calling every person I know, and I know a lot of people, including the deputy prime minister of Canada, who watched my last movie seven times and told me so at TIFF."
"I am also coming," Yuna said.
"Okaa-san—" Ilya used the Japanese term Shane sometimes called her by, and her eyes filled briefly. "Please. Stay with David and Jackie. I need to know you are safe."
Yuna looked at him for a long moment. Then she crossed the room, took his face in both her small hands, and said: "Bring our boy home."
"I will."
"And be careful. You are my son too."
Ilya had to leave the room for a moment after that.
---
PART FOUR: SHANE
At 3 AM, Shane broke free.
He'd been working on his restraints for hours, using techniques he'd learned from—of all things—a behind-the-scenes feature on one of Rose's action movies.
The first problem was position. His hands had been zip-tied behind his back, which was useless. He needed them in front. The stunt coordinator in Rose's Damascus Protocol featurette had demonstrated the technique: you thread your bound hands under your body, past your hips and under your legs, pulling them to the front. It required flexibility, a dislocated-looking contortion of the shoulders, and a willingness to look completely ridiculous.
Shane had practiced this in his living room one boring afternoon while Ilya watched from the couch with fond bewilderment.
"Why are you doing this?" Ilya had asked.
"In case I ever get kidnapped."
"You are professional hockey player in Ottawa. Who is kidnapping you?"
It had taken Shane eleven minutes in the living room. In the auto body shop, with adrenaline and desperation and the metal chair to contend with, it took nearly an hour of incremental adjustments—shifting his weight, working his bound wrists past one hip, then the other, threading them under his legs during the moments when no one was watching. His shoulders screamed. His wrists bled where the plastic dug in.
But then his hands were in front of him.
The second problem was the zip ties themselves. The stunt coordinator had been very specific about this part: Tighten first. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the tighter the tie, the more stress on the locking mechanism. That's where it breaks.
Shane raised his wrists to his mouth and pulled the tail of the zip tie with his teeth, cinching it tighter against his raw skin. He bit down on a hiss of pain. Then he adjusted his hands until the small square of the locking mechanism sat centered between his wrists.
He glanced at Hayden. Hayden, who'd been watching the entire operation with the quiet focus of a man who'd seen a lot of locker room insanity and learned never to question it, gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
Now.
Shane raised his hands above his head. He brought them down fast and hard into his stomach, flaring his elbows out wide—chicken wings, the stunt coordinator had called it—and wrenched his shoulder blades toward each other.
The locking mechanism snapped.
It worked.
The snap was louder than Shane expected. Kidnapper Two, who was supposed to be guarding them, had fallen asleep against the wall. Kidnapper Three was outside smoking. The leader was in the office, still on his phone. Only Marc was awake, and he was facing the other direction, looking at something on his own phone.
Shane pulled the duct tape off his mouth. Then he turned to Hayden and began working on his zip ties—these required a different approach, sawing the plastic against the metal edge of Hayden's chair.
"Plan?" Hayden whispered.
"Working on it."
"Great plan."
"Shut up."
The zip tie snapped. Hayden flexed his wrists, wincing.
That was when Shane saw the hockey sticks.
There were two of them, leaning against the wall near the door. Composite sticks, the expensive kind. They must have been in the shop already—maybe the owner had been a player, or maybe someone had stashed equipment here. It didn't matter. What mattered was that Shane Hollander had been handling a hockey stick since he was three years old, and Rose had made him watch every single one of her action movies, including the one where she'd fought off six mercenaries with a curtain rod.
"The principle is the same," Rose had said, demonstrating a spin move with a broomstick in Shane's kitchen. "It's all about leverage and rotational force."
"That's not real physics," Shane had said.
"It's movie physics. It's better."
Shane grabbed both sticks and tossed one to Hayden.
Hayden caught it, looked at it, looked at Shane, and grinned. It was the grin he used to wear before dropping gloves on the ice—wide, wolfish, and slightly unhinged.
The noise woke Kidnapper Two. He lurched to his feet, groggy, reaching for something in his waistband—
Shane pivoted on his back foot and swung the hockey stick in a flat arc that caught Kidnapper Two across the forearms with a crack that echoed through the garage. The man yelped, clutching his wrist, and Hayden was already moving—driving the butt end of his stick into the man's solar plexus like a perfectly executed cross-check.
Kidnapper Two went down.
Kidnapper Three burst through the side door, cigarette still dangling from his lip. Shane spun the stick—a move he'd practiced after watching Rose's Damascus Protocol—and brought the blade up under the man's chin. Not hard enough to break anything. Just hard enough to make him reconsider his life choices.
"Don't," Shane said.
The cigarette fell from the man's lip.
"Shane—" Hayden's voice, sharp with warning.
The leader had emerged from the office. He had a gun.
Everything stopped.
Shane stood very still, hockey stick still raised, looking at the barrel of a handgun held by a man whose hands were shaking badly enough that the muzzle traced small circles in the air. Behind the leader, in the doorway, Marc stood frozen, his face ashen.
"Put it down," the leader—Michel—said. "Both of you. Put the sticks down."
Shane lowered the stick. Slowly. Hayden did the same.
"You think this is a game?" Michel's voice cracked. "You think—I lost everything. My bar, my friends, my—all because you couldn't just be normal. You had to ruin it. You had to ruin the team, the city, everything—"
"I didn't ruin anything," Shane said quietly.
"You left! You left Montreal for him. For that Russian—"
"His name is Ilya. He's my husband. And I love him."
Michel's gun hand was shaking harder now. Marc took a step forward.
"Michel, put the gun down—"
"Shut up!"
And then the garage door exploded inward.
---
PART FIVE: ILYA
Ilya did not think of himself as a violent man. He had fought on the ice, yes—you couldn't play professional hockey for fifteen years without throwing punches. But off the ice, he had always preferred words, charm, the careful deployment of a smile or a well-timed joke to defuse tension.
He was not smiling when he came through the garage door.
Viktor had gone first, shouldering through the rusted metal with a force that suggested a lifetime of moving heavy furniture. Dmitri went second. Sasha third. Pasha held back, covering the rear exit. It was coordinated, precise, executed with the efficiency of men who had trained for exactly this kind of thing in a previous life.
Ilya went through fourth, and the first thing he saw was Shane.
Standing. Standing. Not bound to a chair but on his feet, holding a hockey stick like a weapon, his hair matted with sweat and his eyes blazing. The duct tape hung in strips from his jaw. There was a man on the ground, another against the wall looking dazed, and a third in the corner, frozen.
And in the center of the room, a stocky man with a gun aimed at Shane's chest.
Ilya did not think. Ilya moved.
Fifteen years of professional hockey had given him exactly one skill that translated perfectly to this moment: the ability to close distance at terrifying speed. He crossed the concrete floor in three strides, dropped his shoulder, and hit the gunman with a check that would have drawn a five-minute major and a game misconduct.
The gun went off as they hit the ground. The sound was enormous, a concussive crack that rang off the concrete walls and ceiling.
Ilya felt nothing. He was on top of the man, pinning his gun hand to the floor, and Viktor was there in an instant, prying the weapon free with hands that treated it like a piece of furniture to be relocated.
"Shane—" Ilya looked up, frantic, scanning.
Shane was standing exactly where he'd been. Unshot. Unhurt. Looking at Ilya with an expression that contained approximately seventeen different emotions, none of which Shane would ever be able to articulate verbally but all of which Ilya could read like a book.
"Hi," Shane said.
"Hi." Ilya was still on top of the kidnapper, who was groaning and trying to breathe. "You have hockey stick."
"I have hockey stick."
"You look very sexy."
"I just got kidnapped, Ilya."
"Still sexy. Cannot help it."
Behind them, Dmitri was efficiently zip-tying the kidnappers—a karmic irony that Ilya appreciated—while Sasha covered the rear exit. Hayden had the wiry kidnapper in a headlock that looked practiced and entirely painless for Hayden and entirely agonizing for the kidnapper.
Then Ilya heard it. A sound from the corner. A small, choked noise.
The youngest kidnapper—a kid, really, barely out of college—was sitting against the wall with his hands up and tears streaming down his face.
"I'm sorry," the kid said. "I'm sorry, I didn't want—I didn't—"
Shane walked over. Ilya watched his husband crouch down in front of this kid who had helped kidnap him, and say, in the steady, measured voice of a team captain addressing a struggling rookie: "I know. It's okay. What's your name?"
"Marc."
"Marc. I need you to stay calm and keep your hands where I can see them. Can you do that for me?"
Marc nodded, still crying.
Shane straightened and turned back to Ilya. "He's got a three-year-old son."
"And?"
"He named him Shane."
Ilya stared at his husband. "You were kidnapped by a fan."
"Technically I was kidnapped by four fans. But Marc is... he's complicated." Shane glanced back at the kid. "His brother is gay. He's not a bad person. He's just broke and desperate and made a terrible decision."
That was Shane. That was the man Ilya had married—the man who could assess a kidnapper's character with the same clinical precision he assessed a defensive scheme, and who would advocate for mercy even while the zip-tie marks were still raw on his wrists.
"We will sort this out," Ilya said. He pulled Shane into his arms, right there in the middle of the abandoned auto body shop, surrounded by zip-tied kidnappers and ex-Russian military men and Hayden Pike, who was still holding his kidnapper in a headlock.
Shane buried his face in Ilya's neck. "You came."
"Of course I came."
"You brought... Russians?"
"They are fans. They work for season passes."
Shane pulled back to look at him. "You assembled a hostage rescue team and paid them in hockey tickets?"
"Is very Canadian solution, I think."
Shane laughed. It was a broken, ragged, beautiful sound, and Ilya caught it with his mouth, kissing Shane in the fluorescent-lit ugliness of the garage, tasting salt and blood and relief.
"I also called Alexei," Ilya said against Shane's lips.
Shane went still. "Your brother Alexei?"
"Yes."
"The brother you haven't spoken to in three years."
"He is on a plane right now. He found these men. He organized everything from Moscow." Ilya touched Shane's face, tracing the bruise on his jaw with his thumb. "He watched our wedding. Online. He said I looked happy."
Shane's eyes filled, which was something Shane almost never allowed to happen. "Ilya."
"He is coming to Ottawa. To meet you. Properly."
Shane kissed him again, harder this time.
From across the room, Hayden cleared his throat. "Hey, uh, not to interrupt the reunion, but should we maybe call the actual police now?"
---
They called the police. They also called Jackie, who answered on the first ring and made a sound that Ilya would never forget—something between a scream and a prayer. They called Yuna and David, and Ilya heard David's voice crack for the first and only time.
When they got back to the house, Yuna was standing on the front porch in her coat, and she walked straight to Shane and held him the way only a mother could—fierce and complete and trembling.
"Don't ever do that again," she said into his shoulder.
"I didn't do it on purpose, Mom."
"I don't care. Don't do it again."
David shook Shane's hand, then pulled him into a hug, then shook his hand again because he wasn't sure which was more appropriate. Rose, who'd stayed in the van as promised, barged through the door and grabbed Shane's face in both hands, inspecting him like a horse at auction.
"Bruised jaw, minor abrasions, zip-tie contusions on both wrists," she catalogued. "Seven out of ten on the kidnapping survival scale. I've looked worse in three of my four kidnapping movies."
"Which one did you look better in?"
"Damascus Protocol. But I had professional makeup artists. You get bonus points for the hockey stick." She pulled him into a hug, and when she let go, her mascara was running. "If you ever get kidnapped again, I'm going full Liam Neeson. I mean it. I will find them. I will use my very particular set of skills."
"Your skills are memorizing dialogue and looking good in evening wear."
"Those are very particular."
---
EPILOGUE: ILYA
Alexei's flight landed at 9 AM the next morning, by which point the police had taken everyone's statements, the four kidnappers were in custody, and Shane had fallen asleep on the couch with his head in Ilya's lap and Anya curled against his legs.
Ilya didn't get up when he heard the taxi in the driveway. He waited, his hand resting on Shane's hair, until the doorbell rang and David answered it.
And there was Alexei.
He looked older than three years should have made him. Thinner. Gray at the temples, lines around his eyes that hadn't been there at the funeral. Cheap leather jacket. Single duffel bag. Standing in the doorway like a man who wasn't sure he was allowed inside.
"Ilya," he said.
"Come in," Ilya said.
Alexei stepped inside. His eyes moved across the room—photos on the walls, the dogs, the evidence of a shared life. Then he saw Shane asleep in Ilya's lap and stopped.
"He is smaller than I expected," Alexei said.
"He is five-eleven."
"For hockey player, is small."
"He is faster than anyone in the league."
"I know. I have watched." Alexei sat down in the armchair. "Every game, Ilya. Since you were eighteen."
Ilya's throat closed.
Alexei pulled his phone from his jacket and turned it to show Ilya the lock screen: a little girl with dark curls and their father's jaw, grinning gap-toothed at the camera. "Mila. She has your poster on her wall. The Centaurs one."
Ilya stared at the photo of the niece he'd never held. "She looks like Papa."
"She has his stubbornness. And his laugh." Alexei put the phone away. "I got sober, Ilya. Eight months. No gambling, no—" He couldn't say it. "Darya said she would leave. Mila deserves a father who is present. I know what happens when a father disappears."
They were quiet for a moment. The house ticked and settled around them.
"I want Mila to know her uncle," Alexei said. "I want to be part of this. If you will let me."
Shane opened one eye. "I can hear you talking about me."
"Go back to sleep, solnyshko."
"Tell your brother Mila can come visit whenever she wants. We have a yard. And a dog that digs really impressive holes."
Alexei looked at Ilya. "He always like this?"
"Always."
"I would like the chance to get used to it."
Ilya reached across the space between them—the three years, the six thousand miles, the funeral and the fight and the silence—and took his brother's hand.
Alexei squeezed back. Hard. The way he used to when they were boys on the frozen pond near their father's workshop, holding on so neither of them would fall.
"There's leftover pasta in the fridge," Shane said, eyes still closed. "Ilya makes it with canned snails. Don't ask."
Alexei looked at Ilya. "Snails?"
"Is long story."
"I have time," Alexei said. "I have all the time."
Outside, the March sun was rising over Ottawa, pale and cold and relentlessly new. Anya snored at Shane's feet. Somewhere in the kitchen, Yuna was already making tea.
And Ilya Rozanov—captain of the Ottawa Centaurs, first overall draft pick, husband, brother, uncle, son—sat in his living room with everyone who mattered and let himself breathe.
fin.
Author's Note: For Marc, who named his son after a hockey player and learned that love is never a betrayal. For Alexei, who flew six thousand miles to prove that family is a verb. For Mila, who thinks her uncle kissing a boy is just okay. And for Shane and Ilya, who were never really rivals at all.