Chapter Text
They had been married for 32 days.
Shane knew this because he had, in the first flush of post-wedding administrative efficiency, updated 16 accounts, 2 insurance policies, emergency contact information with the Ottawa Centaurs' medical staff, and next-of-kin designation with the league. Urgent, necessary matters which he handled with the same seriousness which he applied to all things in his life. He’d put the changes into motion a mere 72 hours of their small, private ceremony in their backyard that had involved a Rihanna song, very few people, no chairs, and Ilya crying during the vows in a way he had subsequently and strenuously denied, and the single best meal Shane could remember eating in his adult life.
And now was the big conversation: estate planning, their assets, and what combining them would look like.
The binder had twelve tabs. Shane had made a copy for Dr. Osei. He had also prepared a fifteen-point agenda, a document package, and a brief cover note flagging the sections he anticipated would require the most discussion and why. He had emailed all of it ten days in advance.
He had gone back and forth about whether the cover note was too much. He had decided it was not. He thought it was necessary.
He was Shane Hollander; he had approached his financial future with all of the key characteristics of a Hollander. Afterall, his mom had guided his career, negotiating sizable contracts for him, and his father worked for the Treasury. It was in his blood.
The idea of all of this wasn’t entirely practical; Ilya took care of him in so many ways. The idea that he could, in some way, take care of Ilya did things to him. Providing for Ilya, it was one thing he could do.
The core premise behind Shane's entire approach to today was simple: he was the more financially savvy of the two of them, which, practically speaking translated to being the wealthier one; he’d designed his life that way, to make his money work for him. Not that he was going to be that obnoxious about it, but he thought it was important in ways that would become apparent once they were sitting in front of a professional and all the numbers were on the table. Shane had been careful and deliberate with his finances since his first MLH contract. He had read the books. He had met with the advisors. He had made every unglamorous, patient, responsible decision that most twenty-two-year-olds didn't make. He had an index fund strategy, a bond ladder, a diversified real estate portfolio, and a commercial property partnership in Kanata.
Ilya, meanwhile, had approached today's meeting with the same organizational energy he brought to most things in his life, except hockey: confident, yet chaotic, and generally not stressed out about whether things would work out in his favor.
Shane had received a call from Dr. Osei last week. "I want to flag," she had said, carefully, "that I received Mr. Rozanov's documentation."
"Oh good," Shane had said.
"It arrived," she said, "as four voice memos, iPhone photos of what we believe are paper statements, two spreadsheet files that appear to be in different currencies, screenshots of multiple brokerage apps taken at, what the timestamp suggests was two-seventeen in the morning, a PDF that is entirely in Russian, and a note that said, " she paused, "more coming, sorry, very busy, Sofya had a thing."
Shane had been quiet for a moment. "Who is Sofya?"
"I don't know," Dr. Osei had said.
"Did he send the rest?"
"He sent three additional voice memos," she said. "One of which is eleven minutes long. The others are shorter, one of them appears to have been recorded while he was driving, we’re going through it all now."
Shane considered this in the context of how his husband approached these sorts of things, in his experience, and shook his head. "Right, I'll see you Thursday."
He was not surprised. He was not even particularly annoyed. This was, in fact, precisely why today was necessary. Because Ilya was gifted and charismatic and beautiful and brilliant on the ice, and he was also a man who sent voice memos and screenshots to his financial planner, at two in the morning, and thought this was suitable financial disclosure and that there was a delay in sending information because of someone named Sofya who occasionally had things. Shane was going to be the one who provided structure. He was going to bring the binder. He was going to be the responsible partner.
This was, in every meaningful sense, a role Shane had assigned himself and rightfully so.
The fact that he was walking into this meeting with the quiet but genuine confidence of the more financially competent husband was simply context.
Dr. Renata Osei, JD, CFP, CPA, PhD, had rearranged two appointments for this meeting, stocked the chocolate dish, briefed her paralegal, briefed her senior analyst, and taken a long walk around the block on Wednesday after finishing her review of Ilya Rozanov's financial documentation.
The walk had been necessary.
She had spoken with Shane on a preliminary call eight months ago. He had been referred to her by his manager, Farrah. Shane was anxiously overprepared, as he was about most things in life, and had asked forty-four questions over sixty-two minutes, like he’d get bonus points for knowing all the correct questions to ask.
Dr. Osei had asked about Shane’s partner, and outside of understanding that he too, was a high-earning athlete, and unlike Shane, he had a penchant for fast cars and 6-figure spending sprees. In other words, she had very little information about him.
Dr. Osei had since concluded that an in-person meeting when both parties were in the same room was a professional obligation verging on moral imperative.
She had received Shane's agenda, documents, and cover note. She had forwarded the email to her paralegal with the subject line: Please review. Extra time needed. Also extra chocolate. Also please cancel my four o'clock.
Her paralegal had responded: Is he a professional athlete or a financial management consultant?
Dr. Osei had responded: Both?
She had then spent four days working through Ilya Rozanov's documents with her senior analyst, who had emailed her on day three and said, I want to make sure I have this right, and she had replied, Check it again, and he had checked it again and emailed back and said, Yes. This is right, and she had said, All right then, and had sat very quietly at her desk and looked out the window at the Ottawa street below for quite some time before getting back to work.
They arrived together, four minutes early. Ilya was in a jacket, clearly expensive, that Dr. Osei assumed had been acquired during one of the shopping events Shane had highlighted in one of his many follow up emails. Shane had the binder. He was wearing a collared shirt and looked like a man who had prepared extensively, and was appropriately smug about it.
She greeted them and led them to the conference room.
"Dr. Osei." Shane shook her hand. "The supplementary documents are indexed to tabs seven and nine. New tab twelve was added Wednesday."
"Thank you."
"The document cover note flags tabs four and nine as the highest-priority discussion items."
"I reviewed both."
"Tab nine specifically. "
"I read tab nine, Shane."
Ilya shook her hand. His English was better than what she had heard in the voice notes and was deliberate in the way a man who had learned it as an adult knew to use it in environments like this: not hesitant, but assembled, each sentence placed with the care of someone who understood that precision and fluency were different virtues and had chosen precision. "Good afternoon. Chocolate?" He nodded towards the bowl of chocolates placed on the conference table.
Dr. Osei nodded and smiled. She gestured for them to sit.
"Mmm," Ilya hummed, with genuine approval, and sat down, and immediately had a chocolate.
Shane sat as well and cleared his throat and opened the binder to the table of contents and looked at Ilya.
"Did you bring anything?" Shane asked. "Documents? Statements? Anything?"
"I sent documents," Ilya said.
"You sent voice memos."
"Voice memos are documents."
"They are recordings, Ilya. "
"Of my voice. Describing documents."
"That is not… " Shane looked at the ceiling briefly, then at Dr. Osei. "I’m sorry."
"No need," Dr. Osei said. "I was able to work with what I was provided."
"One of them was eleven minutes long." Ilya offered, helpfully.
"It was very thorough," she said, which was true in a way that defied easy explanation.
"He sent one while driving." Shane clarified.
"The acoustics were challenging," she allowed. "But the content was useful."
Ilya ate a second chocolate and looked out the window at the street, completely unbothered, and with the conviction that he had done everything that was asked of him and considered his contribution adequate.