Page 87 of Wicked Knight

The two of them look like they’ve aged by a hundred years since I last saw them.

To my surprise, Mom flies out of her chair on seeing me and pulls me in for a hug.

She holds me like she thought something bad was going to happen to me. When she pulls away and a tear runs down her cheek, I feel like a jerk for not calling.

I’m guessing Maxim must have called them or something. Lord knows what must have gone on with when he spoke to them.

“Are you okay?” She looks me over, her eyes pausing on the jersey, on Dmitri’s number—42. She knows it’s his.

I’m further surprised to see that her eyes look sad for me.

“I’m here,” I mumble.

She brushes my cheek, then the softness leaves her eyes when my father stands.

She turns to face him and releases me. Usually, she stands beside him, but now she stays near me.

I stare at Dad. It hurts to look at him. The disappointment is evident in his eyes.

“I’m just going to skip past the parts where I ask you what you were thinking,” he begins.

“Don’t you want to know?”

“Mackenzie, don’t. I’m not going to argue with you today. We have bigger problems than finding out you’ve been seeing Dmitri Valneko behind my back and having his viperous father threatening me and my family.”

Panic twists in my chest, heavy and aching. It throws my heart out of cadence and stunts the flow of my blood. What could be bigger that it overpowers Dmitri and his father?

“What’s happening?” I look from him to my mother and notice just how bad they look. It was foolish of me to assume they’d had a run-in with Dmitri’s father when they’ve been dealing with him and his, as my father said, viperous ways for years.

Whatever is happening is outside of him and must have something to do with thethingI’ve been sensing and fearing for months.

“Daddy?” I prod. God knows when I last called him that. It was so long ago I can’t remember.

It seems like an endearment now and at least softens his expression.

“You asked me weeks ago if I was in trouble. I lied.”

Oh God. I was right. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Do you remember Keaton Chase, my business partner?”

“Yes.” I’ve only met him a few times, but he’s worked with my father since before I was born.”

“He set me up.”

My lips part as a silent gasp catches in my throat. “What do you mean, he set you up?”

“Last year, he got me involved in a partnership that was designed to screw me over. He sold private information to rivals, then I found out he embezzled over five hundred million dollars from the company, our clients, and our investors. He attached my name to it and left me high and dry.”

My heart kicks up a notch as my brain processes the gravity of the situation. “Oh my God. Where is he?”

“No one can find him, so I’ve been taking the shit and trying to pick up the pieces. I’ve been trying to save the company and pay people back. But I can’t do it anymore. The government is now investigating the company because of the substantial debt and findings that we’ve been dealing with illegal entitles.”

“What does this mean?”

“It means I could go to prison for a long time. Or the worst kind of people could come and kill us.”

I glance at Mom, who wipes away fresh tears.