Page 28 of Sinful Mafia Santa

“Hey, Dwayne,” I say, after lowering my own window.

“Mr. Rider,” he says, standing a little straighter. “I’m sorry, sir. No one said you’d be coming in tonight.”

“No problem,” I say. “It was a last-minute decision.”

“Jack and Bulldog are on duty up in the main booth,” he says. “I’ll let them know you’re on your way.”

“Thanks,” I say. The guys will be keeping watch over two dozen security screens. If Dwayne puts them on notice, they won’t have to leave their comfortable booth. “Quiet night tonight?”

“Just what you’d expect on Christmas Eve. Totally dead.”

Totally dead.

“Have a good one,” I say, and I roll up my window. When I park in the reserved spot closest to the door, my name looks like a mistake on the sign.

I start to walk around to open Aeryn’s door, but she lets herself out. Her arms fold around her waist, like she’s trying not to puke.

I punch in the security code at the door and wait for an answering buzz. The door feels heavy when I finally yank it open. “The layout’s different from the last time you were here,” I tell Aeryn. “We finished renovations three years ago.”

“I’ve never been here,” she says. Her voice sounds very small, like someone shrank her down to the size of a puck.

I start to protest—of course she’s been here. But that’s a lie.

She came to Atlantic City to visit her brother. She stayed to fuck me. Once she and I started…whatever the hell it was we started, she stayed as far away from the rink as she could. She didn’t want Logan to know what we were doing. She didn’t want to give anything away.

“Then let me show you around,” I say, keeping my voice perfectly even. I own the Aces. I have keys to every door in the arena.

We start in my office—top floor, ocean view. There’s my desk and two couches, a work table for hashing out contracts and chairs where I can argue with idiots who think they know the game better than I do. There are four televisions mounted on the wall, so I can watch multiple games at once. My private restroom comes with a shower and dressing room.

Downstairs, I start in on the official arena tour. There’s the media gallery—TV and radio and press. I show her the refrigerator filled with pints of Aces Wild ice cream—a promotion with a local dairy that just keeps giving back.

We walk through the laundry and the kitchen and three different rooms filled with medical equipment. I show her our state-of-the-art gym. We stop by the visiting team’s locker room—clean and organized, but stripped down to basic requirements.

The equipment room is next—a wonder of precision sporting gear. There are rows and rows of sweaters, every number in every design the team has worn this season. Entire battalions of pads fill shelves, and helmets line up like shiny boulders. A forest of sticks is broken out by player, so each man can have the weapon he prefers. Shelves of skates stretch on for miles.

We pass through to the Aces’ locker room.

Her gaze goes past the metal benches, straight to Logan’s locker. His sweater still hangs like he’s starting tonight’s game—number 23. His skates are polished, the blades newly sharpened. There’s a photo of the team—the last one either of us played on—making the post-season for the first time in thirty-seven years. Without Logan and me, they went out in the first round. There’s a photo of the Reardon family—Mickey and his five boys, with Aeryn on the end.

“What—?” she starts to ask, but gives up on the question.

“It’s a memorial,” I say. I don’t tell her it was my first official order as owner of the team.

She swallows hard and nods.

I take her through the tunnel that leads to the bench. Almost all of the lights are off around the rink—just the red exit signs glow and a handful of security beacons. I could call down to Jack and Bulldog, ask them to turn on the overheads, but it’s peaceful here in the gloom.

“It’s huge,” Aeryn says, her voice barely a whisper.

I nod. “The first time I practiced with the Aces, I’d just come up from New Brunswick, from the AHL team. I climbed over the boards and skated to center ice, and I thought someone had played some sort of practical joke. The ice looked bigger than the state of New Jersey.”

She smiles politely, but I’m willing to bet she didn’t hear a word I said. She’s looking up in the rafters. She finds his number—23 again—on a flag as tall as two grown men.

“I retired it,” I say. “The first year I owned the team.”

Her eyes well up. She takes my hand. “Thank you,” she says.

I shrug because I don’t know how to respond.You’re welcomeimplies I did a good thing, but I didn’t. I did the only thing I could under the circumstances.