Page 3 of Twisted Play (Cruel Games #1)

ALEKSANDR

Dmitri

Have you selected your medical assistant for the year yet?

I stared at my phone, pain shooting through my knee. Sixteen years of silence, broken only by Dmitri’s occasional attempts to drag me back into the life I refused. I’d walked away instead. Chosen hockey over the brotherhood. Over revenge.

This wasn’t my cousin’s first attempt at contacting me. He’d done so over the summer as well, forcing an invitation to a socialite wedding on me—one of his mafia friends—so that I’d be forced to acknowledge him. It’d been a trap then, and it was a fucking trap now.

Dmitri

Take a second look at the applications.

I had. And a third look. And a fourth. Any of these utterly bland and interchangeable students would make fine assistants .

I leaned forward anyway, shaking my mouse until my computer screen illuminated.

Moments later, I scrolled through the list of applicants, only to shove myself away from the desk as if burned.

A new application sat at the top of the queue, added after the deadline.

I clicked through. Dion Hall, the athletic director, had added it with a note: Excellent academics, medic experience, stellar recommendations—you’ll like her.

“Eva Jackson.” Blyat. I stared at the photo attached to the application, her father’s green eyes staring back at me from a heart-shaped face surrounded by long red curls that begged for a man’s fingers to tangle in them.

Conrad’s daughter had teased at the periphery of my awareness as I let my thirst for vengeance cool into icy hatred. I’d known she was at Yorkfield University, and that she interned with the athletic program, but I’d otherwise ignored her existence. On purpose.

My hands trembled with rage as memories crashed over me.

Conrad Jackson destroying my knee with a metal pipe in that dark parking lot.

The crack of bone.

His silence as I screamed.

“Shoulda’ kept your nose out of hockey scores that don’t concern you,” he’d said quietly, his Irish accent barely discernible.

But I hadn’t been able to look away. I’d been twenty-two and stupid and hated the corruption poisoning the game I loved.

The doctors said I’d never play again. Six surgeries and a lifetime of physical therapy had proved them wrong, but by then, my shot at the NHL was gone. I’d crawled my way back to university coaching instead and built a new life for myself .

When I’d begged Dmitri to help me destroy Conrad Jackson, my cousin had given me an ultimatum. “Only if you come home to the bratva.”

Even then, I’d known it was a test I was meant to fail. If Dmitri had truly wanted me, truly loved me like family, he wouldn’t have forced me to choose. But I’d never been enough for him—not Russian enough, not brutal enough, not willing enough to give up my dreams of something more than violence.

I’d resigned myself to a life of solitude.

My cousin, my brother in every way that mattered, hadn’t loved me enough, and women ran when they discovered what I really wanted—total control, complete submission.

The ones who stayed wanted the fantasy, not the reality of belonging to a violent and vengeful man who needed to own every piece of them.

I hated Dmitri for reminding me of my loneliness, but I hated myself more for indulging in the maudlin emotion of want.

What game was he playing? Sixteen years of refusing to help me destroy Conrad Jackson, of watching me struggle through recovery and rehabilitation while that bastard lived his fucking life, and now he was handing me the perfect weapon?

I googled her name, preparing to hate everything about her, and scrolled by picture after picture, unable to look away.

Eva with her friends laughing. Eva at the beach, curves barely contained by a modest one-piece.

Eva studying, biting her lush lips in concentration.

Eva at a wedding—the same wedding Dmitri invited me to over the summer, where I’d seen her for the first time.

Every image revealed the same haunted look in her eyes, as if, no matter how joyous the setting, she could never truly leave the sadness behind .

My knee throbbed with phantom pain as desire warred with disgust in my gut.

She was stunning—all soft curves and vulnerability that made my hands itch to possess her, to break her.

I wanted to wrap those curls around my fist and force her to her knees, to mark every inch of that creamy, freckled skin until she forgot anyone’s name but mine.

She was Conrad Jackson’s daughter, the daughter of the man who’d taken everything from me, but my cock hardened anyway as she looked at the camera in another photo, innocent and tortured and absolutely fucking perfect.

No mention of her father in a single caption.

Were they estranged? No. Dmitri wouldn’t be sending her to me for any reason but to take my revenge on her father at last. Did he think this was enough?

That it would make up for refusing to help me all those years ago, when I laid in a hospital bed, begging for vengeance?

Or was it merely a tactic to manipulate me into coming back to the brotherhood?

I closed my eyes, imagining what I could do to Eva if she were part of the hockey program, the strings I could tie around her until I took away everything, using her as the instrument of my revenge.

My jaw clenched as my imagination ran wild. With the right leverage, I could take what I wanted from Eva, force her to submit without the pretense of love or trust. I could use her body and break her spirit and never worry about scaring her away, because she’d never have a choice.

The fact that some twisted part of me ached to earn her submission freely, to have her willingly give me the control I craved, only proved how fucked up I truly was.

This was a terrible fucking idea. I closed out of the window and pushed away from the desk, furious with myself for even considering playing Dmitri’s fucking games.

No gift from him came without strings attached.

It never had, and it never would. He’d denied me vengeance once to control me—this was just another way to drag me back.

I’d built a life from the ashes of my dreams here, at Yorkfield U, away from the bratva. My rage gave me purpose and had driven me to championship after championship.

Eva Jackson could destroy all that.

But I couldn’t resist, not when vengeance was finally within my grasp.

I busied myself with the paperwork that inundated me before the beginning of every school year—rosters, past grades, files of the players, none of whom would have kept up the strict training regime I’d requested since the Frozen Four the April prior.

Last year, we came in second, losing in the finals.

This year, I intended to win.

And maybe I’d take my revenge at the same time.

The fact that I was already hard just thinking about how I’d do it made me sick, but I couldn’t deny the dark thrill that raced through me at the thought of claiming Conrad Jackson’s daughter and making her kneel before me.

Damn you, Dmitri.

“Eva Jackson,” I said, peering over the paper file at the young woman before me.

She sat nervously in the plastic chair on the other side of my desk.

I could have interviewed student assistants in my formal office upstairs, but I liked to see how they reacted to being in the locker room of the best performing team at the university.

Dr. Parker had already triaged the applications and handed me half a dozen to interview.

I didn’t want anyone on my team I hadn’t personally selected—one of the perks of being a championship coach.

Oddly, I hadn’t had to put my thumb on the scale to get Eva an interview—her grades were impressive, as were her recommendations, even if she’d slipped in after the deadline.

Damn you, Dmitri. She hadn’t worked for a hockey team before, but I trusted Dr. Parker’s judgment. Mostly.

“Sir,” Eva said softly, and my chest cracked open at the innocence in her voice. She had no idea who I really was or the darkness I carried, no idea that every “Sir” from her lips was another nail in both our coffins.

“Why are you here, Ms. Jackson?” I asked, setting her file down and leaning back, letting my thighs spread slightly.

Her lips parted in confusion, and her tongue poked out to wet them before she collected herself. “I applied for the job, sir, and I assume I’m here because I made it to the shortlist.”

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the desk and letting my eyes roam over her.

She had no idea I already knew far more about her than a personnel folder could reveal, and the power imbalance was so fucking heady.

“The only work you’ve done for the athletic program is with women’s sports. This is the fucking hockey team.”

Her temper flashed in her eyes, darkening them to bottle green, and she lifted her chin, straightening her posture. “Women’s sports also deserve attention, Coach. My grades are excellent, and I’m more than qualified.”

“You had excellent grades,” I snapped at her, my voice hardening. “Last semester, you barely scraped by.”

Her jaw ticked, and she looked me straight in the eye, her fury barely contained. “My artificial heart valve failed last year, and I needed emergency surgery. The school let me start the semester later, and I worked my ass off to catch up. ”

My gaze dropped briefly to her chest, where the faint rise and fall of her breathing strained the too thin fabric of her shirt against her lace bra, her full breasts pushing out, begging for my teeth to scrape against her skin and mark them.

“And you think taking on a forty hour a week commitment is the way to do that?”

I didn’t know why I was giving her a hard time. I was going to take her on, devour this sweet temptation sitting in front of me, so determined not to give an inch, even if I despised myself for it.