Playing for Keeps by Joanne Rock

Author:Joanne Rock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joanne Rock

Chapter Nine

“You don’t look all that surprised about my past.” Swiping the puck to Kyle, Axel tried to gauge his foster brother’s expression. He’d just spilled his guts about his years with the Destroyers, culminating in the confrontation with the biker on the way to the flight to Montreal.

After sleeping with Jennifer and realizing he needed to protect her at all costs, Ax figured the time had come to make his foster family aware of his past. While he didn’t need help fighting his battles, it wouldn’t be fair to the Murphys to be targeted without any warning.

He flipped a shot into the practice net beside Kyle, alone in a training room at the New York visiting team facility.

“Actually, I’m not.” Kyle pulled a puck closer with his stick, setting it up for his shot at the practice net next to him. “You never wanted to tell us much about your background, bro, and Dad couldn’t leave it up to chance.”

“I don’t follow.” Frowning, Axel stabbed his stick into the mat and stared at his foster brother – hell, his true brother in every way that counted.

Thank God the camera guys hadn’t been tagging after either of them today.

“You know Dad.” Methodically, Kyle fired shot after shot, pulling a new puck into position between each goal. “He thinks research is the key to business success. He orders preliminary studies for every property he’s ever considered buying. Do you really think he’d bring home a foreign teenager without looking into your past?”

Blindly, Axel watched as one puck after another drilled the practice net. When the last one found the goal swinging gently in the quiet aftermath, he blinked away his shock.

“You knew all of it?” Axel had omitted a few of the more hellish moments, of course, figuring no one needed to know about the beatdowns he’d seen. The abused teens that showed up at the club, willing to sell their souls to be a part of a new cycle of violence. One where they used their fists.

“Yeah.” Kyle nudged Ax’s stick with his. “From the start. Before we even left Helsinki that first time, Dad knew that you’d been running with those guys. But we had a family vote and it was unanimous. You were one of us, man, even then.”

Ax couldn’t even look at his brother. Not with his freaking eyes burning and his throat dry as a noonday desert.

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” He slammed the stick on the floor. Twice, for good measure. “I could have been a total head case. A violent SOB who carried drugs in my suitcase.”

“You didn’t look like a user. And hey, you weren’t so violent that I couldn’t handle you. Remember how I knocked your teeth out that time?”

Axel snorted a laugh.

“Jesus. It was one tooth.” He looked over at his dopey-ass, crooked-nosed brother. “I can’t believe you brought me into your freaking mansion on the Cape, knowing I was some loser gangster.”

“There, but by the grace of God, go I.

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