The Hockey King's Coveted Billionaire Heiress

Bethany Marsh POV:

I shoved the phone deep into the pocket of my parka, lowering my head against the biting wind as I cut across the frosted quad.

Every gust of New England wind carried sharp ice crystals, but the sting against my cheeks was nothing compared to the clarity burning in my gut.

Near the central bronze statue of the Briar founder, a cluster of girls in varsity jackets whispered and pointed at me.

News in the athletic department traveled faster than an eighty-mile-an-hour slapshot.

I kept my spine ramrod straight, marching past them without breaking stride until I reached the rundown, off-campus brick building on Elm Street.

The stairwell smelled of stale oregano and damp radiator steam.

I pushed open the peeling wooden door of the third-floor apartment we had shared for two miserable years.

The living room was an absolute dump—empty beer cans from Dedric's weekend poker night littered the coffee table beside discarded gaming controllers.

I walked straight into the bedroom, pulled my battered black rolling suitcase from beneath the bed frame, and threw it open.

My wardrobe didn't take five minutes to pack.

Washed-out cotton shirts, two pairs of thermal leggings, oversized hoodies, and heavy socks.

I left behind every dress Dedric had bought me to play the compliant trophy at his booster dinners.

Then I walked over to the reinforced oak desk in the corner.

Sitting on the heavy steel mount was a liquid-cooled workstation rig—a multi-core monster I had custom-built with my own research grants and coding prize money.

I unplugged the fiber-optic leads, packed the solid-state drives into anti-static sleeves, and slipped the heavy tower into a padded tactical backpack.

This hardware held the proprietary source code for every kinematic model I had ever designed.

A sudden, violent pounding rattled the thin apartment door, vibrating the hinges so hard that plaster dust rained onto the linoleum floor.

"Bethany! Open the damn door! I know you're in there!" Dedric's muffled fury boomed through the hallway.

I didn't flinch.

I slid the waterproof tube containing my hand-drawn LN-Titanium skate-runner blueprints into the side sleeve of my backpack.

"You think this little tantrum is going to get you a ring?" Dedric kicked the base of the door, setting off a chorus of barking from the neighbor's pit bull down the hall. "Open this door right now, or I swear to God you won't see a single cent of research sponsorship from my family's firm!"

I walked over to the door, resting my palm flat against the cold wood.

"Take one more step toward this door, Dedric, and I call Briar Campus Security," I said, keeping my pitch level and lethal. "Let's see what the NCAA draft scouts think when their top prospect gets arrested for misdemeanor domestic harassment."

The violent rattling stopped instantly.

Dedric was an arrogant coward who worshipped his own draft stock above everything else.

"You're making the biggest mistake of your life," he spat through the wood, his heavy footsteps retreating down the wooden stairs like a defeated dog. "You'll be begging on my doorstep by Monday morning!"

I scoffed under my breath.

I tossed the brass spare key onto the sticky kitchen counter with a sharp, final clink.

Hoisting the thirty-pound computer pack onto my shoulders and grabbing the suitcase handle, I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me.

The deadbolt snapped into place.

I hauled my luggage down the three flights of stairs and pushed open the front glass door into the street.

The storm had settled into a relentless, freezing mist that coated the sidewalks in black ice.

I reached for my phone to order a standard Uber, but before my thumb could tap the screen, a pair of piercing xenon headlights cut through the gloom.

A pristine, midnight-black Maybach glided silently along the curb, its tires crunching smoothly over the frozen slush before coming to a halt directly in front of me.

The rear passenger door opened, and a chauffeur in a tailored charcoal coat and pristine white gloves stepped out beneath an oversized storm umbrella.

"Miss Marsh," the driver bowed with crisp, Old World precision, extending the umbrella over my head. "Mr. Hoover sent me to escort you."

Through the tinted rear window, I caught the familiar, imposing silhouette of a broad-shouldered man in a bespoke wool overcoat.

The tension coiled in my shoulder blades finally eased.

The driver effortlessly took the heavy workstation bag and suitcase, stowing them into the trunk before opening the passenger door for me.

I stepped into the cabin, enveloped by the scent of rich Italian leather, cedarwood, and faint aged tobacco.

The double-glazed windows rolled up with a pneumatic hiss, cutting off the howl of the campus storm.

The man sitting beside me lowered a crystal tumbler of scotch and turned his steel-blue eyes toward me, handing over a thick manila folder marked with a crimson classification seal.