His Dangerous Love On Ice Chapter 176: Olive's Pov

My mind flashed back to this morning…to Walter seeing me in his kitchen and almost choking on his coffee, completely shocked at finding me there like he'd seen a ghost from his past life.

"Well, it was memorable," I said, unable to stop the smile from creeping into my voice. "My father almost had a panic attack because he thought he'd seen a ghost. You should have seen his face."

Brenda's laughter filled the speaker so loudly I had to pull the phone away from my ear.

"Oh my god, I can absolutely imagine Walter's face right now. I love it when he has those moments where he realizes his past decisions are coming back to haunt him."

She said it with so much glee that I had to laugh despite everything, because yeah, I also loved watching Walter squirm.

"So what's going on with you and Zane?" Brenda asked, her tone shifting to that particular frequency she used when she was about to dig into my personal life. "You posted something on your status last night about relationship issues, and you never mentioned him once in our chat. What happened?"

I rolled my eyes even though she couldn't see me, because I knew she wouldn't let this conversation go until I gave her something substantial.

She was the fucking catalyst of me meeting this star hockey player in the first place, so she felt entitled to know every detail of how it was going.

"Maybe I'll inform you when we meet on Wednesday night," I said, deliberately being vague to annoy her.

"What's happening on Wednesday night?" she asked immediately, taking the bait exactly like I knew she would.

I could practically see her eyebrows raising as she tried to figure out what I was planning.

"Remember I told you I met a new friend?"

"Yes..." She drew the word out suspiciously.

"Well," I paused, trying to pick my words carefully because I really didn't want Brenda having a complete meltdown over this. "She invited us to an Italian club. She said we could come fuck Italian men together. I don't know why that's her selling point, but I believe it's exactly your kind of thing."

I held my breath, waiting for the explosion.

"Oh my god, you accepted a club invitation so fucking easily without me having to drag you?" Brenda's voice came through so loud I actually had to pull the phone away from my ear. "I'm fucking going, Olive. I absolutely need to meet this woman who makes you agree to go clubbing without me creating a whole scene about how boring you usually are."

"And then we can discuss Zane," I added.

"And us getting married," Brenda finished for me, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

"Hopkins Company is doing great, thanks for asking," she continued before I could respond. "And your father has been making some really weird decisions lately, which is so unlike him that people are starting to talk."

My brows furrowed even though she couldn't see my confusion. "Weird decisions? What kind of weird decisions?"

"It's something I'd never imagine Grayson thinking of," Brenda said, her voice dropping to something more serious. "Somehow Hopkins stock plummeted recently—like, significantly—and now the company is somehow considering buying and building our own hockey stadium. I don't know how that's even financially possible given our current situation, but apparently we're courting potential investors for it."

She paused, and I could hear her moving around, probably pacing like she did when she was stressed.

"Grayson should really be the one telling you this since you're the Senior VP of Strategic Development now, but I wanted to give you a heads up. And also, several staff members were fired recently, like, a whole department worth of people. We found out they'd been leaking confidential information about the company to our competitors for months, maybe years. So much is going on right now that the company is basically on fire, but somehow we're also thriving? It's weird."

She ended the call shortly after that, leaving me sitting there with a thousand different questions barging through my mind about why Grayson was making these decisions, about what was actually happening at Hopkins that nobody was telling me about.

I grabbed my phone, about to call Grayson directly and demand answers about what the hell was going on with the company I was supposed to be helping run.

But before I could dial his number, my phone pinged with a message notification that made my blood run completely cold.

I stared at the screen, my heart skipped, my eyes widening.