His Dangerous Love On Ice Chapter 213: Zane's Pov

I stood on the observation platform overlooking the racing track, watching cars tear around the curves at speeds that would make most people's hearts stop, but all I could think about was Olive sitting alone at that funeral while I stayed away like she'd asked.

It was killing me not to be there with her, not to be able to protect her from whatever emotional damage today was going to cause, but she'd been so insistent that I stay away that I'd respected her wishes even though every instinct I had was screaming at me to go to her anyway.

"I hate it when that kid drives," Nikolai said from beside me, breaking through my thoughts.

I glanced at him, then back at the track where a black sports car was taking a turn way too aggressively.

"Who's on the wheel?" I asked, though part of me didn't really care. "And why do you care if they decide to cripple themselves for life? It's their funeral."

The dark humor in my words made Nikolai chuckle despite himself.

"It's fucking Becket," he said, and I felt my attention sharpen immediately. "You know how he drives. Like a monster. Like he's got a death wish. You taught him that."

I groaned internally because Nikolai was right.

Becket was a kid I'd taken under my wing five years ago when he'd shown up at one of my racing events with raw talent and absolutely no sense of self-preservation, and I'd spent years training him, teaching him everything I knew about racing.

Then he'd gone away for the past two years to study engineering, and I'd honestly thought—hoped—that the education might temper some of his more reckless impulses.

Apparently not.

"Why the fuck didn't I recognize his driving style?" I muttered, watching the black car drift around another corner with inches to spare. "I know how Becket drives. Should have spotted it immediately."

"Because your mind has been preoccupied lately," Nikolai said, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag. "With a certain Monroe woman."

I didn't respond to that because there was no point denying it.

My mind had been completely consumed with Olive for weeks now—with keeping her safe, with uncovering the truth about Judy’s death, with trying to protect her from enemies she didn't even know she had.

"Have you heard from her?" Nikolai asked, cigarette smoke dissolving into the air. "The funeral's taking ages. Judy Byron wasn't some priest. Should have been over by now."

"You shouldn't care about her," I said automatically.

"I should," Nikolai countered. "You love her. And she's a good woman. Better than you deserve, honestly."

I couldn't argue with that assessment.

"And I'm awful for her," I said, pushing away from the platform railing to get a better view of the track. "She deserves someone uncomplicated. Someone without all my baggage."

"That fucking bastard," Nikolai said suddenly, his tone shifting to alarm. "I don't think I'm ready to have a kid."

I looked at him in confusion. "What?"

"Becket," Nikolai clarified, pointing toward the track. "He's going for the red zone. He's going to fucking kill himself."

I turned my attention back to the track just in time to see Becket's car accelerating toward a section of the course that was clearly marked as restricted, a dangerous turn that required perfect timing and absolute control.

"You should be a grandpa," I said, trying to inject some levity into the moment even as tension coiled in my gut. "Whining in your own nursing home instead of being here having a panic attack about a boy who knows what he's doing."

Nikolai glared at me because he hated when I referred to him as old.

"I'm not grandpa enough for your Sophia to have a crush on me for however many years that lasted," he mumbled.

The comment made something dark flash through me, made my eyes narrow dangerously, because I fucking hated when Nikolai reminded me that my little sister had once harbored feelings for him.

I'd found out by accident—snooping in Sophia's room when I was trying to figure out who her ex-boyfriend was after he'd broken her heart, stumbling across her diary and reading things I could never unread about how she'd been obsessed with Nikolai for years.

"She was a kid," I said tersely. "And you need to forget about it."

"Yes, we should," Nikolai agreed.

And then it happened.

Fast—too fast for anyone to see it coming or react in time.

Becket's car hit the restricted area at full speed, took the wild turn that everyone knew was impossible to navigate at that velocity, and I watched in horror as the vehicle stumbled, flipped, crashed through a safety barrier and slammed directly into a large concrete pole.

The sound of the impact echoed across the track, metal crunching and glass shattering, and my legs were moving before my brain fully processed what I'd seen.

I ran toward the crash site with Nikolai right behind me, both of us moving with equal momentum while Nikolai screamed my name and I ignored him completely, focused only on getting to that car.

It was one of my favorites too…a customized Dodge Viper that I'd spent months perfecting, that Becket had apparently decided to total in one spectacularly reckless maneuver.

But I didn't care about the car.

I cared about the kid who was trapped inside it.

The second I reached the scene, I could smell diesel fuel leaking, could see it pooling on the ground around the wreckage, and my blood ran cold.

"Fuck," I whispered, then louder, "Everyone get back! The car's about to explode!"

I could hear groaning coming from inside the vehicle, could see movement through the shattered windshield, and there was no time to wait for emergency services or proper equipment.

I grabbed the frame of the car, feeling the heat of the engine burning through my hands, and I lifted.

The Viper was heavy—easily three thousand pounds—but adrenaline did strange things to the human body, gave you strength you didn't know you had when someone's life was on the line.

I lifted the car just enough that Nikolai and the track attendants could reach Becket, could grab him under the arms and drag him free from the wreckage.

He was bleeding from a gash on his head, his red-ginger hair matted with blood, his eyes unfocused and blurry like he might have a concussion or worse.

"Got him!" Nikolai shouted. "Zane, drop it! Get back!"

I lowered the car as carefully as I could given the circumstances, then turned and ran, putting distance between myself and the vehicle just as the engine ignited the leaking fuel.

The explosion was massive, sending flames thirty feet into the air and debris scattering across the track, and if we'd been even thirty seconds slower Becket would have burned alive inside that car.

When the immediate danger had passed, when the fire suppression systems had activated and were working to contain the blaze, I walked over to where Becket was lying on the ground surrounded by medics.

His red-ginger hair was stained with soot and blood, his face pale except for the darkening bruises already forming, but when he looked up at me he had a smile on his face.

A fucking smile.

"I crashed another car," Becket said, his words slightly slurred. "Fuck. I'm so sorry, Sir. I know how much you loved that Viper."

Regret filled his eyes, genuine remorse for destroying my property, but underneath that I could see something else—even through the pain, even through what had to be a serious concussion, there was happiness.

The joy of having pushed himself to the absolute limit and survived.

The high that came from dancing with death and walking away.

I recognized it because I'd felt it myself more times than I could count.

I sighed, smoke curling from my nostrils as I stared down at the kid who was basically the only connection I had left to my mother's side of the family, the boy my mother had made me promise to look after as if he were my own.

She'd been the reason I'd introduced Becket to this world, had asked me on her deathbed to give him opportunities I'd had, to teach him what I knew.

And look what I'd done, turned him into a reckless adrenaline junkie who crashed multi-million dollar cars for fun.

I walked toward him and patted his shoulder once, not trusting myself to speak, because what was I supposed to say?

Don't do it again? We both knew he would.

Be more careful? That was laughable coming from me.

Without another word, I turned and walked away from the crash site, leaving the medics to handle Becket while I processed what had just happened.

My phone pinged in my pocket, the vibration pulling my attention away from the lingering adrenaline.

I paused, pulling it out, and my hands clenched automatically around the device when I saw the message on the screen.

Just then Nikolai walked up beside me, his expression serious, and I met his eyes and nodded.

Once.

A silent acknowledgment between us that the plan we'd set in motion weeks ago was progressing exactly as we'd designed it.

Everyone thought I was reacting to threats, scrambling to protect myself and Olive from enemies closing in from all sides.

What they didn't know…what nobody except Nikolai and a very select few others knew…was that I'd been three steps ahead this entire time.

Every move they made, I'd anticipated.

Every trap they set, I'd already prepared a counter.

And soon, very soon, everyone who'd been pulling strings in the shadows was going to discover that they weren't the puppet masters they thought they were.

They were the puppets.

And I'd been holding the strings all along.