Bethany Marsh POV: "You are so stunning, Edwina. So much softer and more beautiful than Bethany." Dedric's husky voice drifted through the slight gap of the varsity locker room door. I froze in my tracks. The freezing Massachusetts wind was still melting off my worn parka, but the cold creeping into my chest had nothing to do with the winter storm. In my stiff, aching hands, I held a waterproof binder. It contained seventy pages of biomechanical breakdowns—three sleepless nights of analyzing the opposing team's goaltender just so Dedric could keep his second-line minutes on Friday night. Through the crack in the heavy oak door, I saw Dedric pull Edwina Henry flush against his chest, pressing a hungry kiss to her neck. Edwina was a wealthy, entitled sorority queen who made it her life's mission to remind me how poor I was. Edwina giggled, trailing her manicured fingers down his chest. "But what about your little assistant, Dedric? Doesn't she think she's your girlfriend? She's going to be so heartbroken." "She's an unpaid intern who lives to tune my skates and run my stats," Dedric snorted, the sound dripping with lazy arrogance. "Bethany is useful, that's all." "What happens when your dad finalizes the sponsorship deal with the Henry family?" A fellow hockey player asked, accompanied by the clatter of shoulder pads. "Edwina won't want your stray hanging around the team benches." "When I lock down the deal with the Henry family, the stray goes back to the gutter," Dedric dismissed with a harsh laugh. "Bethany is a classic Puck Bunny without the looks or the trust fund. Even after I dump her, all I have to do is snap my fingers, and she'll still hand over her tactical models on her knees." A chorus of frat-boy laughter erupted inside the room. The bile rose thick and scalding in my throat. Three years of tuning his titanium runners, rewiring his kinematic profiles, pulling him through academic probation so his athletic scholarship wouldn't get pulled by the NCAA board. The numbness in my chest calcified into pure, blinding rage. I lifted my foot and kicked the solid door with the heavy sole of my combat boot. The heavy door slammed violently against the concrete wall with a concussive bang. The locker room fell dead silent. Ten half-dressed varsity forwards stared at me in stunned paralysis. I strode into the center of the room, my boots tracking wet gray slush over the pristine Briar University crest painted on the floor. Dedric pushed Edwina away so fast he nearly tripped. The color drained entirely from his tanned face. "Beth... What are you doing here?" Before I could speak, Edwina stepped forward. She smoothed her perfect hair, putting on a sickeningly sweet, pitying expression. "Bethany, please don't be mad at him," Edwina said softly, acting like a bullied victim. "We didn't mean to hurt you, it just happened. Dedric is meant for the NHL, and he needs a real partner with family connections to support his future. You've worked so hard doing his homework, and we are so grateful. I can have my dad write you a nice little check for your troubles?" Her hypocritical "tea speech" made the frat boys murmur in sympathy for her. I stopped two feet away from them, my voice dead, even, and terrifyingly calm. "Keep your loose change, Edwina. I'm just here to deliver his crutches for the rest of his pathetic career." Dedric reached out to grab my wrist, his eyes darting nervously. "Look, babe, you heard that out of context. You're overreacting—" I yanked my arm back. With a snap of my shoulders, I hurled the thick, damp binder straight into his chest. The heavy metal rings slammed against his sternum, bursting open on impact. Seventy pages of pristine velocity charts, heat maps, and stress-strain calculations exploded into the air, fluttering down like a dirty blizzard across the floor. Dedric stumbled back, stepping on his own tactical charts. His face flushed to a humiliated crimson. "Don't flatter yourself, Dedric." I tilted my chin up, curling my lip into a razor-sharp sneer. "You don't get to dump me. You're fired. We're done." "Are you out of your mind?" Dedric hissed, lunging forward with a shaking finger pointed at my nose. "Without me and the Salas family name, you're nothing at Briar! You can't even afford your tuition!" "Then let's see how fast you drown without me," I replied, meeting his bloodshot gaze without blinking. I turned on my heel, grinding his precious shot-trajectory diagrams beneath my rubber soles. "Get back here, Bethany!" Dedric's roar tore through the corridor. "You need me!" I didn't look back once. I shoved open the heavy glass exit doors, stepping back out into the roaring gale of the New England storm. The icy wind tore at my hair, but for the first time in three years, the suffocating weight in my lungs was completely gone. I pulled out my cracked smartphone, blocked Dedric's number across every channel, and deleted three years of shared history in four swipes. A new text message from an unlisted international number flashed across the top of my screen: [Have you seen enough? Are you ready to come home now, my precious niece?]

Bethany Marsh POV: The freezing Massachusetts wind whipped my hair across my face, but a sudden, overwhelming warmth blossomed in my chest. Three years ago, I had hidden my true identity as the sole heiress of the Marsh sports empire just to experience normal college life. I had shrunk myself to fit into Dedric's shadow, giving him everything. And he had repaid me by trading me for a fake socialite like Edwina Henry. My thumbs moved rapidly over the frozen screen. [I'm ready, Uncle Jared. Pick me up.] I shoved the phone into my pocket and marched straight toward the rundown off-campus brick building on Elm Street. The stairwell smelled of stale beer and damp radiator steam. I pushed open the peeling wooden door of the third-floor apartment Dedric and I had shared. I wasn't here for memories. I was here for my brain. I ignored the cheap dresses Dedric had bought me to play his compliant trophy at booster dinners. Instead, I walked straight 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. This hardware held the proprietary source code for every kinematic model I had ever designed, including the LN-Titanium skate-runner blueprints that currently made Dedric a star. 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. Just as I zipped it shut, heavy footsteps thundered up the wooden stairs. "Bethany! Open the damn door! I know you're in there!" Dedric's muffled fury boomed through the hallway. He actually followed me. He probably realized his Friday game was doomed without my updated velocity charts. I didn't flinch. I opened my laptop one last time and logged into the cloud server Dedric's team used. With three rapid keystrokes, I executed the "scorched earth" protocol on my tactical analytics database. Delete. Overwrite. Permanent erase. A violent pounding rattled the thin apartment door, vibrating the hinges so hard that plaster dust rained onto the linoleum floor. "Are you having a breakdown?" Dedric kicked the base of the door. "Stop throwing this little tantrum! Edwina was just a networking thing for my family's firm! Open this door right now and give me the new skate specs, or I swear to God you won't see a single cent of research sponsorship next semester!" I walked over to the door and pulled it open, my thirty-pound tactical backpack slung over my shoulder. Dedric stood there, his chest heaving, his face twisted into a scowl of condescending impatience. He reached out to grab my luggage handle. "Stop being dramatic. Put the bag down. You can't survive in this city without my family's money." I slapped his hand away with a stinging crack. Dedric recoiled, rubbing his reddened knuckles, his eyes widening in shock. "Are you crazy?!" "I'm the most sane I’ve been in three years," I said, my pitch level and lethal. "Check your team server, Dedric. The tactical models, the heat maps, the velocity charts? They're gone. I just wiped them all." The color completely drained from his face. He scrambled to pull out his phone, his thumbs frantically swiping the screen. "You... you locked the core algorithms? Beth, do you have any idea what you've done? That code is Salas Equipment property!" "It was my brain, my sweat, and my property," I corrected coldly. "Without my weekly patch updates, your production lines will brick within thirty days, and you won't even know how to skate a proper shift on Friday." "You vindictive bitch!" Dedric lunged forward, raising his hand as if to grab my neck. I didn't blink. I took a sharp half-step forward, violating his personal space, my eyes deadlocked on his. "Take one more step, Dedric, and I call Campus Security. Let's see what the NCAA draft scouts think when their top prospect gets arrested for domestic harassment." His hand froze mid-air. Dedric was an arrogant coward who worshipped his own draft stock above everything else. I pulled the brass spare key from my pocket and tossed it. It landed in the puddle of melted slush at his feet with a pathetic clink. "We're done. Pack up your lies and go back to Edwina." I stepped around him, dragging my single rolling suitcase, my boots echoing down the stairs. "You're making the biggest mistake of your life!" Dedric spat over the railing, his voice cracking with desperation. "You'll be begging on my doorstep by Monday morning! You're nothing!" I scoffed under my breath and pushed open the front glass door into the street. The storm had settled into a relentless, freezing mist. Before I could even reach the curb, a pair of piercing xenon headlights cut through the gloom. A pristine, midnight-black Maybach glided silently along the sidewalk, its tires crunching smoothly over the frozen ice 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, extending a heavy storm umbrella over my head. "Welcome back, Miss Marsh," the driver bowed with crisp, formal bow.

Bethany Marsh POV: I slipped into the warm, cedar-and-leather-scented cabin of the Maybach. The heavy door pneumatically sealed shut with a soft hiss, instantly silencing the storm and Dedric's pathetic existence. "Done playing house in the student slums?" His voice was a deep, gravelly baritone that vibrated right through the leather seats. "Don't start, Uncle Jared," I murmured, sinking back into the heated leather seat and rubbing my temples. "I cleaned house. It's done." He set down his crystal tumbler of scotch and leaned closer, completely invading my personal space. The pure heat radiating from his large frame was overwhelming. He reached out, his long, warm fingers brushing the melting snow from my cheek. His thumb lingered on my jawline, rough and calloused, sending an unexpected jolt of heat straight down my spine. "You look exhausted," he murmured, his steel-blue eyes darkening with a possessive intensity that made my breath hitch. "I told you that boy was a parasite. I should have crushed the Salas family's little equipment company three years ago." "I wanted to build my own way," I said softly, suddenly very aware of how close his lips were to mine. "And now?" Jared's hand slipped to the nape of my neck, his grip subtle but undeniably commanding. "Now," I breathed, keeping my eyes locked on his, "I want to crush them myself." A slow, dangerous smile curved his lips. The tension in the car was thick, heavy with unspoken promises. Reluctantly, he let me go and handed me his glass of warm amber liquid. "Good. A true Marsh doesn't negotiate with parasites." The Maybach left the university perimeter behind, climbing smoothly through the snow-capped pines of the western hills before turning through towering wrought-iron gates into Eastshire Estate. The massive limestone manor stood illuminated against the night sky, its private, regulation-size indoor hockey rink glowing softly in the east wing. The car stopped beneath the heated portico, where Mrs. Kowalski, our head housekeeper, was already waiting with a thick cashmere shawl. "Welcome home, Bethany," Mrs. Kowalski said softly, wrapping the warm wool around my shoulders as I stepped out into the dry air. "Thank you, Martha." I smiled, letting the comfort of my real life wash over the grime of the last three years. "Your private laboratory in the west pavilion was fully calibrated this morning," Jared said, handing his coat to a footman. "Every piece of spectroscopy and thermodynamic testing gear you requested is live." I took the grand staircase up to the master suite on the second floor. My bedroom was just as I had left it before my ill-fated experiment in independence—vaulted ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the frozen grounds, and a massive mahogany workspace. My phone buzzed on the nightstand. It was a text from Julian Price, one of Dedric's defensemen: Beth, Dedric is losing his mind. Just apologize and come back. You know he needs those skate specs for the Harvard game. I blocked Julian's number without typing a single character and tossed the phone onto the king-size bed. After a scalding shower that washed the stench of cheap student housing from my skin, I threw on silk loungewear and sat down in front of my unpacked workstation. My fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, entering a thirty-two-character cryptographic key. The screen shifted from the standard desktop to a secure, dark-themed cloud terminal. The logo of Cloud-Peak Analytics flashed across the twin monitors—the shadow tactical and sports-materials think tank I had founded under the alias Star-Wake. Dozens of high-priority inquiries from NHL franchises and private equity groups sat in my encrypted inbox. One email from ForcePeak Group caught my attention. It was signed directly by their Chief Technology Officer, Maxwell Stone. To Star-Wake: ForcePeak Group is prepared to offer primary venture backing for your LN-Titanium alloy patent. We request an in-person meeting during the Briar Intercollegiate Winter Gala this week. A knock sounded at the open study door. Jared walked in, placing a steaming mug of hot milk beside my keyboard. "ForcePeak?" Jared leaned against the desk, glancing at the monitor. "Aggressive firm. Their principal owner operates through shell trusts, but they have enough capital to swallow the Salas family's entire supplier network whole." "They want the exclusive license for the ultra-light runners," I said, taking a sip of milk. "I'm taking the meeting, but I'm not selling out. I want equity." "You need our legal counsel with you?" Jared asked. "No," I replied, my eyes fixed on the code compilation window. "I can handle a few college-town suits on my own." I brought up the core parameters for the LN-Titanium skate blades and executed the final anti-piracy script. If Dedric or his father tried to load my prototype files into their factory machines, the embedded logic bomb would corrupt their entire CNC milling database. I hit enter. The progress bar hit 100%. I looked out the high window at the pale winter moon rising over the estate. Tomorrow, it was time to go back to Briar and clean out the rest of the trash.