Page 6 of Omega’s Forward

I sit down again and read through the papers. Hockey was everything my father lived and breathed so for the first twelve years of my life that’s what I lived and breathed too.

I’d never even enjoyed the game that much. I’d just wanted to please him. I spent my entire childhood out here on the cold ice, getting roughed up by bigger kids and all I got for it was a father who looked at me with disgust and disappointment the moment I presented as an omega.

My parents divorced shortly after and my mother moved to London. The old man didn’t bother to keep in touch.

I’m half surprised he even left me anything in his will. Even if it is the stupid franchise.

Twelve years of hockey as a kid means I know something about the game. I know the positions, the game play, the dumb ‘code’ that means you’re allowed to beat each other up, but I don’t know much about the current players and what’s going to help me get the best value for the franchise once I can sell it.

I’m going to have to suck up to Sacco. He’s a dick too, but nobody alive knows this club better.

If the practical management of this team can sit on shoulders that aren’t mine, his are the first ones I’d choose.

From the look he gave me earlier, I suspect he likes me just about as well as I like him. Not that it matters too much.

All I need to know is that he’s not going to block me when I need it. I’m not interested in the day-to-day running, but I also don’t want him to make choices that are for the good of the team and not the sponsors.

I’m aware that statement makes me sound like the dick and maybe I am, but again, if dear old Dad didn’t want me to sell his team for as much as I could get then he shouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave it to me.

If Coach Sacco proves to be too much of an asshole, even for me to pass over the team for a hands-off approach, then I’ve got another potential candidate lined up to take control.

Brody Callahan. Fifteen years with the club, career Baron, my father’s favorite subject at every press conference he held. He was like that, my father. He had favorites. When I was little, I was one of them, but the favorites never held. Sooner or later, they always fell out of favor as soon as they were no longer useful to the great hockey god.

Brody Callahan is due in this office in twenty minutes: the old meet and greet. I don’t want to hand the reins to him, but Callahan is older, knows the club and is loyal to it. He’s also not Sacco. He’d have to retire first — the league treats an active player running a club as a conflict of interest, full stop — but at his age that can’t be far off. I could hand off to a third party, some hired executive, but it makes sense to pass to someone who has the passion for it. They’ll want the win more.

The main problem with Callahan is that as of my father’s last game, he owns the most famous fists in the city.

I watched my father’s last game. All of it. It was the first time I have watched a hockey game in over a decade.

I didn’t watch live.

I watched immediately after I got the call that came to my hotel in Zurich at four in the morning.

It was a weird thing for me to do, but shock does that to a person. After everything, he was still my dad and the second I heard he was dead, all I wanted was to see him again. Like I was eight years old and still the second most important thing in the world to him.

I found the broadcast and watched it start to finish. The game focused mostly on the ice. Some on the crowd. Some on Dad as he watched, mostly because the cameras wanted a reaction shot to go with the gossipy commentators whenever someone down on the rink did something dumb.

In the second period I watched the captain of my father’s team skate up to one of his opponents, drop his gloves, and break his face in front of eighteen thousand people who stood up and screamed in excitement at the spectacle of it.

Callahan just smashed his fists into the guy’s face until blood splattered the ice between them.

And the crowd loved it. The camera kept cutting to children in the crowd with their hands over their mouths, thrilled.

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with these people. They’re all a bunch of brutes.

I turned the volume off eventually. It’s worse with the sound off. You can see how practiced it all is: the referees hanging back at a professional distance, the linesmen choosing their moment to get that little bit more violence in. My father was fluent in it.

And then the camera found the owner’s box, and there was my father on his feet applauding. I paused the feed on his face. I closed the laptop and sat in the dark for a long time, and I have been furious at how happy he looked ever since.

They call it the code. Nobody writes it down. An insult is answered with violence. A hit is answered with violence. The violence is answered with more violence. The league sells the footage.

My father thought it was the soul of the game. I think it’s just brutality as entertainment.

Callahan could run this club. Sacco is the other option. One’s a brute. The other’s an asshole, but then that’s hockey for you.

I draft the week in my head while I wait. Tomorrow, I have a meeting with Sacco. I’ll take his measure then. Callahan will be here shortly.

I put my jacket back on and fix my cuffs. Alphas, especially the rough ones, tend to think they can walk all over me just because of my designation so I need to make it clear who I am the moment that they walk in the door.