Faking It With The Hockey Star

Grandma remained quiet for several excruciating seconds. Finally, she chose her words with extreme caution. "I’m saying... I’ve spent twenty years wondering whether everything that happened back then was really just a tragic coincidence. I was just so heartbroken about my dauther that I did not look into things carefrully. Now it feels too late"

A cold chill ran straight down my spine. She wasn’t making an explicit accusation, but somehow, leaving it unsaid made it ten times worse.

Grandma reached down, opened the bottom drawer of Grandpa’s desk, and pulled out a thick, heavy brown envelope.

"This..." she said gently, "...is the real reason your father suddenly remembered he has a son."

She slid the folder across the polished desk toward me. I reached out and opened the clasp, pulling out the contents. Legal documents, trust papers, financial disclosures, and original corporate filings. Printed at the bottom of the lead document was my mother’s elegant signature.

"What is all this?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Your inheritance."

I looked up, thoroughly lost. "I don’t understand."

"A few weeks before she passed away," Grandma explained softly, "your mother arranged a private meeting with our family lawyer, entirely without your father’s knowledge or consent. She knew something wasn’t right in that house, Justin. So she took steps to protect you."

My pulse hammered in my ears, loud and suffocating. "Protected me how?"

Grandma offered a small, bittersweet smile. "She placed every single controlling share of Farwell Enterprises directly into a private trust."

I blinked, processing the words. "What?"

"The trust belongs to you," Grandma stated clearly. "The company belongs to you. The board votes belong to you. The final authority over the entire enterprise... belongs to you."

I could barely catch my breath. "Dad... knows about this?"

"He knows enough," Grandma answered. "He doesn’t know every technical detail, but he knows the most important part." She locked her gaze firmly onto mine. "In exactly three months, Justin, you turn twenty-three."

I nodded slowly. "So?"

"So... the trust automatically activates on your twenty-third birthday. You officially become the majority shareholder. You become the Chairman of the Board. You become the CEO."

Everything inside me ground to a screeching halt. "No..."

Grandma nodded firmly. "Your father has spent twenty years running a company that was never truly his to keep. He was only ever meant to guide the ship until you came of age, not replace you."

I leaned back hard into the leather armchair, my head pounding as the puzzle pieces finally slammed together. "So that’s why..."

The PR consultant. The sudden lunch invitation. The uncharacteristic compliments. The trip to Cancún.

Grandma nodded again, her face grim. "He knows his time is running out. He realized that treating you like an outcast and an enemy didn’t force you out of the picture. So now, he’s pivoting to a dangerous new tactic."

My stomach churned. "He invited me to go to Cancún with him next week."

Grandma’s posture immediately shifted. Her spine went rigid, and her hands clenched tighter together. "I was terrified you were going to say that."

"Do you think I should go?"

She fell completely silent for a long, agonizing moment. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled with raw emotion. "I honestly don’t know what your father is planning, Justin. And I pray to God above that my fears are wrong. But after everything I’ve witnessed over the past twenty years... I no longer give that man the benefit of the doubt. I pray he comes to his sense and act right"

She reached across the wide mahogany desk and grabbed both of my hands in hers.

"Justin..." she pleaded softly. "If he asks you to sign a single piece of paper, don’t do it. If he asks you to travel out of the country, don’t go. If something inside you feels even slightly off, turn around and walk away."

I stared into her eyes, the cold reality settling in. "You think he would actually try to hurt me?"

Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. "I think desperate men do truly desperate things. And your father is on the verge of losing everything he spent twenty years convincing himself belonged to him. Besides, his wife is now by his side and I am not sure she will sit back and klet everything that has been hers, leave her fingers"

She squeezed my hands tightly, her voice hardening with resolve. "I’ve already sent him a clear message through our legal team. If anything happens to you, if you disappear, if you have so much as a single scratch that cannot be explained, I will expose every single secret I’ve kept hidden for your mother’s sake for the past two decades."

I swallowed hard, nodding slowly.

"So do not be afraid," she added, her eyes blazing with fierce protectiveness. "You are not standing alone anymore. You have me. You have your grandfather. You have Harper. We are going to protect you. Just focus on your hockey right now and make a name for your self. I just want you happy okay, and Hockey does that"

For the first time in my life, I finally understood why my father had looked at me so differently over these past few weeks.

It wasn’t guilt. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t sudden fatherly regret.

He wasn’t trying to build a relationship with his son. He was trying to stop me from becoming my mother’s successor.

And somehow, that realization terrified me far more than anything Ethan or Diane had ever thrown my way.

I stood up from the leather armchair, my mind still reeling from everything she had just laid out on the desk. The folder felt heavy in my hands, but the truth inside it felt ten times heavier.

Before Grandma unlocked the study door, she paused, turning back to face me. The sharp, guarded expression she’d worn while discussing my father softened back into the familiar warmth of the woman who used to bake me cookies after hockey practice.

"How are your classes going, Justin?" she asked gently, resting a comforting hand on my forearm.

"Fine," I mumbled, offering a brief, half-hearted nod. My voice sounded distant, even to my own ears. "It’s all... going fine. I’m graduating soon"

She searched my eyes for a second, easily seeing right through the deflection, but she didn’t push. She just gave my arm a reassuring squeeze.

"Come on," she said softly, turning the brass doorknob and pulling the heavy wooden door open. "Let’s get back out there before your grandfather and Harper eat all the apple pie without us."

She led me out of the quiet study and back down the carpeted hallway toward the kitchen, where the sound of Harper’s soft laughter was already waiting for us.

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