I think the day Shane sits down and actually unravels the extent to which Ilya's family was, essentially, extorting him for money since he was out of juniors, he is going to be gripped by a wave of pitch black fury so intense it manifests as a physical feeling, a clenching in his throat his chest his stomach. He is going to remember Ilya at twenty nineteen seventeen, smooth faced and still so heart stoppingly handsome, and he is going to feel so deeply enraged on behalf of that kid. That kid who didn't have a mother to sit him down at the dinner table at fourteen and meticulously explain financial jargon to him until it all stopped flying over his head and the gibberish actually started to mean something. He didn't have that same mother set an alarm for three in the morning so she could make a call with Reebok and negotiate a deal on his behalf, and then do it again for Tim Hortons, Gatorade, Calvin Klein, CCM. He didn't have a father who always sneakily paid the bill at every restaurant they went to as a family no matter what because he didn't want Shane spending his money on them. A father who carefully set aside a college fund for Shane, just in case he decided hockey wasn't what he wanted. Shane thinks of that kid, navigating the jabbering of some accountant in a second language he barely understood, giving him advice on spending habits and credit scores and barely masking their condescension about the stumbling accented responses they'd receive, and Shane literally has to bend over and grip his office desk, white-knuckled and trembling because it's not fair it's not fair it's not fucking fair someone should have been there someone should have noticed someone should have stepped up and said something why why did nobody fucking do anything!!
I think Shane's going to straighten up after the wave passes over and through him and he's going to think Okay. Enough. And then he's going to drag Ilya from where he's been lounging on their couch, resplendent in his sweats and baggy tee, and he's going to make him sit down and read through his mom's probing emails about possible brand deals that would suit Ilya's image and he's going to ignore Ilya's performative whining and he's going to make him talk through every one and the whole time he's thinking Never again, I'll never let it happen to you ever again.
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