Chapter 1 MY RESPECTS.

~~~AVERY.

“I want the case reopened.”

The silence that followed was heavy. The detective sighed, leaning back in his leather chair as he looked at me with tired, indifferent eyes. “Miss Riley…”

“It wasn’t a suicide,” I interrupted, my voice cracking despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “We’ve been through this, you say? No. You’ve been through it. I haven’t.”

He didn’t argue. Instead, he slid a thick yellow folder across the desk toward me. The bold letters stamped across the front made my stomach turn into a tight knot: CASE CLOSED.

My fingers tightened into fists on my lap.

“The toxicology report showed a lethal dose of sedatives,” the detective said, his voice flat, exhausted by the repetition. “And there was a note left on his laptop.”

“Jonathan didn't write that note,” I countered sharply. “It was typed. Anyone with hands could have typed that.”

“He was under immense pressure as an elite athlete, Avery.”

“That doesn’t mean he killed himself.”

“The dorm room door was locked from the inside.”

I slammed both palms down on the desk, the loud crack echoing off the small office walls. “Then why was the last person to see him alive, the person who supposedly found his body, questioned for eight hours?”

The detective didn’t answer right away. He didn’t have to, because he knew exactly who I was talking about. Cassian Hayes. He was the captain of the Ridgeway University hockey team, my brother’s captain, and the man who claimed to have discovered Jonathan’s body.

“He was questioned,” the detective finally admitted, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “And he was released. There were no signs of a struggle.”

“No signs of a struggle…” I laughed bitterly, the harsh sound cutting through the small room. “Or simply no investigation?”

“Avery.” His tone softened into something patronizing. “I know you’re grieving. Denial is part of the process.”

“I’m not in denial,” I snapped, leaning in closer. “I’m furious. There is a difference.”

But the police didn't care about my fury, and three days later, I found myself standing in a crowded church.

The only person who wasn’t crying at my brother’s funeral was me. Everyone else was drowning in tears, suffocated by the heavy, unspoken stigma of how he died. My mother sat in the front row, trembling so hard that my aunt had to keep an arm tightly wrapped around her shoulders, while my father stood beside the coffin like a statue carved from pure grief, his face pale and hollow. Even some of Jon’s toughest teammates were weeping in the pews behind us.

I wasn’t crying. I couldn’t, because crying meant accepting the lie that Jonathan gave up. And I completely refused to do that.

Instead, the overwhelming scent of the funeral flowers made me sick. Jon absolutely hated flowers. He used to joke that if he ever died, he’d rather have hockey pucks thrown at his grave than bouquets, but now there were hundreds of them surrounding him. White and blue flowers were stacked so high around his coffin that it looked like they were trying to hide him.

The priest kept droning on about life, death, and finding peace—more religious bullshit meant to skate around the word suicide. All I could think about was the last conversation I’d had with Jon six days before he died.

“You’re overthinking it, Ave,” he had told me over the phone, his voice strained and frantic.

“Then tell me why you’ve been acting so weird lately. You sound scared, Jon.”

“I’ve just got stuff going on. Team stuff.”

“What stuff, Jon? Talk to me.”

He’d forced a weak, playful smile then—I could hear it in his voice. It was that annoying, playful smile he always used whenever he wanted to avoid answering a direct question. “Don’t worry about me, sis. I've got it under control.”

I had hated that response at the moment, and now, the realization that he was terrified before he died made my fingers curl into tight fists. None of it felt real. Jon wasn’t a coward. He was a fighter who had spent his entire life earning his spot on the ice. Something was deeply wrong, and nobody in this room wanted to look past the police report to admit it.

When the priest finally stepped away from the podium, the crowd began to move. One by one, people approached the coffin to pay their respects. I stayed exactly where I was, frozen, and that was when I noticed him standing at the very back of the church.

My heartbeat stopped.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore a tailored dark suit that made him look completely out of place among the regular mourners. With dark hair and a face that looked completely unreadable, Cassian Hayes stood completely alone.

My stomach twisted painfully as people glanced at him and whispered, the broken pieces of their conversations floating over to me.

“That’s the captain.”

“I heard he was the one who found him in the dorm.”

“God, can you imagine walking into that?”

“They say he hasn't spoken a word since it happened.”

The whispers made me want to scream. Cassian didn’t look traumatized. He looked too calm. His expression never changed once as he stood there staring at the coffin like he was protecting a heavy secret nobody else could see.

This was the man I’d spent the last three days obsessing over. The last person to see Jon alive. The person who "discovered" the body and the note. He was the man who somehow walked away completely fine while my brother ended up in a box.

As if sensing the weight of my gaze, Cassian looked up.

I didn’t look away because I couldn't. From behind the thick, black lace veil covering my entire face, he couldn’t see the raw hatred burning in my eyes. Everyone else seemed so willing to comfort him, treating him like a tragic witness before they even knew the truth.

The service ended, and people began filing outside into the gray, misty afternoon.

Eventually, I escaped the crowd, finding a quiet corner near the cemetery fence where I could finally exhale in silence. I kept the heavy black veil on, shielding myself, until the sound of footsteps crunching on the damp grass made my body go rigid.

When I looked up, Cassian Hayes was standing a few feet away.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Through the dark mesh of my veil, he looked different up close. There were deep shadows beneath his eyes, and his jaw was set in a tight line.

“You’re Jon’s sister,” he said, his voice lower and rougher than I expected.

I let out a sharp, bitter laugh behind the fabric. “You figured that out all by yourself?”

His jaw tightened slightly. “I came to pay my respects.”

“Did you?” My anger flared instantly, hot and reckless. “Or did you just come to make sure the secret stayed buried?”

A heavy silence settled between us. Cassian just looked down at me, his eyes dropping to the grass for a brief second before returning to my hidden face. “I cared about him. He was my teammate.”

“Then tell me what happened in that room, Cassian.”

He took a slow, heavy breath, his voice dropping to a quiet murmur. “I’m sorry for your loss, Avery.”

“That’s not an answer,” I whispered, my voice breaking.

Before I could press further, he turned on his heel and walked away toward the cemetery gates.

I turned back toward the freshly dug grave where they were preparing to bury Jon. I reached up, tugged the black veil off my face, and let the cold wind hit my skin. I stared at the coffin and finally let the tears fall.

“I’ll find out what they did to you,” I whispered into the wind, meaning every single word.

I looked back toward the gates where Cassian’s car was speeding away. My hands clenched into fists, the crushing grief hardening into steel.

“You’re going to regret it,” I whispered, my voice sharp and deadly. “Whatever you’re hiding… I’m going to ruin you.”