Ian walked into the team’s workout facility, and it was as packed as a neighborhood gym after New Year’s. Down to the last man in Ice Knights gear, they were all in this together, fighting for that edge that could make a difference as the playoffs approached. Last year, they’d been too cocky and had gone down in six games. That wasn’t going to happen again. These were his boys and this was their year.

His phone buzzed in his workout pants for the fifth time since he’d walked into the building. Fucking A. There were a million things he’d rather do than talk on the phone, but whoever was on the other end was damn insistent. He walked through the workout room, heading for the locker room in the back to drop off his bag as he pulled out his phone right as the buzzing stopped. A notification that he’d missed a call from his dad appeared on the screen, but that wasn’t what made him halt in his tracks. Instead, it was the notification right below the missed-call alert. This one was from the Harbor City Post and it made absolutely no sense.

Ice Knights Players Secret Brothers: David Petrov Confesses All

Considering David the dick was his dad and he didn’t have any brothers—just two sisters who could make a grown man cry with a look—this was just nuts. He was gonna have to reach out to the team PR head, Lucy Kavanagh. She’d take care of it. Shaking his head, he continued on into the locker room. Even at one of the most crucial points in his career when everything was finally going right and he’d reached out beyond the journeyman limits everyone had expected of him when he’d been drafted in the seventh round, his dad took center stage.

At this point, he shouldn’t be surprised.

It had always been like this. He was never just Ian Petrov. He’d always been David Petrov’s son, held up to a standard that no one—with the exception of his buddy Christensen, fucking phenom—could come close to. Still, knowing his teammates, he was about to get a world of shit about his “brother,” so he might as well see who it most definitely was not.