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“Okaaay,” I say slowly. I didn’t expect Hannah to speak so ill of the dead . . . the so recently dead especially.

“Jim has barely been dead for like ten days and Tuck already made a lot of changes,” she explains

“Good changes?” I ask, hesitantly.

“I mean, sure. I guess.” Barry shrugs. “Mostly he’s fired a lot of people. Our head coach, general manager, and president are only a few, and I don’t exactly disagree with him firing them since they were pretty⁠—”

“Say it outright,” Hannah demands. “You were doing your coach’s job and you shouldn’t have to.”

It looks like she’s got plenty of opinions on this, and a pull on my cheek makes me realize I’m actually kind of smiling.

It feels good, like my shoulders can relax.

“Yeah, yeah,” Barry mumbles and turns to get the chilled watermelon water out of the fridge, before continuing. “He hasn’t hired anyone new for the Demons yet, and I think he’s probably going to want to be GM or president, but he hired his sisters to be presidents of the two other teams.”

“Sisters? Are they owners too? Wait, how old is he?”

All of this sounds like a fascinating piece of gossip, and it’s helping my body regulate as much as the focus on putting lunch together.

“That’s the thing!” Hannah cries out before Barry can explain. “Jim, the asshole,” she clarifies. “He got married five times. Every wife was way too young for him, but especially this last one. She’s my freaking age, and Jim was over eighty!”

“Jesus,” I whisper, but Hannah’s on a roll now.

“Exactly. Tucker’s sisters are all older than him, like almost a decade older, I think.”

“I don’t know their exact ages,” Barry pipes up. “But yeah, they’re all married and with kids and Tuck is twenty-three.”

“But here’s the kicker. Jim actually had more kids with this last wife, twin boys, but he still left everything only to Tucker.”

I follow the path she’s laying down and have to scoff.

“You’re telling me this dude kept getting married hoping to have a son, a male heir, so he could inherit everything? Just so his daughters wouldn’t be owners of the teams?”

“We don’t actually know⁠—”

“Yes!” Hannah talks over Barry, who’s obviously trying to be sensible, but we don’t care about sensible when the tea is this hot. “But then he does die, Tucker inherits everything, and he makes two of his sisters presidents of the Knights and the Keys.”

“I’d make you president of a team if I inherited one,” I tell her, with mock seriousness, and I get the mocking awww I was expecting in return while Barry just shakes his head at us and grabs the plates to set on the kitchen table.

“Now we just have to wait and see who Tucker’s going to hire to replace everyone,” Barry muses. “And I’ve got some ideas, but I don’t think any owner of a professional franchise is going to ask their players for their opinions.”

“I like Tuck,” Hannah says, and nods firmly. “I don’t think he’s as dumb as he wants people to think he is, certainly not as much as sports analysts are saying he is.”

I think about that for a second.

This guy is twenty-three, grew up as the firstborn son of a sexist billionaire, and now he’s the owner of three sports franchises, legendary franchises.

Yeah, it tracks that the media wouldn’t stay quiet about any of his moves, and though giving his sisters such high profile jobs for the teams is a good sign as far as I’m concerned, Hannah’s seal of approval tells me he’s probably not your typical billionaire trust-fund frat boy.

“I know for a fact he’s not dumb,” Barry says, sounding certain for the first time in this conversation. “At the very least when it comes to hockey.”

“I have high hopes,” Hannah says with a sigh as she takes a seat at the kitchen table then stretches her arms up high and her neck from side to side. “He didn’t look particularly broken up over his dad’s death today.”

“You talked to him?”

I’m not sure why exactly I’m so curious, but this whole situation is so far away from my reality, there’s no way any of it can affect me.

“He came up to the captains.” Barry nods and grabs forks and knives for the table. “I think he felt like he had to at least greet some of the players who came by, since . . .” He trails off with a shake of his head and Hannah picks the explanation right up.