THE SECRET KEEPER PT.2 & PT.3
Pairing: Ilya Rozanov x Hunter!Fem!Reader!
Summary: Ellie’s secret relationship with Ilya is exposed when her brother Scott grows suspicious, leading to violent on-ice clashes and a brutal confrontation.
The secret began to crack six weeks later, not with a bang, but with the subtle, insistent pressure of a tectonic plate shifting deep beneath the surface of our carefully constructed lives.
It was a Sunday family dinner, a tradition Scott insisted on whenever he was in town. His teammate, Liam, and Liam’s wife, Chloe, were also there, the four of us crammed around my small dining table, the air rich with the smell of roasted chicken and garlic bread. It was supposed to be safe, normal.
“So, girl,” Chloe said, passing the green beans. “Any exciting plans coming up? You’ve been kinda mysterious lately.”
I felt Scott’s eyes on me. “Oh, you know. School stuff. Parent-teacher conferences are coming up. Pretty boring.”
“She says that,” Scott chimed in, grinning. “But my little sister is a dark horse. Could be running a secret international spy ring for all I know.”
We all laughed, but the joke sent a bolt of panic through me. If only he knew the secret was both more mundane and more devastating than any spy ring.
My phone, face-up on the counter beside the fruit bowl, buzzed. A notification lit up the screen. It was a calendar alert, visible to anyone who glanced over.
<< REMINDER: Flight to Boston – 7:45 AM >>
Scott, reaching for more bread, saw it. His brow furrowed. “Boston? Since when are you going to Boston? Teacher conference there?”
The room went quiet. Liam and Chloe continued eating, unaware of the landmine just stepped on. My blood turned to slush in my veins. I’d been so careful to keep my shared calendar with Ilya hidden, but I’d forgotten to silence this one reminder.
“Um, no,” I stammered, my mind racing. “It’s… a literacy seminar. For educators. Last-minute thing. A colleague dropped out and offered me her spot.” The lie was flimsy, pathetic.
“Boston,” Scott repeated, his tone shifting from curious to analytical. “The Bears are playing in Boston on Thursday.” The Boston Bears were Ilya’s team. The connection clicked in his head, his eyes narrowing. “That’s Rozanov’s turf.”
“It’s a big city, Scott,” I said, forcing a laugh that sounded tinny and false. “The world doesn’t revolve around hockey.”
“Doesn’t it?” he said quietly, his gaze locked on me. The easygoing brother was gone, replaced by the sharp, perceptive defenseman who read plays for a living. He didn’t say anything else, but the suspicion was now a living thing at the table, souring the taste of the food.
The dinner ended under a cloud. After Liam and Chloe left, Scott helped me clean up in a heavy silence.
“Hey,” he finally said, not looking at me as he scrubbed a pan. “You’d tell me if something was going on, right? If someone was… bothering you? Or if you were in some kind of trouble?”
The concern in his voice was a knife to my conscience. “Of course I would. There’s nothing going on.”
He put the pan down and turned, leaning against the counter. “It’s just… you’ve been different. Distant. Happy, but in a secret way. And you’re always on your phone, but you hide it when I walk in.” He crossed his arms. “Is it a guy? Is that it? Because if some jerk is making you lie to me, I swear to God—”
“No one is making me do anything!” The protest came out too sharp, too defensive. I took a breath. “Scott, I’m fine. I’m an adult. I’m allowed to have private things.”
“Private is one thing. Secretive is another.” He pushed off the counter, his frustration evident. “Just… be careful, okay? The world is full of users. Especially in my world. People see you as a way to get at me.”
He was trying to protect me from the very man I was in love with. The irony was a physical pain. I just nodded, unable to speak past the lump of guilt in my throat.
The trip to Boston was shrouded in that newfound tension. I was paranoid, checking over my shoulder at the airport, half-expecting to see Scott’s furious face. But I made it.
Seeing Ilya was a balm and a new source of anxiety. He could sense my distress immediately. In his sleek, modern condo overlooking the Charles River, he pulled me into his arms the moment the door closed.
“What is wrong?” he asked, his voice muffled against my hair.
I poured it all out—the calendar alert, Scott’s suspicion, the awful, accusatory dinner. Ilya listened, his expression growing grimmer.
“He knows,” Ilya said finally, stating the fear I couldn’t voice. “Not everything, but he is on the path. He smells it.”
“What do we do?” My voice was small.
For a long moment, he was silent, staring out at the city lights. The man known for his impulsive, aggressive plays on the ice was now the picture of calculated stillness. “We have two choices. We stop. We end this now, and you go back to your life with your brother, and this becomes a sad secret that fades.”
The very suggestion felt like my heart being ripped out. “Or?”
“Or,” he said, turning to look at me, his blue eyes blazing with a fierce, possessive love, “we stop hiding. We take control of the explosion before the pressure blows everything apart by accident.”
“You mean tell him?” The idea was terrifying.
“I mean 'I' tell him,” Ilya corrected, his jaw set. “Man to man. I take the hit. It is my responsibility.”
“He’ll kill you,” I whispered, half-serious. Scott’s temper was legendary.
A grim smile touched Ilya’s lips. “Perhaps. But he cannot kill me for loving you. Only for lying. And the lying… it is poisoning you, 'solnyshko' . I see it. This is my fight. Let me fight it for us.”
We argued about it for hours. I was terrified of losing my brother. Ilya was terrified of me crumbling under the weight of the deception. We reached no resolution, only a tense, desperate truce.
The next night, I sat in the stands, disguised in a Bears beanie and sunglasses, watching Ilya play against… Scott’s team. It was the first time I’d watched them play each other since our relationship began. It was agony.
Every check, every slash, every snarled exchange at the face-off circle wasn’t just hockey. It felt personal, charged with all the unspoken truth between them. I saw the way Scott targeted Ilya with a particular viciousness, and the way Ilya gave it back, his physical play more aggressive than usual. They were speaking in a language of violence, and I was the subtext.
In the third period, with the game tied, it happened. Scott had the puck, skating hard for a breakaway. Ilya, coming from the side, threw a clean, hard check that sent Scott flying into the boards. It was a legal play, but it was thunderously hard. Scott popped up instantly, shoving Ilya. Gloves dropped. Words were exchanged, noses inches apart. The referees swarmed in, pulling them apart before punches could be thrown, but the hatred in their eyes was broadcast on the Jumbotron for 20,000 people to see.
I sat frozen in my seat, my hand over my mouth. The crowd around me roared, booing Scott, cheering Ilya’s big hit. I felt sick. The secret was screaming inside me, a living thing trying to claw its way out.
After the game, which the Bears won, I waited in Ilya’s car in the player’s lot, a nervous wreck. He emerged from the arena, his face set in hard lines, a fresh cut over his eyebrow. He slid into the driver’s seat and let out a long, exhausted breath.
“He called me something… very bad. About my mother. In Russian. He has been practicing.” Ilya’s voice was flat, but a muscle ticked in his jaw. “It is no longer just hockey.”
The line had been crossed. The professional animosity had curdled into something deeply, personally toxic. And I was the invisible cause.
He started the car. “We cannot wait, My love. The pressure… it will break you. It will break 'us' .” He looked at me, his eyes full of a pained resolve. “I am going to tell him. After the return game in Montreal. On neutral ground. It must be done.”
I wanted to argue, to beg for more time. But looking at the cut on his face, hearing the echo of Scott’s invented insults, I knew he was right. The fault line had ruptured. The earthquake was coming. All we could do now was try to survive it.
The two weeks leading to the return game in Montreal were a slow-motion nightmare. Every conversation with Scott was strained, peppered with his not-so-subtle probes. Every moment with Ilya was shadowed by the impending confrontation. We were living on borrowed time, and the debt was about to be called in.
The night of the game arrived, a thick blanket of winter snow muffling the city. The atmosphere inside the arena was electric, the rivalry between the teams at a fever pitch thanks to their last explosive meeting. I didn’t go. I couldn’t. I sat in my apartment, pacing, my stomach churning as I watched the game on TV with the sound off.
It was a brutal, ugly game. Penalties piled up. Ilya and Scott were like opposing magnets, drawn into conflict at every shift. With five minutes left in the third period, it finally boiled over. A scramble in front of the net, sticks slashing, bodies falling. Ilya and Scott were at the center of it. On the screen, I saw Scott say something, his face contorted with rage. Ilya’s response was to drop his gloves and grab the front of Scott’s jersey.
The fight was short, brutal, and decisive. Ilya, fueled by a lifetime of street fights and the specific fury of the moment, landed two solid punches before the linesmen dragged him off. Scott ended up on the ice, his nose bleeding, a look of stunned, pure hatred aimed at Ilya as they were both escorted to their respective penalty boxes, ejected from the game.
I turned off the TV. My hands were shaking. This was it. The point of no return.
My phone buzzed. A message from Ilya: 'It is done. He is waiting for me at the usual bar. Come when you are ready. Be safe, solnyshko.'
He was going to meet him. After 'that'. My brother, humiliated and bleeding, was waiting for the man who’d just beaten him in a fight. And Ilya was walking into it.
I threw on my coat and ran out into the snow, hailing a cab, my heart hammering against my ribs. The usual bar was the same dive from months ago, our alleyway. It was grimly poetic.
I arrived to a scene of surreal tension. The bar was mostly empty, post-game. In a back booth, shrouded in shadow, sat Scott. A bag of ice was pressed to his swollen nose, his knuckles raw. And standing before the booth, still in his team-issued suit, a fresh bruise blossoming on his jaw, was Ilya. They weren’t speaking. They were just staring at each other, a silent war raging in the space between them.
I stopped at the entrance, my breath catching. Scott saw me first. His eyes, already dark with anger, filled with confusion, then dawning, horrific understanding as he looked from my terrified face to Ilya’s resolute one.
“Sis? What the hell are you doing here?” His voice was nasal from the broken nose.
Ilya didn’t turn. He kept his eyes on Scott. “She is here because I asked her to come. Because this concerns her.”
Scott’s gaze snapped back to Ilya, venomous. “You stay the 'fuck' away from my sister. You touch her, I’ll—”
“I love her,” Ilya said, the words clear, calm, and absolute, cutting through Scott’s threat like a knife.
The silence that followed was deafening. Scott blinked, as if he’d been physically struck. He looked at me, his expression cycling through disbelief, betrayal, and utter devastation. “What… what is he talking about?”
This was the moment. The secret, held so tightly for so long, finally spilled into the open air, toxic and unavoidable. I forced my feet to move, walking to stand slightly beside Ilya, not touching him, but aligning myself. The choice was made.
“It’s true, Scott,” I said, my voice trembling but clear. “Ilya and I… we’ve been seeing each other. For eight months.”
The raw pain that contorted Scott’s face was worse than any anger. He looked like a little boy, lost. “Eight… 'months' ? You’ve been lying to me for eight months? With… with 'him'?” He surged to his feet, knocking the ice pack to the floor. “Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what he is? What he’s 'done' ?”
“I know him,” I said, stepping forward. “I know the man who reads poetry to his dog. Who calls his babushka every Sunday. Who fought for every single thing he has. You see a goon. I see the man I love.”
“You don’t love him! He’s manipulated you! He’s using you to get to me!” Scott roared, the sound echoing in the empty bar.
“ENOUGH!” Ilya’s voice, rarely raised, was a whip-crack of authority. He stepped between us, facing Scott. “You will not speak to her like that. You think this is about you? Your ego is so big you think the sun rises to spite you? This is not about hockey. This is not about our fights. This is about 'her'.” He jabbed a finger toward me, his composure cracking to show the raw emotion beneath. “I love your sister. I have loved her since the night on the balcony when she was not afraid of me. I would never use her. I would burn this league to the ground before I use her.”
Scott was seething, his chest heaving. “You expect me to believe that? After tonight? After everything?”
“What happened tonight was hockey!” Ilya shot back. “It was the game! This… this is life. And in my life, she is everything. I am telling you this now, to your face, because the lying is hurting her. It ends tonight. Hate me. Hit me again. I do not care. But you will not make her choose between her heart and her family. That is a cruelty not even I am capable of.”
The truth of his words hung in the air. Ilya wasn’t asking for permission. He wasn’t apologizing for loving me. He was declaring it and drawing a line: the deception stopped here.
Scott looked at me, his eyes begging. “Please. Tell me this is some sick joke. Come home. We’ll forget this.”
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I looked at my brother, my protector, my last link to my childhood family, and I shook my head. “I can’t, Scott. I love him. And I’m sorry—so desperately sorry—that I lied. But I’m not sorry for being with him.”
The fight drained out of Scott. He looked broken. He looked from my determined face to Ilya’s unyielding one. The reality was settling in, inescapable.
“Get out,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “Both of you. Get out.”
I took a shuddering breath. “Scott…”
Ilya gently took my elbow, guiding me away from the booth, from my shattered brother. We walked out of the bar into the cold, silent snow. The secret was gone. We were exposed, raw, and the future was a terrifying blank page.
I didn’t go home with Ilya that night. I went to my own apartment, to the space that still smelled of Scott, of our family dinners, of my old life. I cried until I had no tears left.
The days that followed were a desert of silence from Scott. The media had a field day with the fight, speculating on the “bad blood,” unknowingly commenting on the real war that had just ended privately. Ilya gave me space, checking in with quiet, steady texts, being my anchor without smothering me.
A week later, a knock came at my door. It was Scott. He looked tired, older, the bruises faded to yellow. He didn’t come in.
“I don’t get it,” he said quietly, not meeting my eyes. “I will never understand it. I think you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”
“But,” he continued, the word heavy with reluctance, “you’re my sister. You’re all I have. And I watched you for a week, waiting for you to look… manipulated, or scared, or unhappy. You just look sad. Sad about me.” He finally looked at me, his eyes full of a confused, wounded love. “If he hurts you, I will actually kill him. Not hockey kill. Real kill.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t approval. It was a fragile, grudging ceasefire. A recognition that losing me was worse than tolerating Ilya.
“He won’t hurt me,” I whispered.
Scott just nodded, a world of doubt and love in the gesture. He turned and walked away, leaving the door to our relationship open just a crack.
That night, I went to Ilya. He opened his door, his face etched with worry that melted into relief when he saw me. He didn’t ask about Scott. He just pulled me into his arms and held me, his solid presence a promise in the chaos.
“It will be a long road,” he murmured into my hair. “For us all.”
“I know,” I said, holding him tighter.
We were no longer a secret. We were a complicated, painful, open truth. The path ahead was fraught with awkward family gatherings, tense public appearances, and the slow, difficult work of rebuilding a bridge with Scott. But for the first time in eight months, I could breathe. I could love Ilya Rozanov in the light, with all the mess and consequence that entailed. He was worth the wreckage. He was worth the fight. And finally, we didn’t have to fight alone in the shadows anymore. We could begin the harder, truer work of building something real, out in the open, one painful, honest day at a time.
