Take Me as I Am

Coward of the County

Summer still couldn’t believe that Sokolov had done that to his own daughter. Sure, he didn’t claim her as his daughter unless it was beneficial to him, but still. She couldn’t let all of this happen without a fight, so she decided that she was going to go talk to Sokolov herself the next day.

She knocked on his office door and entered without waiting for him to give her any sign. “Yes?” Sokolov questioned looking up from his computer.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Summer asked, anger pulsating through her.

“Excuse me?” Sokolov questioned.

“Olivia is your daughter, whether you want to claim her or not. How dare you give her an ultimatum! You have no power. You can’t fire her, and you can’t get rid of Jon!” she said, her voice growing louder with every word.

“If I had no power, then why would Olivia have quit?” Sokolov asked. “If she thought I had no power, she would have stayed and forced my hand.”

“She thinks that you have some persuasive ability or something,” Summer told him. “And she wasn’t about to see Jon get shipped off somewhere for no reason at all!”

“So, I do have some power, then?”

“No!” Summer yelled. “You are just someone who thinks they can always have their way by intimidating people. However, all you are is a coward.”

“I’m a coward?” he questioned.

“Who else would abandon their child before she was even born? Who wouldn’t even try to get into contact with her for twenty years?” Summer asked. “You are nothing but a coward.”

“You better watch how you speak to the coach,” Sokolov threatened.

“Or what?” Summer asked. “You’ll fire me? Guess what! You can’t do that. You have no control over the translators. So what else do you have in your bag of tricks?”

“Hmm,” Sokolov hummed. “Maybe Patty needs to go to another team.”

“I already told you, I don’t believe that you have any power over that. That’s all Dale,” Summer said with a smirk.

“And you think Dale doesn’t listen to my input? Of course he does! If I tell him that getting Jordan Staal for Pat would be a good deal, he’ll do everything in his power to make it happen,” Sokolov told her. “So, do you still think I have no power?”

“You’re a dick!” Summer yelled at the same time the door to Sokolov’s office opened behind her. She spun around to see Dale standing there. Summer’s eyes went huge as she realized what he had overheard.

“Summer,” Dale began. “We need to talk right now!”

“But,” Summer began, acting as if she had just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar by her father.

“No,” Dale said curtly. “Go to my office right now!”

Summer slowly walked to his office, Dale following her. Once they were both inside, Dale shut the door behind him and took a seat on the other side of his desk. “Summer, you cannot talk to the coach like that! What were you thinking?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Dale, but you don’t know all that’s going on,” she insisted.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like he’s threatening to try to get Pat traded just to get back at me.”

“He doesn’t have that power,” Dale told her.

“That’s what I said, and he told me that if he told you that he wanted Staal for Pat that you would make sure that it happened.”

“That is still no excuse to talk to him like that! He is your superior,” Dale began before Summer interrupted him.

“He’s the reason Liv quit her job,” Summer blurted out.

“What?” Dale asked.

“He’s the reason Liv quit her job,” Summer repeated. “He threatened her that if she didn’t break up with Jon that he would get her fired or have Jon traded,” she explained.

“Olivia knows that he can’t do that,” Dale told her, even though a part of him believed what Summer was saying. That would explain why Olivia quit all of a sudden.

“Dale, I’m telling you, Sokolov has been trying to get Liv to break up with Jon for I don’t know how long,” she told him.

“I know,” Dale commented.

“What?” Summer asked, astonished.

“Dale came to me with concerns that Jon wasn’t paying enough attention to the team since he began dating Olivia,” he explained.

“That’s not true!” Summer exclaimed. “You know Jon’s the hardest working person on the team. He’s not letting his relationship with Liv get in the way. Hell, he played like shit when the two of them were broken up!”

“Do you and Olivia plan what you’re going to say to me?” Dale asked, remembering that Olivia had said practically the same thing when he had talked to her about it.

“What?” Summer asked, confused.

“Never mind,” Dale said. “Either way, you can’t talk to the coach like that.”

“I wasn’t talking to him as the coach,” Summer told him.

“Then who were you talking to him as?” Dale questioned.

“I was talking to him as Liv’s father,” Summer said, knowing that while at first Olivia would be angry that she just told Dale this, that in the end, she would understand why she had to do this.

“What?” Dale asked.

“Sokolov is Liv’s biological father,” Summer exclaimed.

“I don’t believe you,” Dale said. “Why haven’t I heard about this before?”

“Because neither of them wanted anyone to know. Sokolov abandoned Liv and her mother before Liv was born. He never tried to get in contact with her. When she got the job here, she thought she wouldn’t have to face him, and she figured that if she did, he wouldn’t recognize her so it’d be fine. But, somehow he found out and he’s been threatening to get her fired or Jon traded. So, Liv quit her job, and I went to go defend her to Sokolov, and he told me that he was going to get Pat traded. So, I told him he was a dick,” Summer explained quickly.

“Oh boy,” Dale muttered, as he placed his head in his hands on his desk.
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