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Linda from intakes slapped a file against Wilson’s chest.
“Another tip off,” she said. “You’ll never guess which of your cases it is.”
Wilson just nodded. He was not at all surprised that this case garnered a lot of attention, but he felt for the poor haggard tip line employees. They needed a raise.
“Is that the fourth today?” he asked.
“Sixth, you took a long lunch,” she corrected. “You’re not going to believe this one,” she said. “Says he plays on Rozanov’s team. Said he heard Rozanov saying that it was a fake marriage for immigration. Said he even laughed about it. He’s got a recording and everything, sent the file over already.”
Wilson snorted.
“Yeah, I bet he said that,” he told her. But he grabbed his coffee, unbothered. He He was sure Ilya had said that, but he was just as sure that he didn’t believe that the words Ilya was saying were true.
What a crazy case.
He’d read this tip off, and then add it to the stack.
Sometimes it was fans, other times it was fellow players, twice it had been the league commissioner.
There were quotes, photos, Twitter threads and Reddit deep dives daily, as everyone on planet Earth tried to prove to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander were getting a fake marriage so that Ilya Rozanov could get a Canadian Permanent Resident card.
Sixteen women submitted tips that Ilya was straight and had stories they thought backed that up.
Two men submitted tips that Ilya was bisexual but was way too promiscuous to actually be getting married.
(Every one of the people in those last two categories sounded bitter and jealous.)
But the thing was
The people who worked at the IRCC were probably the only people on planet earth who actually believed it was a real marriage.
Wilson fully, 100%, without a doubt believed that it was a very real marriage.
He couldn't be convinced otherwise by a hundred tips a day from people who didn’t really know them.
He was definitely going to approve their application.
He’d interviewed Ilya and Shane several times each, both separately and together. Normally a couple of interviews would have been sufficient, but there were extenuating circumstances in this case. Namely, the copious evidence provided on the tip line day after day. The IRCC needed to be thorough. But nothing in any of those tips held up against the real evidence.
Wilson had reviewed years worth of correspondence. There weren’t many photos, but there were enough.
There were texts that backed up the fact that almost every post Shane had made on Instagram in the past five years was related to his relationship with Ilya.
Wilson had interviewed Shane’s parents both separately and together, and knew without a shred of doubt that they believed this marriage was real.
He interviewed Shane’s best friend and teammate Hayden, and his nausea really sold it.
Ilya could recite every hockey award Shane had ever won, starting at 7 years old.
Shane knew the placement of every mole on Ilya's body.
Ilya knew every detail of what foods Shane was willing to eat on his complicated diet regimen. He also knew which foods Shane would cheat for. (Shane said he didn't cheat often. Wilson believed Ilya over Shane.)
Shane knew the tune to Ilya's late mother's favorite song, even though he couldn't say the words.
Shane's father knew all about Ilya's attempts in therapy to work through his difficult childhood.
Shane's mother was creating a recipe book of Ilya's favorite recipes that his grandmother used to make him in Russia as a child, and had a studied familiarity with Russian cooking techniques. When asked, she’d been able to tell him where the Russian grocery store in Ottawa was.
Ilya's childhood best friend got a misty look in her eyes when she talked about how much happier Ilya seemed. She wasn’t shy about the fact that they’d once been lovers, but she seemed happy for him that he had finally found monogamy worth committing to. (Her words.)
Shane's ex-girlfriend shared a very colorful quote about how he'd come out to her and then giggled like a schoolgirl at the memory. Even Wilson couldn't help but laugh.
Shane was pretty funny with the people he actually invited into his inner circle. It was pretty easy to tell who wasn't in that bubble, because those people all thought he was a pretty serious guy. But when he was relaxed, he sounded like a good time.
Ilya had a reputation for being the funny guy. But while his public humor was largely sarcasm, Shane saw a sweeter side of his humor, a side few people got to see. Wilson felt like he was almost intruding on an intimate moment he shouldn’t see when he caught glimpses of those moments.
Wilson was a bilingual Russian speaker. That was why he’d been assigned this case. Ilya conducted most of his interviews in English, but was able to fall back on Russian at times when the language failed him. It was pretty standard. He probably would have been fine with just an English speaker, but that would have been such a shame, Wilson thought, because that person could not have been blown away by how much Russian Shane Hollander knew.
They'd told him Wilson early on, that Shane had started learning Russian for Ilya, but he managed a 10 minute conversation about his own childhood in Russian, and even cracked a few jokes. He didn't know every word he wanted to say in Russian, but he knew enough to be able to talk around the words he didn't know, which was an incredible skill for a Canadian hockey player.
Ilya knew almost nothing in French except sexual innuendo, which was equally telling.
The next day when a report came in that Shane hadn’t denied that it was fake to fans, Wilson shook it off as he stamped their application approved. When another tip came in that Ilya was secretly dating a woman in Montreal, Wilson laughed it off and waved it away as he put the application in an envelope. And when a tip came in that Shane Hollander had sworn off sex, which was why he was willing to marry a man, Wilson was thrilled to tell the tip line that he was closing the case and they didn’t have to accept any other submissions, and he dropped the stamped package in the mail.
Even if no one else in the world believed that the marriage between Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov was real, Wilson really, truly, deep down in his heart believed that not only was this a real relationship, but it was one of the most committed and loving he’d ever seen in fifteen years working this job.