CHAPTER 1 Cash Maddox
Vegas Vengeance Seeks Vengeance
The bottle comes with sparklers. That’s Vegas bottle service for you, I guess.
I don’t even look up from my phone.
It’s theatrics, and I’m not here for that. What am I here for?
That’s a damn good question. It’s fucking July. You’d think by now I’d be over the tragic ending to what was supposed to be our season.
But if we had won the Cup, I’d still be celebrating right now. Just as well that I’m still lamenting it instead.
“Put your phone down and drink some sparkly 1942,” my buddy West says, referring to the bottle of Don Julio 1942 that just arrived at our table.
He was there with me, one of the two wingers I’m tightest with. Our lockers are beside each other, and we’re constantly in the rink together in practice.
Hell, even our seats on the plane are usually together. I never had much choice but to become close with the two assholes who share the line with me in season, and we have a hell of a lot of fun together. We’re known for our locker room antics, pranks, and one-upping each other.
But I’m not in the mood for any of that tonight.
He knows how much it hurts.
We lost by one in Game Seven, one round before the Finals. It should’ve been ours. We should’ve had the chance to fight for the Cup.
It feels like the one that got away.
Maybe it’ll always feel that way, or maybe we can seek vengeance this season. I nearly laugh at the thought. Vegas Vengeance Seeks Vengeance.
I’m not getting any younger. Once guys hit thirty, they notoriously start to go downhill. I refuse to be one of those guys. I’m more focused than ever—just look at me now. I’m sitting in a goddamn Vegas nightclub in the offseason rewatching that final play for the ten thousandth time.
I should be drinking with my buddies, enjoying all Vegas has to offer, finding a woman with a hotel bed waiting for me tonight.
Instead, I’m sulking.
I blow out a breath as Kellan, my other winger, walks over and hits the top of my phone so it tumbles out of my hand.
“Dick,” I mutter, as if anyone can hear me over the music in this place. I let the phone clatter to the table and offer a glare.
“Snap out of it, Maddox,” he demands.
“Fuck off,” I mutter.
“Look, we were all there. It sucks ass. But now we’re in the height of the offseason, and we should be celebrating how far we made it. The offseason is short. I’m here to have fun, so either get on board or go home.”
“Home it is.” Yeah, so I’m in a bit of a mood tonight.
Kellan leaves me alone, and I chug down what’s left in my glass of 1942. I slam my glass back on the table, ready to get the fuck out of here.
But when I glance up, my eyes catch on blonde hair in the middle of the dance floor.
It swings with her movement as she dances to the beat of some electronic song that I’d never in a million years be able to actually identify.
I’m more of a classic rock kind of guy. Ozzy, AC/DC, the Stones…give me that over this shit any day.
I blame my mother for my strange penchant for music. My teammates seem to think it makes me old, but I’d venture to argue that being born an entire decade before most of them has more to do with it than my musical preferences.
Back to this girl.
She’s gorgeous.
The lights flash, only giving me glimpses of her when they move back on her.
Blonde hair that tumbles in waves down to the middle of her back. A gorgeous body that’s got my attention as I’m already imagining her beneath me.
She shakes her ass with another woman who’s in the periphery, and I can’t help but watch her from where I sit. I sink back despite my words that I’d be heading home, and I pick up the 1942 and tip it over my glass.
I guess I’m not quite ready to go home just yet.
My eyes move back to the blonde, and my cock thickens as I watch her and take a sip of my tequila.
She’s wearing a black skirt that’s a little too short with a black tank top that shows off tits that make my mouth water.
I can’t see her shoes from here, but hell if I’m not imagining black fuck me heels she can wrap around my waist later.
It’s West who follows my line of sight toward the woman. “The blonde? No fuckin’ way, dude.”
“Fuck you. Why not?”
“A, she looks like she’s a decade younger than you, which means she’d be better off with someone like me. And B, she’s a Bradley,” he says.
“Bradley? Like the football Bradleys?”
He nods. “One and the same.”
“Oh fuck.” I shake my head as my will to stay here suddenly vanishes into thin air. My cock is still hard, though. I’ll figure out a solution to that, just maybe not with a Bradley.
I fucking hate that family after that bullshit with their casino.
I finally focus my gaze beside her to see a man standing behind her friend. “Dex Bradley,” I mutter, venom in my voice.
“I still can’t believe you got so lucky, by the way.” West shakes his head.
It’s true. Sometimes I think I live under a lucky star. Sometimes I think it’s probably just my old man up there watching out for me.
Except for the fact that my dad died over a decade ago, and now, with the exception of missing out on the Cup this year, I tend to get pretty much whatever I want.
So when the Bradley family’s illegal underground casino here in Vegas was raided last October and I happened to be there at the time…well, I got lucky. And not because I was winning. For the record, I wasn’t.
I was smart enough to gamble with cash, never credit, but I also didn’t know it was illegal at the time.
Most of us who gambled there didn’t—or so I assumed. I thought it was just one of those fancy VIP lounges.
I had no idea it had the potential to end my fucking career.
And I just so happened to head upstairs to the legal lounge to take a piss and get a fresh drink just as the SWAT team showed up to raid the illegal one down in the basement.
So, yeah, I hold a bit of a vendetta against the Bradley family. And I guess I’m a bit of a lucky bastard at times.
Dex specifically reached out to me because he knew I’d been there in the past. We circled past each other in the Vegas scene a few times, but he called me to make sure I’d keep my mouth shut about who was behind the operation.
He wasn’t nice about it, either. In fact, he was a total dick.
I wasn’t going to say anything. Nobody ever questioned me since they had plenty of witnesses around who were downstairs at the time of the raid. But the point is, the tapes could have shown me on them. It could’ve been bad.
Dex and I play for two different pro sports teams here in Vegas, and we could’ve teamed up with each other to make a difference in this town. Instead, the entire family made it onto my avoid at all costs list after that shit went down.
And now…maybe I don’t want to avoid them at all costs. Not when the females look like that.
Or maybe this is my chance at a little revenge.
“Not that it matters,” West tells me. “You can’t land a Bradley.”
Those are fighting words. They’re enough to make me tear my gaze off the Bradley girl whose commanding every ounce of my attention even from across the goddamn room.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, old man,” he says, goading me on.
My eyes—and my ego—light up at the challenge. “Bet.”
He grins as he punches the air in celebration. “Fuck yeah! Stakes?”
“A thousand bucks says I can get her in my bed.”
He sticks his hand out. “You’ve got yourself a deal. I’ll need proof, obviously.”
I nod as if that goes without saying, and I stand with resolve. I turn my hat around. I pick up my glass of 1942 and head toward the dance floor.