The Not-So-Neutral Zone (The Blue Ox Boys #1)

Chapter 1

one

brody

SIX MONTHS AGO – BARCELONA

There are about a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t be here now, and most of them are stuffed in my backpack.

To start, my hockey team’s PR department would have a collective aneurysm if they knew where I was—or what I was about to do.

Secondly, I’m carrying enough cash to buy a luxury car or fund a small criminal enterprise.

And thirdly, I hate crowds. But here I am, drowning in a sea of tourists on La Rambla in Barcelona, and I’ve got nobody to blame but myself.

Well, myself and my father, but we’ll get to that disaster in a minute.

The late-afternoon sun beats down on the tree-lined promenade, turning everything gold and hazy—very picturesque, very Insta-worthy, and very much wasted on me right now.

Palm trees tower overhead, their fronds rustling in the Mediterranean breeze that carries the smell of salt water mixed with roasting chestnuts and something sweet—likely from those sugar-dusted pastries the vendors are hawking from carts.

And if I were here for anything close to resembling a vacation, I’d be soaking it in. As it is—

My phone buzzes in my pocket for what has to be the thirtieth time in the last hour. At this point, I don’t need to check it to know who it is.

Dad.

Again.

I pull the brim of my baseball cap lower and keep my head down as I weave through the chaos, shouldering past flower stalls exploding with roses the size of my fist—reds, yellows, pinks so bright they hurt to look at.

A guitarist sits on a folding chair near a café, his fingers moving over the strings with the kind of easy confidence that says he’s never had to bail his father out of a gambling debt.

Must be nice.

I break through the crowd and keep walking, leaving the square behind me.

Me, on the other hand, I’m here because my father gambled away fifty thousand dollars he doesn’t have—again—and now he owes it to people who don’t exactly accept IOUs or sad stories about “next time, I swear.” I’m here to bail him out with cash I can’t afford to give, cash that’s currently sitting in my backpack like a ticking time bomb.

To clean up his mess, make sure no one finds out, and get him on a plane home before the press catches wind of any of this.

Because if they do? If one single journalist gets a whiff that Brody Kane’s father is a gambling addict who just went on a three-day losing streak at an underground poker game in Spain?

Career over. Image shattered. Contract renewal? Might as well frame it and hang it on the wall next to my childhood participation trophies.

So yeah. No stopping to smell the roses.

My phone buzzes again—because apparently the obvious thing to do when you’re waiting to be bailed out from a potential knee-capping is to send thirty-seven text messages back-to-back—and this time I yank it out just to make it stop.

Dad

Where are you? The guy’s getting impatient. Brody, PLEASE. I need you.

The screen is too bright in the sunlight, making me squint, a bead of sweat trickling down my back in the Barcelona sun.

You always need me, Dad. That’s kind of your brand.

I swipe back to my map. Almost there. The meeting point is ten minutes away—some shady back-alley casino tucked into the Gothic Quarter, where my father’s been hemorrhaging money like it’s an Olympic sport and he’s going for gold.

I just need to get there, pay off whoever needs paying, pour my father into a taxi, and vanish before anyone recognizes me.

I set out to do just that, taking one last glance at the picturesque square before starting down the next street. So far, so good.

Stay invisible. Keep your head down. Don’t let anyone see you.

It’s basically been my mantra since I turned pro. On the ice? I’m untouchable. Calculated. Controlled. Perfect. My teammates call me—and I’m not kidding, this is actually a thing—“Candy” Kane, because apparently I’m so sweet and polished and media-friendly that I might as well be made of sugar.

I hate that nickname. Every time someone calls me Candy, I die a little inside. At this rate, I’ll be completely dead by playoffs.

But off the ice? I’m a ghost. No scandals. No mess. No cracks in the armor. Because if people see the real me—the guy with the train-wreck father and the hidden dyslexia and the fear that no matter how hard I work, it’ll never be enough—they’ll know the truth.

I’m not made of candy.

I’m just a guy pretending to have it all together while everything falls apart in slow motion.

I sidestep a group of tourists taking a selfie in front of a flower stall—matching “Barcelona Babes” T-shirts, matching fanny packs, the whole nine yards—and catch a glimpse of my reflection in a café window.

Baseball cap pulled low. Faded gray T-shirt with a small tear near the hem.

Dark jeans. The post-season haircut—shorter on the sides, longer on top—hidden under the cap.

Generic. Forgettable. Exactly what I’m going for.

Good.

I take a breath and adjust the straps on my backpack. The weight of the cash inside feels heavier than it should. Fifty thousand dollars. I can’t believe I’m bailing him out. Again—

Someone slams into me.

Hard.

The impact sends me stumbling forward, my sneakers skidding on the smooth cobblestones, and I barely catch myself.

Smooth, Brody. Real smooth. I look up just in time to see a guy in a dark hoodie sprinting past me.

Dark hoodie. In Barcelona. In the late afternoon.

In the heat. Because that’s not suspicious at all.

He’s weaving through the crowd like he’s got somewhere very important to be, which—spoiler alert—usually means he’s running from something, not to something.

What the—

And then I see her.

A woman—mid-twenties, maybe—standing about ten feet away. Her hand is still outstretched like she’s reaching for something that’s no longer there. Her face is frozen in pure shock.

She’s wearing a sundress, blue with tiny white polka dots, and flat sandals. Her purse strap is broken, dangling uselessly from her shoulder.

Oh.

Oh.

Hoodie guy just stole her purse.

And I don’t think. Which is probably for the best, because if I thought about it, I’d remember I have fifty thousand dollars in cash on my back and a father waiting for me and approximately zero time for heroics.

But something about the look on her face flips a switch in my brain.

And I run.

The backpack bounces against my spine—fifty thousand dollars, Kane.

You’re running with fifty thousand dollars in cash—but I ignore it.

My sneakers pound against the cobblestones.

Years of hockey training kick in—muscle memory, reflexes, all the countless hours in the gym and on the ice finally paying off in the form of… purse-chasing.

The thief is fast, but I’m faster. I vault over a café chair—someone yelps—dodge a family with strollers, and nearly take out a flower display. Petals scatter everywhere, and I mentally apologize to the vendor, who’s shouting something that definitely isn’t “good job, American tourist.”

The street musician stops playing. The silver statue breaks character to watch. Tourists scatter.

And honestly? This is the most alive I’ve felt in months.

Which says something deeply concerning about my life, but we’ll unpack that later.

The thief darts into a side alley—narrow, lined with graffiti—and I follow. The alley smells like stale beer and poor life choices.

He stumbles over a trash bag.

I grab the back of his hoodie and slam him against the wall.

Not hard. Just…encouragingly.

“Bad idea, man,” I say, breathing hard.

He stares at me for half a second, then throws the purse at my feet.

Smart kid.

Then he bolts.

I let him go. I don’t care about him. I pick up the brown leather bag and check the contents. Wallet. Phone with a daisy case. Keys on a keychain shaped like a tiny Eiffel Tower.

I jog back toward La Rambla, because apparently, I’m doing this now. I’m the guy who chases down thieves while carrying fifty grand in cash and ignoring increasingly frantic texts from his disaster of a father.

Somewhere, my agent is getting a stress migraine and doesn’t know why.

I round the corner back onto La Rambla, and there she is. Still standing in the same spot, one hand pressed to her chest.

I walk up, slightly out of breath, and hold out the purse. “I think this is yours.”

Her gaze lifts to meet mine, and—

Up close, she’s…wow. Freckles scattered across her nose. Brown eyes—warm, the color of melted chocolate—currently doing this thing where they’re welling up but also crinkling at the corners like she can’t decide whether to cry or laugh.

She looks at me.

Then at the purse.

Then back at me.

And then she laughs.

Not a polite chuckle. A full, slightly hysterical laugh that makes her shoulders shake.

“Oh my goodness,” she says, taking the purse and clutching it to her chest. Her voice is warm, slightly breathless. “Oh my goodness. You—you got it back. I can’t believe you—” She stops, presses a hand to her forehead. “Thank you. Thank you. I don’t even—who are you?”

“It’s nothing,” I say, which is a lie because—you know, 50K in my backpack and all. “Are you okay?”

“Am I—” She stares at me. “You just chased that guy down and rescued my purse like you’re Batman, and you’re asking if I’m okay?”

When she puts it like that, it does sound a little ridiculous.

I shrug. “Just making sure.”

She opens her purse—the zipper sticks—and starts riffling through it with shaking fingers. And then she pulls out this worn, battered sketchbook. The cover is soft leather, faded and creased, with coffee stains near the bottom corner.

She flips through it quickly, her lips moving silently.

And for just a second, it falls open.

I see it.

Drawings. Whimsical, detailed, beautiful drawings. A dragon with fierce, expressive eyes and intricate wings. Handwritten notes crammed in the margins.

It’s…incredible.