Neon & Nets (Venom Next Gen #1)

Chapter One

Chapter One

Grady

15 Years Later…

“Grady Metcalfe! It’s great to meet you.” The smiling man who holds out his hand to me looks like he’s barely in his thirties. In fact, the longer I look at him, the more I think he might be in his twenties at best. He’s young, fresh-faced, and eager.

Maybe I’ve got it wrong. Is this guy really the owner of the team? Financially, how is that even possible? I bet he’s younger than some of the players.

“Are you Mr. Giovanetti?” I ask, even as I extend my hand.

The guy wrinkles his nose. “Please, call me Sergio. Every time people say Mr. Giovanetti, I think of my dad, and… well, you’ll meet him soon enough.”

I pump Sergio’s hand in greeting. Sure enough, this is my new boss. I’m not sure how I feel about working for a kid, but as the youngest coach in the NHL as of this season, I know how it feels when people don’t take you seriously on account of your age. Sergio seems nice enough. He’s got a full head of dark hair—okay, I’m a little jealous, since mine’s never been that thick—and a round, open face that makes me like him at once. There’s none of that weird posturing and extra-tight hand squeezing that some guys do when they want to establish dominance.

So far, so good. I can work with this.

“We’ll get you all set up after the welcome breakfast,” Sergio explains. He turns deeper into the building and waves for me to follow him. “You’ve already met Renee, since she’s the one you’ve been corresponding with. And I know you’ve been in touch with my dad…”

Technically, Dante Giovanetti is the one who hired me, although I have yet to meet the guy in person. My official interviews were with, Mitch Calloway, the Venom’s General Manager, but I got the impression immediately he was more of a figurehead than a major player. From Dante, I got a series of slightly unhinged emails talking about magic at the end of last season, and after confirming that they weren’t a hoax, I did some digging. I knew the Vegas Venom from back in the day, of course, but over the years, they lost their mojo, and the entire organization has gone downhill.

It seems fitting, I suppose, that I’ve come full circle. A Venom player took me out of the game. Now, a decade and a half later, that same team is paying me a staggering amount of money to put them back on the map. The team roster even includes a kid with the same last name as the guy who injured me: Abbott. It’s a wild coincidence, but it also feels like a sign. Like redemption.

I let Sergio take me on a quick tour of the building, just to get my bearings. “We’ll show you around in earnest later,” he promises. “Renee will get you set up in your office, and then Ranger—he’s the assistant coach—will give you the rundown on how everything’s going.”

I cock my head to one side. “Ranger? As in, Ranger Shaw? Wasn’t he on the team back in the day?”

“Yeah…” Sergio draws out the word and rubs his temples. “For our second Stanley Cup run. Listen, my dad is a little, uh. Eccentric?” The way he hits that last word makes me think he has another adjective in mind. “So he started hiring a bunch of the former players’ kids onto the team and stacking the front office with old friends. He says he’s trying to get the magic back.”

“Hold on.” Ah, so now all that magic stuff is starting to make sense. I think back over the roster. Now that I consider it, there were a few other familiar names on the roster, although I didn’t put two and two together because… well, because this plan doesn’t make any sense. Who does that kind of thing? And if I had accepted the job prior to Sergio’s dad getting this harebrained idea, I would have stopped him.

And does that mean the Abbott kid…?

“Oh, don’t worry.” Sergio flaps a hand at me, misreading my hesitation. “Dad’s really excited to have you, with your reputation. He’s all about the nepotism, but even he has his limits. At the end of the day, he just wants to win.” Sergio laughs, but there’s a note of awkwardness in his voice, which makes me wonder what kind of pressure Dante’s putting on his son. From what I can tell, his are pretty big shoes to fill. If I were a father, I would never…

Well, it doesn’t matter. No use opening up that old wound. I guess I’ll never know for sure.

“The players will be here in about half an hour, but I wanted to give you the chance to meet the rest of the guys you’ll be working with first.” Sergio pauses at a pair of double doors and gives me a big grin. “Ready?”

“As ready as I’m gonna be.”

Sergio pulls one of the doors open and leads me through, and the instant I step inside, my words make a liar of me. I’m prepared for the two guys sitting across the long table from me, one of whom is my age, the other of whom is a little older. They look kind of familiar, but I can’t place them. It’s the sight of the third man that stops me in my tracks.

Noah Abbott. Noah fucking Abbott, the man who singlehandedly ended my career and, indirectly, my marriage, is…

Right.

Fucking.

There.

My whole body locks up. I can feel myself slipping into flight or fight mode. When Dante Giovanetti sent me the bios of the coaching staff, Noah Abbott was not on that list. This is not how today was supposed to go.

The three men stop talking, and two of them look up at me with expectant expressions, their eyes fixed on my face. I should turn away, but my body isn’t listening to me, and I find myself staring right into Noah’s eyes. He grins.

“Hey, let me guess… you’re Grady Metcalfe,” he says. Like he’s never seen me before in his life. Like we’re meeting for the first time.

“Yeah,” I croak.

Sergio slaps my back so hard that he almost knocks me off my feet. Given that you could blow me over with a feather, I guess that’s not saying much. “Grady, this is Noah Abbott, our goalie coach.”

Yeah, I think, I fucking know who he is. I wait for things to click for him, or for whatever facade he’s holding together to break, but it doesn’t happen.

This guy ruined my life, and he has no idea who I am.

Sergio plows on. “And this is Briggs Sawyer, the Director of Acquisitions.”

“Yo.” Briggs lifts a hand in greeting. He’s a little shorter than the other two, with the kind of body that speaks of a guy who used to rely on his metabolism to keep his weight in check and is gradually slipping into dad-bod territory. His cocky grin makes him look younger than furrowed brow suggests.

“And this is Ranger Shaw, the assistant coach.”

The younger of the three, the guy who’s closest to my age, lifts his hand in greeting. “Hi, Grady, nice to meet you.” He’s the sort of skinny fit that tells me he’s still watching what he eats. Shaw was one of the top goal scorers in the league back in the day.

This isn’t the first time I’ve met a new team, but it is the first time that I’ve been so painfully aware that we all come from a similar background, but they got to do all the things I couldn’t. They got to keep playing. As for me, I guess the old saying about “ those who can’t do ” applies. There’s a reason I’m comparing myself to them, and I hate how small and insecure I’ve gotten in just a few seconds in their company.

I lift my hand on autopilot. I slap on a grin I don’t feel. “Hey,” I croak.

“Sit down,” Sergio urges. “I’ll be right back.”

Sure, boss, throw me to the wolves. I can handle it. I nod even as my numb feet carry me to one of the empty chairs.

“It’s great to meet you,” Ranger says, with an almost disconcerting level of sincerity. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Yeah?” My eyes flick toward Noah, but… nothing. How much has he told them?

“How’d you end up taking this position?” Briggs asks.

“Uh.” I drag my gaze back to him. “You know how it goes—”

“I made an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

I whip my head back toward the doors just as they slam behind a newcomer. I have yet to meet Dante Giovanetti, but I know him on sight. He looks almost exactly like Sergio, aged up thirty-five, maybe forty years. Unlike the rest of us, he’s wearing a slate-gray suit, which almost perfectly matches his silver hair.

Briggs snorts and directs his next comment to me. “You could’ve refused. Everyone he tried to threaten us with is dead now.”

“Watch it, Sawyer,” Dante growls. He lopes to one end of the long table and drops into his seat.

Briggs ignores me. “For us, however, our threat is very much alive. And well. So well, in fact, I swear Cash looks like he’s preparing to compete in an Ironman.”

Dante’s eye twitches. “What have I told you about bringing him up?”

Briggs finally swivels his chair toward Dante. “I mostly ignore you… since there’s no reason for you to even be here.”

Noah watches their back and forth with a neutral expression, while I can see Ranger fighting to keep a smile from his face. Apparently, this is the normal dynamic.

“Cash?” I blurt, without thinking. “Cash Hale?”

“The music star, yeah,” Noah says. “He used to play for the Venom.”

“And now his son, Knight, is back on the team,” Ranger adds.

“Right.” I nod, as if this is new information. Seriously, did none of these guys look past my coaching history to my playing days? We were all in the same damn league.

Dante narrows his eyes at Briggs. “Sergio may be running things, but I’m still the team owner. It’s my name on your paycheck.”

Briggs shrugs. “I wouldn’t know. I get direct deposit. No one signs checks anymore, boomer.”

“I can still fire you,” Dante warns. “And for your information, I am GenX.”

“And then who would bring back the magic?” Briggs winks and aims finger-guns at… our boss? But Sergio’s our boss. Maybe. I guess I’m not the only one who missed a few memos.

Sergio returns with caterers in tow, the room is filled with the hubbub of people setting up trays of eggs benedict and towers of blueberry muffins, juice, and hot coffee. The players begin to trickle in, and soon I’m at the center of a maelstrom of introductions, putting names to faces, and listening to life stories.

This part, I can handle. The kids, the ones who still have their careers ahead of them. With them, I know my role.

And all the while, Noah Abbott falls into easy conversation with other members of the Vegas Venom, oblivious to me. Like I don’t matter to him. Like I never mattered.

Like he never gave the kid whose career he detonated another fucking thought.