Page 47 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys (Forbidden Fantasies #18)

“I don’t know,” she says. “But I think they’re trying to wear her down. Catch her off guard. Maybe break her routine. Maybe just…see what she does when no one’s supposed to be looking.”

When I stand, Mia stands too. She hugs her bag to her chest like she is bracing herself for whatever comes next.

“If you find out who it is,” she says, her eyes steady now, “you’ll tell her. You’ll let her know what this really was.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I will.”

She leaves first, shoulders hunched, head down. I watch her until she’s out of sight, then step outside into the wet chill of the street.

The wind cuts, but I barely feel it as I head to the Storm Front media suite in the arena’s sub-basement, two turns and a staircase below the ice.

Even the hallways feel hungover here, the linoleum stained with shoe scuffs and spilled Gatorade, the lights flickering in apology for never being fixed.

Most nights the place is dead, but tonight there’s a sliver of yellow beneath the media room door.

I badge in with my player card and let it slam behind me, hoping whoever’s inside is just bored enough to talk.

The first thing that hits is the smell: old sweat, energy drink, and the greasy tang of half a dozen takeout containers stacked along the far wall.

The second is the glow—an entire wall of monitors, all set to different freeze-frames of practice, interviews, game tape, even the parking lot.

It’s like sitting inside the world’s least subtle surveillance rig.

There’s a guy at the center console. Early twenties, Storm polo one size too big, hair slicked in a way that says he’s either going bald or never learned restraint. He sees me in the reflection before I say anything and spins the chair around with a flourish.

“Whoa,” he says. “Didn’t know the big dogs came down here.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I say, grinning just enough to seem harmless. “I had a question about the edit. You got a minute?”

“Sure, sure.” He motions to the empty chair beside him, then starts clearing old Red Bull cans off the desk. “Name’s Drew. You need a clip or something? Social team’s upstairs, but I can pull game highlights if you want.”

“It’s not for social,” I say. “I was hoping to see the raw footage. Especially from last week.” I lean in, voice low. “Lot of rumors going around. Figured I’d get the real story from the source.”

Drew nods, clearly flattered, and taps a few keys. “You want practice? Locker room? Tunnel? We got like five terabytes of the shit.”

“Start with the physio suite,” I say.

He smirks. “Spicy. You sure you wanna see that?”

“Just pull it,” I say, but with a wink, and he laughs like we’re both in on some secret.

It takes a minute for the drives to mount, so I kill time by spinning in the chair and checking the monitors.

Two show game replays, but the other four are live feeds: one for the player entrance, one for the press room, one for the empty ice, and one for the staff corridor outside the medical suite.

Even at midnight, the place never really sleeps.

Drew loads the footage and drops the first file onto the left-most screen.

It’s the treatment room, shot from a ceiling cam, the time stamp running in a red bar at the bottom.

Sage is in frame, kneeling by a player’s leg, taping an ankle while talking to someone off camera.

I watch her hands, precise and fast, barely looking down.

Then she glances up, frowns, and points straight at the camera.

“She hated those things,” Drew says, not taking his eyes off the screen. “Used to flip us off all the time.”

I laugh, then settle back as he clicks through the files.

The footage gets jumpier, the angles more creative.

Some are from chest high, others from behind supply cabinets or inside the utility closet.

There’s one from what looks like the inside of the fridge, pointed straight at the worktable.

The audio is garbage, just a muffled murmur, but you can see the tension in every frame.

“Who’s setting these up?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

Drew shrugs. “Usually the AV guys. Sometimes Talia drops by, tells us to get more coverage on staff. Says it’s for insurance or compliance or something.

” He scrubs forward, and the camera shifts to a new day.

Sage is alone, moving between cabinets, clearly hunting for something.

She stops, lifts a bottle of sanitizer, and glares up at the lens.

For a second, she just stands there, staring.

Then she mouths something—hard to tell what, but it’s not “thanks”—and flips the bird again.

“Does she know about all these?”

“Hell if I know. But Talia’s the only one who ever reviews the whole set. Coaches barely look. She’s got a folder just for staff compliance stuff. Big on liability, I guess.”

I lean in. “Mind pulling up the folder?”

Drew hesitates, then shrugs and clicks into a shared drive.

There it is: STAFF_SURV , a string of subfolders for every employee.

Sage’s is top of the list, three times as big as the others.

Drew opens it. The screen floods with video files, each labeled with a date, time, and a short string of numbers.

I point at one near the bottom. “That one. The day she collapsed.”

He opens it. We watch in silence as Sage preps recovery packs, wipes her forehead, and stumbles. There’s no sound, but her legs go loose and she drops behind the counter, out of sight. Thirty seconds later, players rush in. I see myself, then Beau, then the medics. None of us look like heroes.

Drew shakes his head. “Sucks, man. Hope she’s alright.”

“She’s tough,” I say. “Always is.”

I scan the time stamps again, then check the logs. Talia’s name is everywhere—opening files, copying footage, setting permissions.

“You ever get weird requests?” I ask, turning to face him. “Stuff that’s not for TV?”

He laughs, but it’s a nervous sound. “Sometimes. Last month, Talia wanted us to dump every second of her one-on-one sessions. Said it was for an HR thing, but…I dunno, man. She creeps me out.”

“Did she ever ask for, like, specific players?”

“Only staff. Never the team. If she wants dirt, it’s always on the trainers. Sage, mostly.”

I let that sit.

On the screen, Sage is back in frame, lips pressed tight, a look in her eyes I’ve never seen in real life. The camera follows as she paces the room, stopping every few seconds to check the corners, the ceiling, the cabinets.

“She knew,” I say, mostly to myself.

Drew leans back, folding his arms. “Hey, can I ask you something? Why do you care so much? Not judging, just…You know the rumors, right?”

“I know,” I say, and leave it at that.

I stand, stretching, and pat his shoulder. “Thanks, man. You ever need tickets, let me know.”

He beams, then goes back to the monitors.

My next destination is the AV closet. I find Hector in his usual uniform—cargo pants, Storm quarter-zip, and a beard that could double as insulation if he ever had to survive a nuclear winter. He’s hunched over a field monitor, soldering a busted HDMI port with a focus that looks religious.

I knock on the metal rack with a knuckle. He doesn’t jump; just sets down the iron and grins up at me, teeth impossibly white for a man who lives on black coffee and vending machine jerky.

“If it isn’t the franchise,” he says. “What brings you to the land of broken dreams?”

I hold up a thumb drive. “Got a favor. You mind if I ask some questions about the cameras?”

He shrugs, then wipes his hands on a rag and gestures at the folding chair by the workbench. “Shoot.”

I sit, let the silence fill itself. The room’s lined with pelican cases and battery packs, tangled cords coiled like sleeping snakes. On one shelf, a shrine of failed projects—dead GoPros, half-melted helmet cams, a drone propeller sticking out like a trophy.

“So,” I say, keeping it light, “how many cameras you got running on a normal day?”

Hector snorts. “Depends who’s asking. You want the corporate answer or the real one?”

I shrug. “Just curious. Lot of chatter about privacy lately.”

He leans back, pops a toothpick from his shirt pocket, and rolls it between his teeth. “Policy is five stationary, two mobile, all with blinking red. Reality? There’s at least a dozen. Most on the network, some not.”

“Why the extras?” I ask, feigning ignorance.

“Because Talia wants redundancy.” He doesn’t hide the sneer when he says her name.

“She came in six months ago, doubled our budget, said we needed better coverage for ‘liability purposes.’ Then she started asking for stuff off schedule. Cameras in meeting rooms, supply closets, even the laundry chute. You think you’re not being watched, you’re probably wrong. ”

I nod. “What about the physio suite? They got more eyes on it than usual?”

He frowns, the tip of his toothpick still. “That’s where it gets weird. She wanted 24/7, overlapping feeds. Brought in her own guy from Toronto to set up motion triggers. Even paid out of pocket for a couple black-box recorders.”

The words “black-box” make the hair on my arms stand up. “Who gets to see those feeds?”

He looks at me, eyes suddenly very clear. “Not me. Not security. Just her and maybe a couple in league compliance. Everyone else gets a five-minute delay, and anything she marks as ‘incident’ goes straight to her Dropbox.”

Hector starts stacking cables into a crate, as if that’s the end of the conversation. “You want my advice?” he says, not looking at me. “Don’t trust the system. It’s built to protect itself. If you want something done right, you gotta go old school.”

I smile, but there’s no joy in it. “Thanks, man.”

He shrugs, already lost in the guts of a broken camera. I head up the stairs, pocket burning with the shape of my phone.

I know where this ends now. And I’m not going to let them sweep her under. I’m seething all the way to the arena.

The door swings wide when I push through, the wind off the lot slapping hard enough to pull my hood back. I see Grey leaning against the concrete pillar just past the loading dock, hood low, eyes wild, like he’s been waiting for something to punch.

He doesn’t say anything right away. Just flicks his eyes toward me, then down to the file folder in his hand.

“You beat me to it,” I say as I take it.

Inside are three stills from surveillance footage, all from the rehab suite, each more damning than the last. Sage appears in one—half out of frame, one hand braced on the table, the other curled near her stomach—and the rawness of it, the unfiltered vulnerability, makes my ribs tighten.

It was never just fatigue. Never just stress.

It was something deeper, something she was fighting without backup, and someone was documenting every second like they were waiting for the right moment to use it.

“She’s been accessing ultrasound records,” Grey informs me, eyes fixed on the far end of the lot where the building lights spill out in slanted lines. “Sage doesn’t know. Transfer request was marked incomplete, but Talia kept the back channel active. She used my name to cover it.”

I close the folder slowly, letting the edges press into my palms. The rage is there, sharp and slow-burning, but what scares me more is how quiet it’s become. There’s no panic left, just facts stacking neatly in my mind like pucks in a warm-up crate.

“I met with Mia,” I tell him. “She found three hidden cameras. Nothing league issued. No studio tags. Local memory only. They were placed to follow Sage’s movements. Every week the angles changed, always zeroed in on her.”

Grey nods once, grim. “She’s building something. Not just a case. A narrative. One that puts Sage at the center.”

We don’t need to spell it out further. Between the surveillance, the medical files, and the timing of the leaks, it’s obvious this was never about performance or policy. It was a setup. Quiet, meticulous, and meant to unfold too late for anyone to stop it.

We find Beau outside the staff lot, hunched against the wind in a black hoodie, phone in one hand, eyes scanning the sidewalk like he’s replaying a game that hasn’t finished yet. When we tell him everything, he listens without interrupting, and when we finish, he doesn’t explode like I half expect.

Instead, he drags a hand through his hair and mutters something low under his breath that might be a prayer or a curse. He studies both of us for a long moment, then shifts his weight and squares his shoulders, the way he does before a penalty kill.

“I don’t like it,” he says at last, voice rough with something older than anger.

“You’re not supposed to,” I reply.

“She wants to bury Sage,” Beau says. “And if she gets her way, she’ll bury all of us in the fallout.”

“We don’t let her,” Grey says, quiet but firm. “We don’t make it about retaliation. We make it about proof.”

Beau exhales, a long, steady breath that fogs the air in front of him. “You need her to admit it?”

Grey nods. “We need her to say it out loud.”

Beau’s eyes roam toward the building, toward the glass-walled office above the rink where Talia’s probably still seated, smug behind her desk like she’s the one who built this team.

“She does that,” he says slowly, “you better have a net ready to catch the whole damn building.”

I don’t hesitate. “We will.”

He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t smile. Just pulls his sleeves down and sets his jaw.

“You think she’ll fall for it?” he asks.

Grey’s answer is calm and razor-sharp.

“She’s already halfway there,” he says. “She just needs to believe she’s the smartest one in the room.”

Beau gives a single nod, the kind you only make when you’re past the point of doubt, past fear, past wondering what this might cost. “We get her to say it herself,” he says. “Then it’s not just suspicion. It’s career ending.”