Prologue
If there’s one thing Alessia Sterling has learned from growing up in the NFL, it’s that love and loyalty don’t mix with locker rooms.
They say football is a religion down here in the South — full of rituals, worship, and men who think God wears a headset on game day. But for her, football was family. Sunday night dinners with post-game stats, bedtime stories laced with Hail Marys and comeback drives, and a father whose idea of affection was a nod after a win.
She used to think it was magic.
Until she fell for one of them.
Until she learned what happens when her heart is just another thing a player thinks he can throw away.
The headlines called it “a scandal,” but they never mentioned the truth — how humiliation tastes when it’s served on a national stage. How fast people forget your name when you’re not the one in pads. How the man who swore you were his everything replaced you with a bottle blonde and a six-figure sponsorship deal.
So no, she doesn’t do athletes anymore.
She fixes them. She manages their reputations, sweeps their messes under billion-dollar rugs, and walks away before their apologies turn into promises. She keeps her heels sharp, her standards higher, and her heart locked tighter than a playbook before the Super Bowl.
And then came Jace Donovan.
The headline-making, camera-loving, bad boy quarterback with a smirk like sin and trouble tattooed across his grin.
Her newest client.
Her worst nightmare.
And, God help her...
... her next mistake.
