VEGAS BABY, vinnie hacker ✓

The desert air shimmered, a heat that clung to skin even after the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in bruised purple and electric orange.

Las Vegas.

The Nevada dust gave way to a wild symphony of neon and noise. The Strip throbbed with a thrilling, almost frightening energy, a constant river of people flowing between the towering casinos, each a glittering monument to excess. The clatter of slot machines mingled with the thumping bass of nightclub music spilling onto the street.

It was a city where reality and fantasy blurred, inhibitions were shed like cheap sequins, and anything, absolutely anything, seemed possible. The air hummed with a restless energy, a feeling of constant motion, as if the city never slept.

This was Vegas, a place where dreams were made and broken in the same night, a place where Elara Moon, twenty-one and a little reckless, was about to make a life-changing decision.