Hades’ Gambit (Seattle Emeralds #3)

Chapter 1

Mireya

I kick the last ball so hard it leaves a mark on the back wall. It'll stay there with the other eleven because nobody cleans anything at Aura Valley anymore.

On the rebound, it almost clips Liz in the face.

She protests, but I barely look at her. My eyes stay fixed on the scuff the ball left just below the broken window, the one we've been asking them to fix for three months.

There's a leak in the locker room. The paint is peeling off the club crest at the entrance, the one my father helped design thirty years ago.

The fluorescent lights flicker every few seconds. Half of them don't even turn on anymore, and two of the gym mats have holes we've patched with duct tape.

This is Aura Valley.

It might not be much, but it's home.

It doesn't look like a professional soccer club because it barely is one.

We're the team that usually sits dead last in the standings, the one that makes the sports news only when we actually win a game.

The team our opponents look at with equal parts pity and relief because they know we're an easy three points.

If this were a European league, we'd have been relegated a long time ago.

We might not be a big club. But we're a family.

And I've spent twenty-six years loving this patchy field with the same intensity other players chase a league title.

Liz walks over and punches me in the arm.

“Margot wants to see you in her office. Says it's urgent,” she announces, shrugging.

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

Her tone tells me everything I need to know.

She won't meet my eyes, and that means she knows something I'm probably not going to like.

Our financial problems have been an open secret for a couple of years now, but there's a difference between knowing that and watching your captain look at you like it's the last time she'll see you in this jersey.

My mother's office is at the end of the hallway, behind a door that doesn't close right because the hinge bent years ago.

Margot Guerrero sits behind her desk, glasses on, fingers laced together.

On the ceiling, the same water stain that's been there since I was a kid.

A half-drunk coffee in the corner of the desk, cold for who knows how long.

“You'd better sit down,” she sighs when I walk in.

“I'd almost rather stand.”

“Mireya. Sit down,” she says. An order.

I sit, and I hate this already. I think it's the news every single one of us in the locker room has been waiting for. Any player earning above the league minimum is going to have to take a pay cut. I'd been afraid it would happen. Just not this soon.

My mother draws in a long breath and lets it out slowly, eyes fixed on me. The shadows under her eyes have been deep for months, but today they look worse, like someone went at them with a purple marker.

“The league has scheduled a financial viability review of the club,” she says. No preamble. “If we don't find funding before the end of the month, they pull the franchise. We don't have the money to keep going.”

Damn. I knew it. I'd spent weeks bracing for this news. But hearing it out loud is something else — the same way knowing someone's about to slap you doesn't make it hurt any less.

“How much do we need?” I ask, my voice thin.

“More than any local sponsor can offer. I've called everyone, Mireya. Every single person. Companies, foundations, private investors. Nobody wants to pour money into a club that finishes dead last year after year.”

“What about the city council?”

“The city council sent their best wishes. Literally. They wished us luck by email. With an emoji and everything.”

“An emoji?”

“A thumbs up,” she sighs.

I press my elbows to my knees and drag both hands down my face. The water stain on the ceiling looks bigger than yesterday. Suddenly the whole club seems to crumble right in front of me.

“There is one way to save us,” my mother continues, but something shifts in her voice.

I lift my head fast.

“There is?” I ask, surprised.

“The Seattle Emeralds.”

Of course. The Emeralds. The most powerful club in the league. The highest salaries. Facilities that look like a movie set. The most feared coach in the country.

Diana Creed.

“What do they want? Nothing good, I'd guess, coming from that team,” I mutter.

“You,” my mother answers, raising her eyebrows.

“No.”

“Mireya, listen. Please. Just that. It would be a transfer.

The Seattle Emeralds pay Aura Valley a record transfer fee, and you sign a five-year contract with them, the longest the league allows.

But that's not all. The Drummond investment group commits to an affiliation agreement with Aura Valley that includes sponsorship, infrastructure, and access to the Emeralds' youth development program. Five years of guaranteed stability. All tied together.”

“All tied together,” I repeat, because I need to hear it twice to believe it. “So the sponsorship package means they're buying me.”

“Yes, more or less. They want you specifically. Diana Creed requested you by name. I've spoken with Alexandra Drummond, the general manager, and the terms are clear: our club survives for five years. In exchange, you go to Seattle and play for her.”

I stand up fast. I need to move. The office has suddenly shrunk two sizes.

I take three steps to the window, and my eyes drift to the main field, to the uneven grass, full of patches, and the stands that need a coat of paint.

On the sideline, someone left a bag of balls getting soaked in the drizzle.

“What if I say no? What happens if I refuse to play for them?”

“If you say no, the club folds before the month is out. We don't even make it to the start of the season. Aura Valley is gone. Forever. The youth teams are gone. Tuesday training sessions for the neighborhood kids are gone. Everything is gone, Mireya. Everything your father built.”

Damn. She had to bring up my father. She always knows exactly where to push.

Not because she's cruel — though occasionally she is, even as my mother.

It's because she knows me better than anyone, and she knows my father's memory is the one thing that moves me when I've dug in and decided not to move.

“I negotiated a clause,” she adds, dropping her voice to near a whisper. “You can come back every December for the community charity match.”

“Great. Perfect. One game a year. How generous.”

“It's the best I could get, Mireya,” she says. Almost an apology.

“No, the best you could get is selling your own daughter like she's livestock,” I shoot back.

She takes her glasses off slowly and looks at me. Direct. Unblinking. My mother never blinks when she's about to say something important. Neither do I. Probably genetic.

“I'm not selling you. I'm asking you to save the club your father founded. Those are very different things.”

“Are they? Are they really?”

Silence drops between us. The only sound is rain tapping against the window. It never rains here, and today it has to. Figures.

“Think about it tonight. That's all I'm asking,” she says finally. “I need an answer tomorrow.”

**

The community center the club keeps running for the neighborhood is locked at this hour, but I have a key.

When I hit the switch, the hallway lights come on with a hum, and the first thing I see is the framed photo next to the door. A group of men and women in the nineties, wearing oversized jerseys and enormous grins, posing in front of a dirt field that's now our stadium.

My father is in the second row. Young. Dark-haired. With a mustache my mother made him shave off years later. He's smiling, arms crossed, eyes squinted against the sun. We were a neighborhood club, a place where soccer kept kids off the streets and out of trouble. In some ways, we still are.

Below the photo, a bronze plaque I can recite without reading because I know it by heart.

Tomás Guerrero. Co-founder of Aura Valley. First youth team coach. 1968–2012.

I press my forehead to the wall, right next to the plaque. The metal is cold.

“Dad, what the hell do I do?” I whisper.

No answer. My father died when I was a kid, and since then I've been asking him questions he never answers.

I hear her footsteps before I see her. The steady click of heels, unmistakable. My mother walks the way she coaches; unhurried, but with a rhythm that doesn't leave room for interruption.

She stops beside me without saying anything. Just looks at the plaque in silence. We stay like that for a long moment, the two of us, in front of the name of someone who's gone but still means everything to this club.

“Your father built this with his own hands, Mireya,” she murmurs.

“And I've kept it going the best I could.

Nobody ever thought we'd make it to the professional league, and it's been in large part because of you and your goals.

He'd be so proud. Now it's your turn to decide.

I won't tell you what to do. Whatever you choose, I'll respect it.”

I don't answer, because if I open my mouth, I'm going to cry, and I don't want to cry here.

Not in front of my father's plaque. Not with my mother standing there waiting for me to make a choice where, no matter what I pick, I lose something.

I swallow hard and bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood, until the pain crowds out the tears.

**

Our usual bar is called Extra Time. The owner thought it was funny when he opened it twenty years ago, because everything in the small community of Aura Valley ties back to soccer.

My teammates are already here. Seven of the eleven starters, four subs, and Becca, the assistant coach, who officially shouldn't be drinking with us but never cared much about what's official.

The second I walk in, every conversation cuts off at once, like someone killed the music.

They know. I'm the last idiot to find out.

“Jesus, Guerrero, who died?” the bartender calls from behind the bar.

“Nobody yet, but we're working on it. Get me a beer.”