Chapter 2
Hades
I scrub the video back for the fourteenth time, and I still can't figure out how she does it. Though maybe by now the question should be why I can't stop watching.
She picks the fourth one.
She pivots on her left foot, threads between both defenders with a move that doesn't look human, and barely winding up at all, she fires a curling shot that sails past the goalkeeper's gloves, helpless to do a thing.
I pause the image. The ball is suspended halfway between Guerrero's foot and the net. Frozen mid-air.
How did she know she had that angle? How did she know the keeper was three yards off her line if she received with her back to goal?
My statistical model says from that position, under that defensive pressure, the probability of a goal is eleven percent.
And she shoots without a second's hesitation.
Eleven percent. And she shoots without hesitating.
Game after game, Mireya Guerrero moves across the field without respecting the system, without asking permission to be somewhere she's not supposed to be.
I've spent two seasons trying to ignore her. Every time she pulls me back harder. Sharper. More insistent.
“How many times are you going to watch that goal?” I hear from behind me.
Ethan is leaning in the doorway with a coffee in each hand. One for him, one for me. He always brings two. He's been my assistant for eight years, and he's learned I don't like asking for things. I'd rather they show up or not show up.
“As many times as it takes,” I say without pulling my eyes from the screen.
“You know it by heart, Diana. We've analyzed every game she's ever played. We have her heat maps, her stats, her percentage of duels won, her output per minute played. We have everything. And you know perfectly well she's not going to fit this team.”
Ethan sets the coffee on my desk. He drops into the chair across from it, the same one every player hates because it sits lower than mine, which is exactly the point.
“She plays on instinct, Diana. There are things instinct does that data can't capture. That woman playing alongside Iris Vance… they're going to drive us all crazy,” he says.
“They play together for the national team, and it works.”
“Because their coach gives them freedom of movement. This is different. We've had other players like her, and they all wilted inside the system. Several of them asked for the transfer themselves. There was a stretch where the press called us the talent graveyard.”
“I have a feeling about this one. It'll work,” I sigh, and then I take a long pull of coffee.
“You're telling me you forced the most expensive transfer of the season on a feeling? I really hope it works out, because Alexandra Drummond is going to lose her mind if you end up benching her.”
I hold his gaze. Ethan holds mine back. He's one of the few people who doesn't flinch when I do that. Players drop their eyes, all of them except Iris. Drummond usually changes the subject. Reporters stumble over their words. Ethan finishes his coffee and waits.
“Are you done?” I ask.
“No. But I know you're not going to change your mind and the signing is done, so I'll skip the speech. I just want it on the record that I warned you and I disagree. Also, she gave a press conference a little while ago,” he says, and leaves.
I watch the press conference five times.
First time, I read her body language. Back straight. Shoulders squared. Hands still on the table — no finger-tapping, no pen to fidget with. She looks straight into the cameras, no wandering. Professional. Controlled.
Second time, I listen to what she says. Short answers, neutral. Precise. They ask if she's excited about the signing, and she says she's grateful for the opportunity. They ask if she's nervous about the pressure of playing alongside teammates at this level, and she says pressure is a privilege.
All correct. Rehearsed. Maybe a little too rehearsed. She won't give the press any trouble — that's Iris Vance's department.
Third time, something becomes clear.
It's barely visible, but she tightens her grip on the edge of the table the moment the reporter mentions the “affiliation agreement” with her club.
To us it's a strategic investment in player development.
To her, it's the only thing keeping her father's team alive, even if we can't call it that in public.
In that split second she shows exactly what she actually feels.
Mireya Guerrero is not grateful. She is not excited.
She is furious.
But it's a quiet fury, contained. A professional fury. That's both good and bad, because she can keep a lid on it, but that kind of anger lasts longer and runs deeper.
My phone rings. Alexandra Drummond. I'd been expecting her call at any moment.
“I don't need to remind you that the club's board is just as excited about this signing as they are concerned. We have a lot riding on this, Diana.”
“I know,” I tell her. I've said it seven million times now.
“The expectations are clear. Mireya Guerrero doesn't just have to play. She has to shine. And the team has to win the championship. Are we in agreement?”
“We're in agreement.”
She walks me through the record transfer fee again and the additional investment from the Drummond group in the affiliation deal with Guerrero's former club.
I already have all of it memorized, so I excuse myself politely by saying we're about to start a technical session with the players, even though we both know that's not true.
I don't need anyone reminding me that I was the one who asked for Guerrero. Not Drummond, not the board. I walked into her office with a fifty-page report and told her I needed Guerrero to lock up the title.
We head to Florida tomorrow for preseason. This better work.
I close up the office, get in the car, and drive in silence.
Seattle's streets are wet, it's been raining again, and the traffic lights reflect off the asphalt, red, green, yellow, cycling through their intervals on schedule.
I like traffic lights. They're one of the few systems that always do exactly what they were designed to do.
The apartment is dark when I walk in. I drop my keys in the bowl by the door. My bag on the floor. Shoes beside the door, lined up straight. Everything where it belongs. I turn on only the kitchen light. The living room light floods the place, and at this hour I prefer the dark.
I stand there like an idiot staring at the photo of the twins.
Hard to believe they're twelve already. They have their mother's smile. Lauren took that photo last summer in Vancouver, sent it to me on WhatsApp with a message that said, “The girls miss you,” and I printed it out the next day at the copy shop on the corner.
I see them every other weekend. Occasionally every third, depending on the match schedule. We video call almost every day, though this year they seem busier and sometimes they skip it.
Every so often I'm the one who skips it. My work destroyed my marriage. As Lauren used to say, soccer always wins.
It's not that I want it to win. It's that I don't know how to make it lose.
Lauren saw it clearly almost from the start. She said it one night, right here in this kitchen, three months before she left. “The most messed-up part isn't that I'm competing with another woman. I'm competing with your league games and your systems, and I'm going to lose every single time.”
That night I didn't argue. I went back to preparing for the next day's game because our defensive line wasn't working right in transition, and that needed fixing.
By then there was nothing left between us anyway. We were just two friends sharing a home who made love every now and then, almost out of habit.