CHAPTER THREE
SIENNA
Darius Vale has sent over a list of media boundaries before I’ve had coffee, which tells me two things.
He’s organized.
And he’s terrified.
The list glows on my laptop screen in the hotel café, neat enough to have been built with a ruler and a grudge.
No medical-room filming.No private staff areas.No family questions without prior approval.No recording teammates without direct consent.No player-and-staff relationship speculation.No off-the-record comments may be used, implied, paraphrased, referenced, or framed without direct consent.
I read the last one twice.
Then I laugh into my coffee cup.
Not loudly.
I have some manners.
Also, I’m sitting in a hotel café full of team staff, tournament officials, exhausted reporters, and at least three people pretending not to listen to me. The morning after a semi-final is not a morning. It’s a holding pattern with caffeine.
The café windows look out over the hotel drive, where a security guard is moving fans back from the entrance with the weary patience of a kindergarten teacher on field-trip day. A teenager in a Kings jersey presses a handmade sign against the glass.
DARIUS, brING IT HOME.
The marker has bled at the edges.
I look back at the boundary list.
He added the off-the-record clause after midnight. Of course he did.
A man like Darius Vale probably alphabetizes his protein bars.
My coffee has gone lukewarm. I drink it anyway and click open the attached schedule.
Recovery session. Travel back to Charlotte.
Kings facility access. Briarwood segment pending captain approval.
New York/New Jersey arrival three days before the Final.
Official training. Media village. Fan zone. Final.
The week stretches across the screen in blocks of approved time.
Approved access.
Approved angles.
Approved distance.
I take one sip and start looking for the gaps.
My phone buzzes beside the laptop.
MAREN.
Naturally.
I answer before the second buzz. “Good morning to you too.”
“Tell me you’re looking at the list.”
“I’m admiring the emotional architecture.”
“He added clauses?”
“He built a moat.”
“Can you cross it?”
I scroll back to the top. “I can swim.”
“That’s why I like you.”
“You like me because I answer before eight.”
“I tolerate that about you. Listen, we need more than noble captain talks teamwork. Every network has that this morning.”
A server passes with a tray of toasted bagels. The smell should make me hungry. It doesn’t.
“What exactly are you asking for?” I ask.
“Pressure points.”
I glance toward the hotel entrance.
A Kings staffer walks past the café carrying two garment bags and a case of bottled electrolyte drinks. Her badge swings from her neck with every step.
“Maren.”
“Don’t use that tone. I’m not asking you to invent anything.”
“You never do.”
“I’m asking you to notice what everyone else misses.”
I tap one finger against the laptop edge. “Darius is careful.”
“Careful people have reasons.”
“So do private ones.”
A pause.
Not long.
Long enough.
“Sienna,” Maren says, and her voice smooths into the one she uses when she wants me to remember she signs off on assignments I want, “this is the Global Cup Final. The Kings are the story of the tournament. The captain is the spine. Viewers don’t want a wall. They want to know what’s behind it.”
The café door opens.
A rush of humid Atlanta air slips in, carrying the smell of pavement, exhaust, and somebody’s too-sweet perfume.
I keep my eyes on the screen. “And if what’s behind it isn’t ours?”
“Then you ask better questions.”
I almost smile. That’s what she likes about me. I do.
Usually.
“There’s a difference between a profile and a takedown,” I say.
“Good. Find the difference on camera.” Her keyboard clicks through the line. “And Sienna?”
“Hm?”
“Don’t let him turn this into a press release with cheekbones.”
The call ends.
I stare at the screen.
Press release with cheekbones is irritatingly accurate.
A shadow falls across my table.
I look up.
Morgan Bellows stands beside me in team sweats with a tea in one hand and the kind of expression that makes athletes suddenly remember where they left their ice pack.
For a beat, neither of us speaks.
Her gaze drops to my laptop.
The boundary list.
Wonderful.
I close the screen halfway, but not fast enough to make it look casual.
Morgan’s eyebrows lift.
“Morning,” I say.
“It is.”
Not warm.
Not rude.
The exact temperature of an examination room.
She shifts her tea to her other hand. Her hair is pulled back, no loose pieces, no softness wasted on a morning like this.
There are faint half-moons under her eyes.
She still looks more put-together than I feel, which seems unfair considering she probably spent last night chasing professional soccer players away from bad decisions.
“Congratulations,” I say.
Her eyes narrow a fraction. “For?”
“The Final.”
“Right.” She nods once. “Thank you.”
The polite thing lands between us and dies.
I should let her go.
Instead, my hand slides off the laptop and into my lap. Fingers curl once against my skirt.
“Morgan.”
She stops turning.
The café noise fills the space. Cups clink. A blender whirs behind the counter. Someone laughs too loudly near the pastry case.
“I owe you an apology,” I say.
Her face does not change, but her tea lowers an inch.
“That story angle around staff boundaries and player relationships,” I continue. “I pushed close to something that could have hurt your career.”
Her mouth tightens.
Good.
Not good because I want to hurt her.
Good because the arrow has landed where it should.
“I didn’t publish anything false,” I add, then hate the words the second they leave my mouth.
Morgan’s eyes sharpen.
There it is. The defence. The little reporter reflex. The part of me that wants a clean record more than a clean apology.
I stop. Swallow. Start again.
“That came out wrong.”
“It did.”
“I’m sorry.” I make myself hold her gaze. “No qualifications. I was too focused on whether there was a story and not focused enough on who would pay for the framing.”
Morgan studies me for so long my coffee turns another degree colder.
Around us, the café keeps moving. A tournament official answers a call. A child in a Kings jersey smears cream cheese on his sleeve. Outside, the security guard points a fan back behind the line.
Morgan takes a sip of tea.
“Are you apologizing because you mean it,” she asks, “or because you need me not to block your access?”
I almost answer too fast.
That would ruin it.
I look down at my laptop. At the bright line of Darius’s rules visible above the half-closed lid.
Then back at her.
“Both.”
Her eyebrows lift again.
I give a small, humourless smile. “That wasn’t the polished answer.”
“No.”
“But it’s the honest one.”
Morgan’s gaze stays on mine. “Honest is a start.”
Then she walks past me toward a corner table, leaving behind the scent of peppermint tea and disinfectant wipes.
My chest loosens in a way I refuse to examine.
A good start is not forgiveness.
It is not even friendliness.
But it is not nothing.
I open my laptop again.
Darius’s list stares back.
I add a note in my own document.
MORGAN: don’t push apology further. Earn it.
The café door opens again.
This time, the room changes before I look up.
That is annoying.
I know it’s Darius before I see him because conversations shift by half a volume. Not stopping. Just adjusting. A few people glance over. A tournament official straightens. The teenager outside the glass starts waving the handmade sign so hard the security guard flinches.
Darius Vale walks in with Coach at his left and Nathan Bellows trailing a step behind, still typing on his phone. Darius wears dark team travel pants and a navy polo with the Kings crest over his heart. No armband. No grass stains. No stadium lights.
He still looks like a man people expect to know the answer.
His eyes find me.
I don’t look away.
He crosses the café with Coach, and the closer he gets, the more I notice things I don’t need to notice. The faint shadow under his jaw. The way his hair is still damp at the ends from a shower. The smooth, controlled pace of his walk.
Too controlled?
No.
Maybe.
Stop it.
Nathan drops into the chair beside Morgan at the corner table and steals something off her plate. She smacks his hand without looking.
Darius stops opposite my table.
“Miss Voss.”
“Captain Vale.”
His gaze flicks to my laptop. “I see you received the list.”
“I did.”
“Any questions?”
“Yes. Did you draft it yourself, or does the team employ someone whose only job is preventing adjectives?”
Coach coughs into his hand.
Darius’s expression doesn’t move.
His eyes do, though.
Just enough.
“I like clear expectations,” he says.
“I noticed.”
“Then this should be easy.”
“Easy rarely rates well.”
Coach steps in before the room temperature drops too far. “We’ll use the small conference room.”
I gather my laptop, phone, notebook, and coffee. The coffee isn’t worth taking, but I do anyway because carrying it gives my hands something to do.
The conference room sits off the lobby behind frosted glass. Inside, the hotel has provided a round table, six chairs, a speakerphone no one needs, and a plate of muffins sweating under plastic wrap.
Darius chooses the seat facing the door.
Coach sits beside him. I take the seat across from Darius. Morgan enters with her tea and stands near the wall instead of sitting, tablet tucked under one arm.
Nathan appears last and drops into a chair with a muffin already in hand.
Coach looks at him. “Are you part of this meeting?”
Nathan points at his chest. “Emotional support local.”
“For whom?”
“Undecided.”
Morgan says, “Eat quietly.”
Nathan salutes with the muffin.
Darius pinches the bridge of his nose for half a second.
I look down at my notebook so I don’t smile.
Coach opens a folder. “We have a compressed week. Today is recovery and travel. Tomorrow, Charlotte facility access. Briarwood community segment, if approved. Then New York/New Jersey three days before the Final. Official training, media day, tournament fan zone, tactical walkthrough, match day.”