CHAPTER SEVEN
SIENNA
The Charlotte Kings training facility has three security checkpoints, two credential scanners, and one athletic trainer who looks like she would happily tackle me into a laundry cart if I cross the wrong line.
Morgan Bellows meets me at the second scanner.
Not a receptionist.
Not a media intern.
Morgan.
She stands beside a glass door marked AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY with a tablet tucked under one arm and her hair pulled back so tightly it looks personally committed to discipline.
My camera operator, Scott, slows half a step behind me.
Smart man.
“Good morning,” I say.
Morgan looks at my credential, then my face, then the credential again as if hoping one of them might confess to a crime.
“Morning.” She taps something on her tablet. The scanner chirps green. “You’re cleared for media-approved areas only.”
“Understood.”
“Training pitch from the marked line. Gym through the observation glass. Film room doorway only if Coach allows it. No treatment rooms. No locker room. No recovery hallway filming. No audio capture in transitional spaces unless everyone in the conversation has consented.”
Scott shifts his camera bag higher on his shoulder.
I nod. “Understood.”
Morgan’s eyes narrow by the smallest amount.
Apparently agreement is suspicious.
She scrolls. “No filming medical supplies, treatment charts, athlete taping, rehab exercises, or anything on my tablet.”
“I’m not here for medical footage.”
“Good.”
She looks like she doesn’t believe me.
Fair.
A staffer passes behind her pushing a laundry cart stacked with towels and training bibs. The warm smell of detergent slips into the lobby, followed by turf rubber, coffee, tape adhesive, and the faint bite of whatever cleaner they use when athletes have been sweating in a building since dawn.
The facility hums around us.
Not loudly.
Purposefully.
Balls thud against rebound boards somewhere beyond the hall. Cleats click over rubber flooring. A staff member calls for hydration crates. Two players jog past in compression gear, one reading something on his phone, the other eating a banana like it has personally betrayed him.
Scott lifts his camera slightly.
Morgan points one finger at him without looking away from me. “Not yet.”
He lowers it.
“Noted,” he murmurs.
I bite back a smile.
Morgan catches that too.
“This way,” she says.
We follow her through the glass doors and into the Kings’ world.
It’s cleaner than I expected.
Less glamorous.
Better.
The walls are white and navy, with framed match photos arranged in sharp lines.
Not just goals. Tackles. Team huddles. A keeper mid-dive.
Morgan crouched beside a player’s ankle in one photo, face focused and unamused by whatever pain scale he probably lied about.
The Global Cup bracket is printed huge on one wall with the Kings’ path marked in blue.
Houston. Dallas. Atlanta. Final: New York/New Jersey.
My fingers itch for my notebook.
I leave it in my bag.
For now, I look.
A cart near the hallway holds crates labelled: NY/NJ TRAINING. RECOVERY. MATCH DAY. MEDIA.
The Final is no longer a future event.
It has packing labels.
Morgan stops at a junction in the hallway. “You’ll start with facility atmosphere. No player interviews until Darius arrives.”
“Darius is joining the tour?”
“He insisted.”
“Of course he did.”
Morgan’s mouth almost moves.
Almost.
“Is that a problem?” she asks.
“No. It’s consistent.”
“That’s one word for him.”
“What’s yours?”
Morgan looks down the hall.
Colton Ayers is walking toward us with a reusable water bottle in one hand and the exact grin of a man who has either done something wrong or is about to.
Morgan’s face changes.
Barely.
But it changes.
“Complicated,” she says.
Colton lifts the bottle in greeting. “If it isn’t Northline’s favourite menace.”
“Colton,” Morgan says.
“What? That was affectionate.”
“Try polite.”
He looks at me. “Good morning, professional observer of chaos.”
“Closer,” Morgan says.
I smile before I can help it. “Good morning, professional creator of chaos.”
Colton points at me. “See? She understands the brand.”
Morgan takes one step toward him. “Why are you out of the recovery room?”
“Because I recovered.”
“You were assigned twelve minutes of mobility.”
“I did twelve emotional minutes.”
“Colton.”
He sighs. “Fine. Nine physical minutes and three minutes thinking about mobility.”
Morgan holds out her hand.
He gives her the water bottle like a child surrendering contraband.
She weighs it. “This is full.”
“I carried it.”
“Back.”
He opens his mouth.
She points down the hall.
He turns without finishing whatever terrible argument he was about to make. As he passes me, he leans just enough to say, “Please get Darius to answer one question like a human being. The team is counting on you.”
“Colton,” Morgan says.
“Going.”
He goes.
Mostly.
At the corner, he looks back. Morgan lifts one eyebrow. He disappears.
The whole exchange takes under thirty seconds, and somehow tells me more about the Kings than yesterday’s access meeting.
Morgan returns the bottle to her side without looking at me. “That isn’t for your package.”
“I know.”
Her eyes flick to mine.
This time, she doesn’t challenge me.
Progress is sometimes just one person not assuming the worst out loud.
A door opens farther down the hall, and Nathan Bellows steps into view carrying two equipment bags and a stack of cones. He sees Morgan first, then me.
His expression shifts into something polite and guarded.
Briarwood guarded, I think.
Friendly fence. Locked gate.
“Sienna,” he says.
“Nathan.”
He adjusts the bags. “Here for the grand tour?”
“Apparently.”
“Watch out for the laundry room. That’s where the real secrets are.”
Morgan says, “The real secret is that half this team thinks towels regenerate.”
Nathan grins. Then his gaze settles on me, not unkind, not soft. “Darius know you’re here?”
“He insisted on supervising.”
“Sounds right.”
He starts to leave, then stops. “Briarwood knows you’re coming?”
“Not yet.”
His smile fades by one careful inch.
Morgan watches him.
I do too.
Nathan shifts the cones higher. “Small town. Big ears. Maybe don’t surprise them with a camera and a tragic violin.”
I could deflect.
I don’t.
“I won’t.”
He studies me for one extra second.
Then nods.
Not trust.
Not forgiveness.
A temporary visitor pass.
I’ll take it.
Morgan leads us past a glass wall overlooking the gym.
Players move through recovery stations inside: bands, foam rollers, light lifts, trainers tracking movement on tablets.
No one poses. No one performs. It is all small work, the kind of unglamorous maintenance that lets glamorous moments happen later.
Scott starts to lift his camera again.
Morgan says, “Wide shot only. No treatment details.”
He nods and films through the glass, slow and respectful.
I make a note.
Not for broadcast.
For me.
Every victory has a laundry room.
“What?” Morgan asks.
I look up. “Nothing.”
“You made the face people make before they turn something into narration.”
“That sounds impossible to prove.”
“I’ve watched Colton pretend he wasn’t limping for weeks. I can prove most things.”
I tuck my pen away.
The third scanner chirps somewhere behind us.
Morgan’s posture changes.
I do not need to turn.
But I do.
Darius Vale walks through the doors with Coach beside him, a folder in one hand and a navy Kings training jacket zipped halfway. He is exactly on time, because naturally.
His eyes take in the hallway before they land on me.
Morgan. Scott. Camera. My bag. My hands. The distance between me and the recovery glass.
He sees the whole board before choosing his first move.
“Miss Voss.”
“Captain Vale.”
Coach nods to me. “You’re all set?”
“Morgan has made sure I understand the laws of the land.”
Morgan’s voice is dry. “She signed nothing in blood, but we’re early.”
Darius’s gaze flicks to her, then back to me.
“Ready for the official version?” he asks.
“Always my favourite kind.”
“No, it isn’t.”
I smile. “Good. You’re learning.”
Coach makes a sound that might be a cough and might be a laugh.
Darius turns down the hallway. “We’ll start with the training wing.”
The official version of the Charlotte Kings facility is efficient, polished, and almost impressive enough to distract from everything it avoids.
Almost.
Darius shows me the gym from the approved side of the glass.
The indoor turf lane where players work acceleration mechanics.
The nutrition station, where three rookies are making smoothies with the grave uncertainty of men defusing a bomb.
The media room, where the backdrop already reads GLOBAL CUP FINAL WEEK in clean white letters.
He gives useful answers.
Professional answers.
The kind of answers that sound like someone laminated his personality for public use.
“The facility was designed to keep performance areas close,” he says as we pass the gym. “Less transition time. Better recovery flow.”
“Do players appreciate efficient recovery flow?”
“Players appreciate not walking far when their legs hate them.”
“That almost sounded human.”
“Don’t report it.”
Scott snorts behind the camera.
Darius glances at him.
Scott immediately becomes fascinated with the wall art.
We reach a doorway marked FILM ROOM.
Inside, several players sit in staggered rows facing a large screen. A paused clip from the semi-final fills the front wall: Atlanta’s midfield pushed high, the Kings’ back line tight, Darius circled in digital yellow.
Coach looks in, then nods once. “Doorway only.”
I step to the threshold.
The room smells like coffee, dry-erase markers, and nervous focus.
On the screen, the Kings are caught in the moment before pressure breaks. Atlanta’s wide player is ready to jump the passing lane. Nathan is half a step higher than the centre-back. Colton is between two defenders, one arm lifted for the ball.
I lean closer before I remember not to.
“That wide overload,” I say, pointing with my pen before I can stop myself. “They baited your fullback out, but you didn’t follow the runner. You dropped central instead.”
Darius looks at me.
Not the polite media look.