Chapter 17
"I don't give a damn, Candela, use it," Ernesto, the journalist's editor, demands.
"It's a perfect fucking story. Leire Cobos renews with Costel for five years and fourteen million — a brand that slaps its 'family values' on every tag of their goddamn clothing — and you've got photos of Cobos making out with Brogan. Publish it or I swear I'll—"
"I'm losing signal, we'll talk later." Candela hangs up and tosses her phone on the table, cursing Sergio under her breath.
They'd been having breakfast at a diner, sitting side by side, when her phone buzzed. She'd been distracted, reading the paper, and opened the message almost without looking.
"Holy shit. That's Brogan and Cobos," Sergio had said, eyebrows shooting up.
Candela nearly knocked the paper off the table as she dropped it to grab her phone and pull it out of her camera's line of sight.
She'd tilted it to her right, shielding the screen from him, and zoomed in on the photo that had come from the same number as the first one.
Her heart lurched when she realized the shot wasn't just a candid — it had been taken inside the tennis player's hotel room, probably with a hidden camera.
Both women were clearly visible. Leire was pressed against the wall, hands on Kate's hips, and the redhead was molded against her body, her right hand just below Leire's chest, their lips almost brushing while they smiled at each other with unmistakable desire.
"Damn it," Candela had muttered when she read the message underneath.
Last chance.
That was four hours ago, and the call she'd just gotten from her editor could only mean one thing: Sergio had talked, despite her begging him not to say a word.
Studying the photo, Candela can't place the hotel.
She doesn't know whether it's from Cincinnati or whether it was taken three months ago and someone is using it now.
What she does know is that someone in Leire's inner circle is willing to destroy her — and that the Spanish tennis player is on a countdown before someone goes public with this.
The journalist grabs her phone and steps out of her room, moving at a near-jog down the hallway. Brogan's first US Open match starts in half an hour, and Leire plays three hours after that. She takes the elevator down and finds her colleague waiting for her.
"Cab's almost here," Sergio says, and she walks right past him toward the exit.
"Hey, what's your problem?"
"You're a goddamn snitch," she snaps once they're outside.
He furrows his brow and lets out a dismissive scoff.
"Were you actually serious when you told me not to say anything to Ernesto? You really don't want to use it?" he asks, genuinely baffled.
"What do you care? I'd understand if you'd taken the photo yourself, but you can't even claim that much credit. What the hell is wrong with you?"
"It's a win for the paper. That means something."
Candela looks him up and down with contempt and gets into the cab without another word.
They arrive at the complex, and the journalist works her way through the corridors, past the courts, even through the locker rooms, looking for Leire.
She's not going to publish the story, but she can't stop someone else from doing it — so the only thing she can do is give Leire a heads-up before it blows up.
She's about to give up and head to the stands to prep for Brogan's match when she spots Leire coming out of the restrooms.
"Leire," she calls out, almost running toward her.
The Spanish woman turns and looks at her, surprised.
"I need to talk to you. Two minutes."
Leire checks the time. Kate's match starts in less than half an hour — she has time.
"You know I'm not doing any unscheduled interviews, right?"
"I'm not going to ask you anything. I just need you to know something. Can we find somewhere private?"
A strange feeling washes over Leire — something like a premonition — and the hair on the back of her neck stands on end.
"Come with me," she says, and heads toward the press room, which she knows will be empty until Kate's match is over.
They go in and shut the door, walking all the way to the back, past the table where athletes give their statements, and into the small side room near it.
"What's going on?" the tennis player asks.
The journalist's mind goes blank for a moment.
She'd known exactly what she was going to do while she was looking for Leire, but she hadn't figured out how to start.
Somehow she's sure it wasn't Brogan — she barely knows her, and even if she had reasons, she doesn't seem like that kind of person.
What she is sure of is that Brogan is exactly the type who would do anything to protect the woman she loves.
To pull something like this, in her opinion, you need a financial motive, and Brogan has more money than she knows what to do with.
She's completely convinced the leaks are coming from inside Leire's circle — someone who spends enough time with her to know her schedule and her every move, someone who stays at the same hotel and could get into her room without raising any suspicion.
And for Candela, only one name checks every single box: Bruno Cobos.
"I just want to warn you that whatever's going on between you and Brogan is going to come out at some point," she starts, trying to keep her voice steady.
"W-what?" Leire stammers. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do, and it's okay — I don't need you to confirm anything.
" She holds Leire's gaze and bites her lip, fighting the urge to reach out as she watches the color drain from the tennis player's face.
"There are photos of you and Brogan. They're sharp, Cobos.
You can both be clearly identified. I'm not going to publish them, but if they found their way to me, they can find their way to someone else who won't hesitate. "
Leire pulls out a chair and sinks into it, shaken. Candela grabs another and sets it beside her.
"What photos? That's impossible — we're careful."
Candela exhales slowly.
"Thinking you're being careful is one thing. Actually not slipping up is another. I've known for two years. I saw you myself at a hotel — I was coming out of a room and Brogan was coming out of yours. I saw you kiss in the hallway."
She opens her phone and pulls up the image in her gallery.
"Look at it yourself. The quality isn't great, but it's clearly you. You can't really make out Brogan, but we both know it's her — and anyone who saw it would've had enough to make something of it, because she's a woman."
The air leaves Leire's lungs as she tries to process what she's being told.
"Is that the photo that's going to come out?"
"No. That's the one I took, and I promise you'll never see it published. I haven't used it in two years and I'm not going to now. The ones I think could actually surface are these."
Candela opens the conversation with the unknown sender and shows her the first image she received — the one from the locker rooms. Leire's throat goes dry and she lets out a sound somewhere between a breath and a sob, pressing her hand over her mouth.
"That one came in a few weeks ago, around the time there was talk of your Costel contract running out."
Leire tries to get her mind working, reaching back for that moment — barely a few lines in the press, never even a headline. By the time it was published, she'd already signed the preliminary agreement with them. But she can't see what one thing has to do with the other.
"And this one came in this morning."
"Oh my God." Leire's eyes go wide. "That's my room in Paris. How the hell—"
Candela just looks at her and presses her lips together in a quiet, sympathetic grimace.
"Who has access to your room, Leire? Because someone had to plant a camera in there before you arrived."
The tennis player's head is spinning. She feels dizzy, like she's trying to wake up from a nightmare. She can't think of anyone. The idea that it could be someone close to her doesn't even cross her mind.
"Maybe hotel staff—"
"I doubt it," Candela cuts her off, firm. "It's a real stretch that whoever photographed you in a locker room in one city would also plant a camera in your hotel room in a completely different country."
Disoriented, Leire takes the phone from her hands to get a closer look at the locker room photo and try to place it — and that's when she understands.
It was her father. Not because of the sender's number, which means nothing to her, but because of the tiny dark smudge above Kate's shirt.
It's a small dark circle, barely noticeable, but she knows it by heart because it shows up in every single photo her father's phone takes.
To make sure she's not imagining things, she pulls out her own phone, opens their conversation, and starts zooming in on match photos he's sent her over the months.
The smudge is in all of them, in the exact same spot — because her father dropped his phone a while back and something in the camera lens got damaged, leaving that mark that he never bothered to fix and that has now given him away.
She doesn't have the hotel room photo on her phone, but she's already certain that one could only have been taken with a hidden camera — which is why one image has the mark and the other doesn't.
"Do you know who it is?" the journalist asks when she sees her expression of disbelief.
Leire nods, her face so flushed her pulse is visibly beating in her cheeks.
"My father," she says, her voice cold and flat, and Candela decides the player doesn't need to hear that she'd suspected him too.
"But I don't understand — why would he do this?
" she asks, trying not to think yet about the violation of her privacy, about how many images of them he might have, about what he's seen, about what he's done with it.
"This kind of thing is always about money, Leire. Think about that and you'll figure out the motive," Candela says.