Chapter 21
"Would it be okay if we grabbed breakfast and talked?" Isaac asks when Leire comes down to the hotel lobby to meet him. "Sorry I couldn't make it sooner, but after lunch they dragged me off to the golf course, and yesterday was impossible."
Leire shrugs and finishes replying to a text from her friend Marta, who called twice yesterday after Kate's retirement announcement and got no answer either time, because the grief is still lodged in her throat and she doesn't trust herself to speak without falling apart.
Everything's fine, I'll call you another time, things are crazy busy right now. Love you.
She pockets her phone and looks up, finding Isaac's eyes already on her.
"Sure, but anywhere except the hotel café—the food there is pretty bland," she says, her face flat.
Isaac smiles.
"You should've called me so I could find you somewhere better to stay. This place is pretty mediocre. I'll sort out a transfer for you later. Come on." He pushes open the door and holds it while she walks through. "I spotted a couple of good cafés nearby. Pick whichever one you like."
Leire doesn't like either of them, and in the end they walk nearly ten minutes in silence before she spots one that catches her eye.
"Okay, tell me what the hell is going on," Isaac says, once they've ordered and the food arrives and they can talk without being interrupted.
"Are you going to tell me you didn't know?" Leire's voice tightens. "That you're not in on this with my dad?"
The man frowns, so genuinely puzzled that the tennis player doubts herself for a few seconds.
"In on what, Leire? I swear I have no idea. All I know is that the other day your father left without a word, and then you switched hotels without telling me. Do you know how stupid I felt when people started asking me what had happened?"
"My dad sent photos of me and Kate to a journalist," Leire says flatly, watching his face for any flicker that might give him away.
"There are photos of you two everywhere. You're both elite athletes, you're always—"
"Intimate photos." Leire's brows are nearly touching as she says it, and Isaac nearly chokes on the pancake he was chewing.
"Wait, what kind of photos?" he asks, alarmed. "And who the hell did he send them to?"
The tennis player stares at him without answering for several seconds.
"Answer me, for God's sake. What the hell happened?" he asks, visibly rattled.
"You really don't know anything?" she presses, still not convinced—but if he's lying, Isaac is the best actor she's ever seen.
"No, damn it," he says, exasperated. "What did your father do?"
"What do you know about Kate and me?" she asks, trying to catch him in a lie.
Isaac sets down his fork, wipes his mouth with his napkin, and leans back in his chair.
"I know you're sleeping with her. I've known for over a year because a guy who edits a newspaper told me. He said one of his reporters had photos of you and Brogan being affectionate, but he never showed them to me."
Leire no longer knows what to think.
"If you knew, why didn't you say anything?"
"Because who you sleep with is none of my business. You do your job, you play brilliantly, and you make me good money—no offense, but as long as that doesn't change, what you do with your private life is not my concern. Now tell me what the hell your father did."
"Candela Valle came to see me a few days ago to warn me.
She said someone had been sending her photos of me and Kate, and she showed them to me.
One was taken in the locker room—I assume he shot it from the doorway—but the other one was inside my hotel room.
He put a camera in there to record me with her. "
Isaac scratches his jaw, thrown.
"Are you telling me your father planted the camera?" he asks, hesitant. "That's impossible. Bruno would never do something like that. It could be—"
"He admitted it."
Leire's words knock the air out of him. His face cycles through colors: first white, then red with rage, then pale again.
"Why the hell would he do that? If that journalist publishes it, it would only hurt you. Something like that is yours to share on your own terms—and it was obvious you had no plans to. Did he do it for money? Did Valle pay him for the photos?" he asks, increasingly lost.
"You're not understanding any of this. Candela hasn't published anything and she's not going to.
The journalist they told you had photographed us was her, but she chose not to go public with it.
That's exactly why my father went to her—he sent her the photos because he suspected she wouldn't publish them, that she'd end up coming to me to show me. "
"Now I understand even less. If it wasn't about money—"
"He wanted to scare me. He wanted me to see the photos, freak out, and break things off with Kate."
He looks at her, confused.
"According to him, I'm throwing my career away by risking being seen with Kate when I have a signed contract with Costel. He says they could sue me for breach of contract and ruin me. He said he did it for my own good."
Isaac's eyebrows shoot up, and then he lets out a short, ironic laugh.
"Why are you laughing?"
"Because I thought your father was smarter than that. Turns out he's more clueless than I gave him credit for."
Leire shifts in her seat, uncomfortable, because she doesn't follow.
"Costel can't touch you if it comes out that you're sleeping with Brogan, or ten women every night, for that matter. I took care of that—it's one of the clauses I insisted on during the last round of negotiations. That's why it took so long to officially sign."
"What do you mean they can't touch me?"
"Think of it this way," Isaac begins. "Say a photo of you and Brogan goes public somehow, or it leaks and people find out you're sleeping with women.
The clause allows Costel to terminate the contract without having to make any public statement—but they'd have to pay you three million dollars to do it.
They'd never have to publicly admit they're homophobic assholes, and in exchange, they can't screw you over. "
Leire's eyebrows fly up.
"How did you pull that off?"
"Because I'm your agent and that's my job—protecting your interests, and by extension, mine.
Ever since I found out about you and Brogan, I've dealt with a lot of crap and shut down more than a few people.
I didn't know it was Valle who had the photo that guy mentioned, but she wasn't the only one who knew.
Over the past year or so I've paid three different people to keep the story quiet.
Pardon my bluntness, but you two might've kept things behind closed doors in bed, everywhere else you were painfully obvious.
The way you'd brush against each other, the looks you'd exchange when you crossed paths on the court or in the hallways—it was way too incriminating.
And that bad habit Brogan had of coming to see you in the locker room after matches has cost me a serious amount of money. "
Leire is stunned, her heart hammering so hard she's afraid she might get dizzy.
"I don't understand—you mean to say—"
"Have people seen you?" Isaac shakes his head, almost amused. "Come on, I can't believe you're that naive. The locker rooms are big. Someone can be in any corner without you noticing. Did you ever actually bother to check?"
"I never—" she starts, flustered, searching her memory for those moments, but there are too many, and her judgment always goes out the window when Kate is around.
"I figured. Anyway, it doesn't matter—I've got it under control for now, so don't worry. When you're ready, just say the word and we'll put together a quick statement, no questions. Two minutes and it's done," he says, and she feels the room tilting around her.
She still can't quite make sense of Isaac's reaction. She'd assumed he was as old-fashioned as her father, as the brand that sponsors her—but he doesn't look scandalized. Not even worried.
"Isaac, I'm sorry for thinking you—"
"Knew about it?" he offers. "Don't worry about it.
I get it—sometimes I act like an arrogant ass.
And maybe sometimes I am one, and maybe I love money a little too much, let's not kid ourselves.
" She manages a small smile. "But I care about you, Leire, and as long as I can help it, the wolves aren't going to come for you until you're ready to take them on yourself. "
"I don't think it matters anymore." Leire looks down at her hands, surprised to find herself having this conversation with him.
"What do you mean?"
"Kate ended things with me. And I don't blame her. So you can relax—I don't think anyone's going to be blackmailing you over this going forward."
He sighs—not with relief, but with something closer to understanding.
"And are you okay with that? Without her?"
Her eyes fill instantly, and she can't hold back the tears.
"No." She smiles sadly. "But I brought it on myself. I kept Kate in the shadows for three years, proving to her every single day that she wasn't enough—that I cared more about what other people thought than about what I felt for her."
He shifts, uncomfortable. He can handle just about anything, but comforting a woman with a broken heart is not something he has much experience with.
"I don't really know what to say. I'm not great with matters of the heart—if I were, I'd be married by now—but you should ask yourself what actually matters to you, and stop letting what other people think run the show."
"I always used Costel as a shield, you know? I clung to that contract to justify how scared I am of putting myself out there—of becoming the center of attention, of people pointing fingers, of my sexuality becoming a bigger story than my results on the court."
"Brogan is openly lesbian and I don't see anyone going after her for it—not even when she came out."
Leire looks up and smiles a little, because the way Kate came out was by walking out of a hotel holding a girl's hand, smiling at the cameras beside her, and when someone asked if she was her girlfriend, Kate answered, calm as anything, that she wasn't.
"Don't worry—when I have a girlfriend, you'll be the first to know."
She said that and kept walking with the girl, and even though she was on every front page that week, the whole thing was so effortless that by the time they saw her with the next one, people barely paid attention—a few articles, nothing more.
"Kate is different." She smiles softly. "She always makes everything look easy."
"Yeah, maybe," Isaac agrees. There aren't many players on the circuit with Kate Brogan's ease—though lately she seems to have lost that part of herself, always trying to fly as far under the radar as possible. "I understand it's harder for you, but whenever you feel ready, I'm here."
"Thank you."
"As for your father," he says, still struggling to believe it, "what do you want to do?"
Leire meets his eyes.
"I mean, are you going to let it go, or do you want to take legal action?"
"He says he didn't see anything—that he stopped the recording as soon as he had the first image. But I don't know."
"What he claims doesn't mean a damn thing.
He violated your privacy and Brogan's, and he torched your trust. I'm not sure exactly what the charge would be, but he went way too far.
So if you want to pursue this, tell me, and I'll bring in a firm that specializes in this kind of thing to make sure he never pulls anything like it again. "
Leire nods. She knows she should. She knows it's the right thing to do. And still, it costs her, because she still can't fully believe it happened—that her father, the only family she has left, was actually capable of this.
"Can you look into what my options are?"
"Here's what we'll do," he says, leaning forward when he sees her hesitation—which he clearly understands.
"I'll do my research and lay all the options out on the table for you.
You don't have to decide anything. If you want to drop it, we drop it and it stays in a drawer.
If you want to move forward, we go all in. Does Brogan know?"
"No. I didn't have it in me to tell her."
"You should. She's in those images too, and she has the right to weigh in and decide whether she wants to take action on her own."
"I know." The Spanish woman nods. "It's just that things between us are a little tense right now, but I'll find the right moment to tell her."
"Good. I'll reach out to Candela Valle—if you do move forward, we'll need her to testify."
The tennis player nods, and her head seems to sink between her shoulders. Isaac is not a brotherly man—he doesn't even think of himself as warm—but he cares about the tennis player, and given that this is the first time he's ever seen her this shaken, he's willing to do whatever it takes to help.
"Want me to order you some chamomile tea?"
"You want me falling asleep before a semifinal?" she shoots back, trying to smile.
"Fair point—no chamomile. Hey, did you know about Brogan? About the retirement."
"Yes, she told me in Cincinnati. And instead of being there for her, I froze. What I can't understand is why she didn't leave me sooner."
"I guess it must be really hard to leave someone when you love them. I didn't realize things between you two were that serious."
Leire looks him in the eyes but doesn't really see him, as if Isaac's words are the ones she needed to finally understand the full extent of the damage she's done to a woman who only ever gave her good things—who stood by her for three years and made do with a relationship where Leire would take one step forward and two steps back, making promises she never kept while asking for everything and giving nothing in return.
That is the person she has been to Kate, and she doesn't like that person. She doesn't recognize herself in her. And it's long past time she started putting her life in order and making what matters to her a priority.