"I like her."
The voice came through with the particular clarity of a late-night phone call — present but slightly compressed, the small distance of a connection, conviction sitting underneath every word.
"There's just something about her, you know? It's just a feeling. I can't really explain it — I just know."
A pause from the other end.
"You barely even know her."
"Yeah, but—" The first voice, undeterred, the warmth in it entirely unaffected by the pushback. "Yeah, but that's the thing. Sometimes you don't need to know someone fully to know that there's something there. You just — you feel it. You know?"
Andrew King was not, at 1:05 in the morning, where he was supposed to be.
He was supposed to be in bed. He had told himself this at eleven. He had told himself this again at half past eleven, and at midnight, and at twelve-thirty, and at each of those points he had been sitting in exactly the same position he was sitting in now — at his desk, the room dark behind him except for the combined glow of two tablets positioned in front of him, the kind of sustained lateness that stops being about tiredness and becomes about momentum.
The desk had the organised chaos of someone who worked with genuine focus and had stopped caring about appearances sometime around the third hour. Papers to one side, a pen that had been picked up and set back down many times, a cup of something that had been warm at some point and had made its peace with no longer being warm.
On the tablet to his left, the face of James.
James was somewhere in his mid-forties — the age sitting comfortably on him in the way it sits on men who have spent their careers in rooms with other competent people and have absorbed something from each of them. His hair was ginger going grey at the edges, the kind of colouring that announced itself. He had the face of someone who had spent a long time finding things funny and had the lines to show for it. At this particular moment he was looking at something on his phone, angled slightly away from the camera, which was his standard operating mode when they were between subjects.
Andrew knew James. Had known him for years — they had worked together in a previous chapter of his professional life, the specific bond of people who had been in stressful situations in the same room many times and had come out the other side with a mutual respect that had calcified into something more durable. James was good at his job. He was also, reliably, a problem in any context that required strict professionalism, because his natural register was about three notches below strictly professional, and no amount of context seemed to be able to move it.
Andrew also knew exactly why James had said what he'd said about Gabriela Oliveira before reading a single line of her credentials.
He rolled his eyes.
"Let's get back on track," he said.
James laughed — the easy, unrepentant laugh of a man who had been caught doing something predictable and had no strong feelings about it. "Okay, okay. I'm back. I'm focused."
He did not look focused.
Andrew reached for the second tablet — the one that had been sitting to his right, the one he had been working through more slowly, more carefully. He brought it up and opened the file.
The photograph was first.
It was a professional image — the kind taken for institutional purposes, clean background, good light, the subject presenting a version of themselves that was composed and intentional. She was Brazilian, the photograph showing a woman in her early thirties with dark hair worn back from her face, skin with the warm, deep tone of someone who had grown up in a place where the sun was a constant, eyes that were dark and direct and carried the specific quality of someone who was comfortable being looked at without being altered by it. Her expression was not the full smile of someone performing approachability — just the edge of one, the small, controlled version that sat at the corner of the mouth and in the eyes and communicated something more interesting than warmth alone. Competence, maybe. Or the particular ease of someone who did not need to perform.
Andrew looked at it for a moment longer than he had intended to.
He could not, in good conscience, blame James for his reaction.
But it was not beauty he was here to assess. He moved to the next page.
A whistle came through the tablet speaker — James, audible without looking up from whatever he was reading on his phone.
"Dude." His voice had shifted — the teasing had not left it, but something had joined it. "You have to see this."
Andrew did not look up from his own screen.
His eyes had started moving down the page and had not stopped. They were moving faster now, not because he was skimming but because each thing he read was producing the involuntary response of wanting to get to the next thing, the accumulating effect of a document that kept delivering.
He understood why James had whistled.
Gabriela Oliveira's CV was, in the specific language of Andrew's professional experience, not normal.
Eleven years. Not eleven years of general physiotherapy — eleven years of elite sports rehabilitation, the distinction being not incidental but fundamental, the difference between someone who treated injuries and someone who had spent over a decade at the highest level of competitive sport learning the specific, particular, brutal demands that professional football placed on human bodies and developing an expertise so refined that it had a shape.
The academic foundation was immaculate. A Bachelor of Physiotherapy from the University of São Paulo — which was not simply a good university but one of the most rigorous sports science programmes in South America, the kind that produced people who entered the field already knowing things their contemporaries would spend years learning. Then a Master of Science in Sports Physiotherapy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, completed in 2015, which meant she had gone back to deepen the thing she was already good at, which was not the behaviour of someone coasting on natural ability but of someone with a genuine appetite for the work.
Then the certifications. Andrew read them and kept reading.
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. The FIFA Diploma in Football Medicine — which was not a general qualification but a specific, football-focused credential that required demonstrated competence across a curriculum designed for the demands of the professional game. Advanced Manual Therapy. Dry Needling and Myofascial Release Specialist. Sports Injury Rehabilitation Certification. Each one a separate investment of time and commitment, each one building on the previous, the whole collection forming a picture of someone who had looked at the field she was in and decided she wanted every tool it had available.
"Okay," James said, from the tablet. The teasing register had quieted slightly, replaced by the tone he produced when something had earned his genuine attention. "That's—"
"Keep reading," Andrew said.
"I am reading."
"The clinical experience section."
A pause.
"Oh," James said.
The clinical record spanned both institutional and elite contexts — early career years in orthopedic and musculoskeletal rehabilitation, the foundational work of someone learning how bodies failed and how they came back. Post-surgical recovery specialisation. Chronic injury case management. Then the progression into elite sport, the work becoming more specific and more demanding as the career advanced — injury prevention programmes, return-to-play optimisation, the precise and high-stakes work of getting professional athletes back onto pitches within timelines that the sport demanded and that the body sometimes disputed.
Her track record with professional footballers specifically was documented in the kind of concrete, outcome-based language that was either true or was a very well-constructed fabrication, and Andrew's professional experience told him it was the former. Players she had worked with. Injuries she had managed. Return timelines she had hit. The data sat in the document quietly, not performing, just existing, which was its own kind of confidence.
"Wow," James said.
Andrew said nothing. He was still reading.
"I mean—" James laughed — a different laugh from before, less teasing and more genuinely surprised. "Wow. See? I told you. Gut feeling. My gut is never wrong."
"Your gut saw her photograph," Andrew said.
"My gut is not that shallow. Mostly." A pause. "Okay, the photograph was a contributing factor. But look at this — the gut was right regardless."
Andrew put the tablet down briefly and looked at the ceiling.
It was right. Objectively, measurably, the document in front of him described someone whose qualifications for this specific role — the personal physiotherapist position he was trying to fill for Mateo, the person who would be responsible for managing his body through what was going to be an extremely demanding career — were not just adequate. They were, on paper, close to ideal.
And that was exactly the problem.
"James."
"Yeah."
Andrew picked the tablet back up. Found the line he had been looking at before the credentials had pulled him in.
"It says here she's currently the lead physiotherapist at Fluminense FC."
James looked up from his phone. "Yeah?"
"In Brazil."
"Yeah, I saw that."
"That's a top-division team."
"It is," James agreed.
Andrew looked at him.
"So." He said it carefully. "Why would someone in that position — lead physiotherapist, top division, established career — why would someone like that want to leave it to come and be a personal physiotherapist for a young player?"
James opened his mouth.
"I know what you're going to say," Andrew said.
"It's Mateo—"
"I know. And yes, his trajectory is — the trajectory is good, the future is bright, the potential is real." He said it without any pleasure in it, the way someone states a fact they're not trying to celebrate right now. "But that's still a possibility. It's not a guarantee. And that's still not enough reason — not on its own — to leave a secured position at a top-flight club." He paused. "It doesn't add up."
James smiled. "You know, strictly speaking, an agent probably shouldn't be talking down his own client's prospects—"
"I'm being realistic."
"You're being you." James leaned back slightly. "Which is realistic, yes, but also — you worry. It's your thing. You worry."
Andrew said nothing.
"Look," James continued, the teasing dropping back to a lower level, his voice finding the register it used when he was being actually useful. "I've been doing some reading too. And you're right — teams don't let their top physios walk. That's true. They hold onto them. So if she's leaving Fluminense, she's leaving for a reason." He tilted his head. "Maybe she was just that adamant about it. Maybe she wanted something different. Maybe she's one of those people who needs a new challenge before the old one gets comfortable." He spread his hands. "We don't know."
"No," Andrew said. "We don't."
"And we won't know until we sit across from her and actually ask." James looked at him evenly. "On paper, she's perfect for the job. That much is not debatable. Whatever the reason she's leaving — that's a conversation. That's not a disqualifier."
Andrew was quiet.
He looked at the photograph again — at the competence and the ease and the small, controlled smile — and then at the document beside it, at the eleven years and the credentials and the outcomes and the track record.
James was right.
He did not particularly enjoy admitting this, because James used these moments in ways that were generally unhelpful for Andrew's blood pressure. But the logic was sound. The reservation was real — there was something about the Fluminense situation that he could not resolve yet, some piece that did not sit flush with the rest of the picture — but a reservation was not a conclusion. It was a question. And the answer to a question was a conversation.
He exhaled slowly.
"We'll add her to the shortlist for now," he said.
James smiled. The smile of a man who had been expecting this and had been patient about waiting for it.
"Yeah," he said.
After Gabriela's file was set aside — added to the shortlist, the question of her motivations filed away for the face-to-face — they kept going.
The list was longer than a single role. That was the thing Andrew had understood early, when he had first started mapping out what Mateo's life was going to require as it expanded into what it was clearly going to expand into. A physiotherapist was one piece. One important piece, yes — the person responsible for keeping the body that everything else depended on functional and available — but one piece nonetheless.
There was a nutritionist. Potentially also a personal chef, or a combination of the two — someone who understood the specific demands of an elite athletic calendar and could translate that understanding into what actually went on the plate, day after day, in the unglamorous daily reality of fuelling a professional career. Not a restaurant. Not delivery. Someone present, consistent, calibrated to Mateo specifically.
A personal trainer — distinct from the club's conditioning staff, someone whose sole focus was Mateo's physical development outside of team training. Someone who could work in the gaps, who understood the particular combination of power and endurance and recovery that his position demanded, who could track his body's responses over months and years and adjust accordingly.
A PR manager, or a firm. Because the profile was growing — had already grown, significantly, in a very short time — and the way a public profile was managed in its early stages had consequences that lasted much longer than the early stages did. It needed someone who understood football, understood the media landscape, understood how to protect and present a young person who was not yet fully equipped to navigate all of it alone.
And a personal assistant. This one Andrew thought about the most, because it was the most personal — the person who would sit closest to the daily life, who would manage the calendar and the appointments and the communications and the hundred small logistical things that accumulated around a life like the one Mateo was beginning to live. Someone who would, in practical terms, help him manage himself. Keep him aware of where he needed to be and when and why.
Lord knows the boy needed it.
He had spent weeks pulling the list together — his own contacts, contacts he had solicited from Deco, people the club had pointed him toward. The process had been deliberate: cast wide, gather names, build a longlist for each role, narrow to two or three serious candidates per position, then face-to-face interviews where Mateo would make the final call.
That last part was non-negotiable for Andrew. These were people Mateo would see constantly — not colleagues he passed in a corridor but people woven into the texture of his daily life. The decision had to be his. Andrew could filter, advise, flag concerns. But the choosing was Mateo's.
The profiles kept coming.
They had been at this for hours now and it showed — not in any sloppiness of attention, because both of them were too professional for that, but in the particular heaviness that settled into the body after sustained concentration, the kind that caffeine stopped touching.
James yawned — a full, uncontained yawn, one hand rising to cover it approximately halfway through. He shook it off and looked back at the screen.
"That should be all for the PA list," he said.
"Hmm." Andrew was still looking at his tablet.
"Yeah." James scrolled something. Set his phone down. Picked it up again. "That should be all of them."
Andrew made the sound again. He was making a note on the side of the screen, the small annotations he added to each profile as he went, the accumulation of a night's worth of assessment.
"What about David?" he said, without looking up. "Has he responded to you?"
James yawned again — smaller this time, the second one in a minute, which was the body stating its position clearly. "Nah. Last I saw him was yesterday, at the office building. After that, nothing." He shrugged. "No call, no message."
Andrew hmmed.
"Let's continue then," he said.
James yawned again. "Okay."
They reached for their respective tablets.
"But seriously, dude."
Andrew looked at the screen.
James was not looking at his tablet. He was looking at the camera — at Andrew, specifically, with the expression he wore when he had decided to say something he had been sitting on and had resolved that this was the moment.
"Are you actually doing this?"
Andrew's expression did not change. "Doing what?"
James tilted his head slightly. "Quitting the firm."
The tablet came away from the screen. Andrew leaned back, putting a small distance between himself and the question, which was the tell James had known to look for for many years.
"James—"
"I know, I know — I keep repeating myself." He held his hands up briefly, acknowledging it. Then put them down. "But I'm repeating myself because it keeps being true and I don't think you've fully sat with it yet." His voice had found the register it used when he was being genuinely concerned rather than generically cautionary — lower, less performative, the voice of someone who actually meant what he was saying. "This is risky. You're gambling everything you've built. At the firm, you were on the partner track — actually on it, not maybe, not eventually, on it. That doesn't happen to everyone. That doesn't happen to most people." He paused. "And you left it. You walked away from that to become a sports agent, which is — that's not done. That's not a normal transition. I get that your brother made sacrifices, I understand that, I understand the whole thing. But this—" He gestured at the tablets, at the late hour, at the whole operation. "This isn't even a sacrifice for your brother. Your brother is fine. Mateo is more than fine. His career is already moving faster than anyone expected. There would have been other people — qualified people, experienced people, people who have been doing this for twenty years — who would have lined up to represent him. You didn't have to do this." He looked at him steadily. "I just want to know you didn't make this decision too fast."
Andrew listened to all of it.
Then he smiled.
Not the deflecting smile, not the managing smile. The quiet one — the one that came from somewhere that had already resolved the question being asked and found the resolution sufficient.
"I know what I'm doing," he said.
James looked at him. "Really."
"Really."
James made a sound. "Right — so you, just fifteen minutes ago, were questioning why a highly qualified physiotherapist would leave a top-division club for an unproven individual client. You were being realistic about it." He said the word with the light, pointed inflection of someone returning it to its owner. "That doesn't add up, you said. The logic isn't there. What's the real reason?" He tilted his head. "But your own logic — walking away from a partner track to represent your nephew, on potential, on a feeling — that makes sense?"
"Those are completely different situations—"
"They're really not—"
"Her situation has a piece missing," Andrew said. "Mine doesn't." He said it simply, without defensiveness. "I know Mateo. I've known him his whole life. I've watched him since he was small — I've watched him work, I've watched him think, I've watched how he moves through difficulty and what happens to him when the stakes go up." He paused. "He's not potential. He's not a bet." The smile was still there, settled and certain. "He's going to be big. Not might be. Not could be. Is. In a few years — you'll see. And this—" He gestured at the tablets, at the hour, at everything James had just called a gamble. "This is nowhere near a sacrifice. This is the easiest decision I've ever made."
The certainty in it was not the certainty of someone who needed to be right. It was the certainty of someone who had done the thinking, arrived at the answer, and was simply living in the aftermath of that.
James looked at him for a long moment.
Then he sighed — the sigh of a man who had made his case and believed it and had also accepted that the man across the screen had made his and believed it too, and that neither of them was going to shift.
"Okay," he said. "I trust you."
Andrew looked at him — at his best friend on a screen at two in the morning, who had spent three hours reviewing profiles with him and had still found time to worry about him specifically. The particular warmth that comes from being known by someone who has chosen to keep knowing you.
"Okay then," he said. "Let's continue."
James reached for his tablet.
And then, from somewhere off-screen — muffled but clear, a small voice with the particular quality of voices that have been working up the courage to speak for a few minutes before actually speaking.
"Daddy."
Both of them stopped.
James turned. Andrew watched the screen adjust — James's attention moving entirely and immediately to something behind and to the left of the camera.
A face appeared at the edge of the frame.
Small. Round with the specific roundness of seven-year-old faces, the eyes large and slightly uncertain, the hair disordered in the way sleep disorders hair. He was standing in what looked like a doorway, a blanket pulled partway with him, his whole posture communicating the particular vulnerability of a child who has woken up somewhere in the dark and has come to find the person who makes the dark manageable.
"Hey—" James's voice was completely different now. Lower. Warmer. The professional register gone entirely, replaced without transition by something much older. "Hey, buddy. What's going on?"
"I'm scared," the boy said. Directly. With the honest directness of children stating facts.
"Yeah?" James leaned slightly toward him. "You want Dad to come in with you?"
A nod.
"Okay." Easy, immediate, no hesitation. "I'll be right there. You go back — get in bed, I'll be there in just a second." A pause. "I'll even bring you milk and cookies."
The face considered this. Found it acceptable. Nodded once more and withdrew from the frame, the shuffle of small feet audible for a moment before fading.
James turned back to the camera.
He had the expression people have when they have just been reminded of something important without anyone intending to remind them.
"Is that George?" Andrew said.
"Yeah." The warmth was still in his voice, sitting there naturally. "I have him for the week." He reached for something off-screen. "As you can see, I have to—"
"Go," Andrew said. "It's fine. Seriously."
"Man, I'm sorry—"
"James." Firmly, kindly. "Go."
James looked at him for a moment. Then he smiled — a different smile from any he had produced in the last three hours, the smile of a man going somewhere he was glad to be going.
"Sorry, man. Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
The call ended.
The silence arrived quickly.
Andrew sat in it for a moment — the room dark behind him, the two tablets still glowing in front of him, the night at its deepest point, the kind of quiet that only exists in the small hours when everyone else has found their way to sleep.
He did not mind the silence.
He reached for the tablet — not the profiles one, not the spreadsheet of candidates. The other one. The one with the courses downloaded onto it, the material he had been working through in the gaps between everything else — the certification content, the industry reading, the accumulated expertise of people who had been doing this for decades being absorbed, piece by piece, by someone who had been doing it for months.
He opened it.
The lecture resumed where he had left it — mid-sentence, the instructor's voice filling the quiet room with the methodical, unhurried clarity of someone who had explained this many times and had found the most useful way to do it. Andrew settled into his chair and listened with the focus of a man who had decided something important and was going to be ready for it.
He was not doing this casually. He was not doing it as a side project or a favour or a temporary arrangement that would resolve itself when something better appeared. He was doing it with everything he had, in the same way he had done everything he had ever decided mattered.
The lecture played.
At some point his eyes moved briefly to the time displayed at the top of the screen.
2:19.
He looked at it. Then past it, at nothing specific — at the dark room, at the quiet house, at the closed doors behind him where his brother and sister-in-law were sleeping the sound sleep of people who had worked hard and long today, the restaurant demanding what it always demanded and them meeting it as they always met it.
His thoughts moved, the way thoughts move in the small hours when the noise of the day has finally cleared — sideways, without particular direction, following their own quiet logic.
They moved to Mateo.
To the profile he was building, to the team he was assembling, to the eleven years of a physiotherapist's career that didn't quite add up and the PA list they hadn't finished and the face-to-face interviews still ahead and the match on Tuesday and the Champions League and the title race and all of it, the whole enormous, accelerating thing of it.
And underneath all of that — underneath the logistics and the preparation and the late hours and the courses playing in a dark room at two in the morning — a single thought, quiet and certain.
'He should be sleeping by now.'
The lecture played on.
A/N
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