Read Chapter 15: The Agent's Game

The charity gala was everything Elena hated in a room: champagne towers, black ties, and the low hum of people pretending they weren't calculating each other's net worth. The Dorchester's ballroom had been transformed into a winter wonderland of white orchids and fairy lights, and somewhere in that glittering crowd, Jack’s agent Ray Dempsey was smiling like a man with nothing to hide.

Jack’s hand found the small of her back as they moved through the crowd—a gesture so casual it took her a second to realize he was steering her, not comforting her. His tuxedo fit like it had been painted on, all sharp shoulders and controlled menace, but his eyes were scanning the room the way he scanned a pitch. Looking for threats.

“There,” he said, barely moving his lips. “By the bar. Ray’s already on his second scotch.”

Elena followed his gaze. Ray Dempsey stood with his back to them, broad-shouldered in an ill-fitting dinner jacket that strained at the seams. He was talking to someone in a dark suit—a man whose profile she didn’t recognize. The journalist. Her fingers itched for her phone, but she’d learned the hard way that camera flashes in a room full of sharks got you noticed for the wrong reasons.

“He’s doing his rounds,” Jack murmured, leaning in close enough that his breath tickled her ear. “Charity gala’s the best place for him. All the right people, all the right excuses to talk.”

“And all the wrong reasons,” Elena said.

They’d come for one purpose: to watch Ray operate. The plan had been Jack’s, hatched somewhere around Oxford as the M40 blurred past. *If Ricky’s the leak, he’ll be meeting his contacts somewhere public. Somewhere he can explain away.* And a charity gala, with a hundred wealthy patrons and a dozen journalists covering the Premier League beat, was the perfect hunting ground.

Elena had argued against it—twelve hours left before Marcus pulled the trigger, and they were wasting precious time at a party—but Jack had been immovable. “Trust me,” he’d said, and that word again. Trust. It hung between them now like a live wire, and she could feel the charge every time his arm brushed hers.

They took up position near a marble pillar, close enough to the bar to observe without being obvious. A waiter drifted past with a tray of champagne; Elena declined, needing her senses sharp. Jack took a flute and held it like a prop, never drinking.

“He’s got something,” Jack said suddenly.

Elena followed his gaze. Ray had steered the dark-suited man away from the bar, toward a quiet alcove draped in velvet curtains. His posture had shifted—less jovial, more conspiratorial, shoulders curved inward like he was protecting something. And in his right hand, she saw it: a thick white envelope, held flush against his thigh.

Her heart kicked. “You see that?”

“Mm.”

The dark-suited man reached for the envelope. Ray hesitated—just a beat, just long enough for the scene to feel scripted—and then he handed it over. The man tucked it into his inside jacket pocket without a word.

“Who is he?” Elena whispered. “Do you know him?”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “He looks familiar. Give me a second.” He was already moving, cutting through the crowd with the easy grace of someone who owned every room he entered. Elena followed, trying to look like she belonged among the glitterati, not like a journalist chasing a story that could blow up her career.

They pulled up short behind a cluster of elderly donors arguing about cricket. From here, Elena could see the alcove clearly. The dark-suited man had turned now, his face half-caught in a shaft of golden light, and she got a proper look at him: mid-fifties, silver-streaked hair, a patrician nose that had probably been broken once or twice. He wore his dinner jacket like armor.

“I know him,” Jack breathed. “That’s Andrew Whelan. Head of football operations at City.”

Elena’s blood ran cold. Manchester City. The club that had been circling Jack like a hawk for two transfer windows, the club his alleged outburst threatened to leave him stranded from if he refused to leave WFC. The rival club that would pay anything—say anything—to poach a Premier League captain of Jack’s caliber.

“Your agent,” she said slowly, “is handing an envelope to a director at your rival club. At a public event. He’s not even trying to hide it.”

“He thinks he’s untouchable.” Jack’s voice was flat, dangerous. “He’s been my agent for eleven years. He knows everything—every contract, every clause, every weakness.”

Elena’s mind was racing. She reached into her small evening clutch, the one that barely held a phone and a lipstick, and cursed. The compact camera she’d brought was in the hotel room, too obvious for formalwear. But her phone—

“Don’t,” Jack said, reading her move. “Flash that thing and Ray will know. He’s got a sixth sense for cameras. I’ve seen him spot paps from a hundred yards.”

“I need proof,” she hissed. “Marcus gave me twelve hours. We’re down to nine.”

Jack’s hand closed around hers, stopping the phone’s ascent. “Wait.”

Wait. Wait and watch as their only lead walked off arm in arm with a rival club director? Elena opened her mouth to argue, but something in Jack’s expression stopped her. He wasn’t looking at the alcove anymore. He was looking past it, toward the main entrance, where a woman in a sapphire gown was just arriving, flanked by a man in a livery uniform.

Charlotte. Jack’s mother.

Elena recognized her from the photograph on Jack’s bedside table—sharp cheekbones, iron-colored hair swept into a chignon, eyes that had probably been judging people since the 1980s. The man beside her was not his father. He was younger, leaner, with a military bearing that suggested security. Or something darker.

“She’s meeting Ray too,” Elena breathed.

Jack’s hand tightened on hers. “My mother and my agent.” His voice cracked, just a little, before he steeled it. “Both of them in the same room, the same night this man is handing envelopes to Manchester City. What are the odds?”

They were almost zero. Elena knew it, and Jack knew it too.

Charlotte crossed the room with the ease of a woman who owned every floor she walked on. She approached Ray, exchanged a few words, and then the two of them disappeared behind the velvet curtain—the same alcove where the exchange had just taken place.

Jack’s face was stone. “I need to hear what they’re saying.”

“You can’t just—“

But he was already pulling her, not toward the alcove but around it, through a service door marked STAFF ONLY that he slipped open with practiced ease. “I had a tour of this place during the charity dinner last year. There’s a corridor behind the ballroom. It runs alongside the alcove.”

They emerged into a narrow whitewashed passage smelling of bleach and old champagne. Jack moved with confidence, his polished shoes silent on the floor, and Elena followed close enough to feel the warmth of his body heat. The corridor turned; ahead, through a thin panel of frosted glass, she could make out the silhouettes of two figures.

“—should have told me about the recording.” Ray’s voice, muffled but unmistakable. “Do you have any idea how this looks?”

“I have every idea.” Charlotte’s voice was cool, expensive, utterly controlled. “That’s why I gave the tape to the journalist.”

Elena’s breath caught. The tape. The recording of Jack threatening to quit. Her editor had received it from an anonymous source, but nothing about the leak had ever suggested Charlotte was the one who fed it to the press.

Jack’s whole body went rigid beside her.

“Why would you do that?” Ray demanded. “You’ve just handed his biggest rival the ammunition they need to paint him as disloyal.”

“I handed them the truth.” Charlotte’s voice was ice. “If Jack won’t force a transfer himself, I will do it for him. Manchester City is offering sixty million pounds, Ray. Sixty. He should be thanking me.”

Silence. Elena could feel Jack vibrating with fury next to her, his hands clenched at his sides, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.

“He won’t thank you,” Ray said quietly. There was something almost like regret in it. “He’ll hate you.”

“He’s too young to know what’s good for him.” Charlotte’s heels clicked on the floor as she shifted. “And now, thanks to that little journalist,” the word dripped contempt, “he’s gallivanting off to Cornwall with a woman who’s going to destroy his career. Better I get him out now, while I still can.”

Elena felt the accusation like a slap. Beside her, Jack’s hand shot out and slammed against the frosted glass. The panel clattered.

On the other side, both figures spun toward the sound.

“Jack.” Charlotte’s voice didn’t waver. “I was just talking about you.”

“I heard,” Jack said, his voice raw with betrayal. “And I heard enough.”

He turned, grabbed Elena’s arm, and pulled her back the way they’d come, leaving his mother and his agent frozen in the dim alcove behind them. The night air hit Elena’s face like a shock of cold water as they burst out a fire exit into a service alley, the city roaring around them.

Jack stopped, hands on his knees, breathing hard.

“I’m sorry,” he managed. “I didn’t know—I never thought—“

Elena reached out and took his hand. He gripped it like a lifeline.

“We’re going to Cornwall,” she said. “We’re going to find Sarah. And we’re going to prove that this,” she gestured back toward the gala, toward the glittering room full of people who had betrayed him, “was never about what you said. It was about them.”

Jack looked at her, his eyes wet, and nodded.

But as they stood there in the dark alley, Elena’s phone buzzed in her clutch. She pulled it out. A text from Marcus, timestamped four minutes ago.

*Running the recording at 8 AM. You’re out of time.*