Read Chapter 6: The Boy at Ten

Yannis Benali was late on Wednesday.

Not dramatically late. Eleven minutes. Enough that every other player noticed Marc standing with his watch in his hand.

Yannis jogged from the gate, boots unlaced.

“Bus broke down,” he said.

“You own a phone?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting device. Can send messages now.”

“I said I'm sorry.”

“Good. Ten laps.”

Yannis stared at him. “Ten?”

“Eleven if you want to negotiate.”

The squad enjoyed that.

After training, Yannis stayed, as he always did, and kicked alone. Marc joined him with a bag of balls.

“You're not punishing me twice?”

“No. I'm correcting something worse than lateness.”

“What?”

“Your left-side conversion.”

Yannis rolled his eyes.

Marc placed the ball near the touchline. “Your plant foot opens. You compensate with your hip. Under pressure, you'll drag it.”

“I made three there Sunday.”

“You'll miss one when it matters.”

“Everyone misses.”

“Exactly.”

Yannis looked at him, catching something in the tone.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You keep saying nothing like it's a secret.”

Marc handed him the tee. “Kick.”

Yannis kicked. Wide left.

Marc said nothing.

“Fine,” Yannis muttered. “Again.”

They worked until dusk.

On the way out, Yannis's father waited in the school minibus, still wearing his municipal transport vest. Karim Benali had played scrum-half for Saint-Aurèle in the nineties and possessed the compact, restless build of a man who still mentally chased every loose ball.

“You're making him think,” Karim told Marc.

“Dangerous?”

“For Yannis? Extremely.”

The young man complained from behind them. “I'm standing here.”

Karim lowered his voice anyway. “He wants out.”

“I know.”

“He thinks one season can get him a contract.”

“It might.”

“Then don't let this town teach him the wrong lesson before he goes.”

Marc studied him.

“What lesson?”

Karim's eyes flicked toward the clubhouse.

“That everything has a price.”

Yannis climbed into the bus. Karim followed.

Marc called after him. “Karim.”

The older man paused.

“Did anyone ever ask you to influence a match when you played?”

Karim's face changed.

“Not when I played.”

“When?”

“Marc.”

“When?”

Karim looked at his son through the open door.

“Two years ago, a man offered Yannis five hundred euros to tell him whether Lucas was injured before a derby.”

“What did Yannis do?”

“Showed me the message. I told him to block the number.”

“Who was the man?”

“Didn't know him.”

“Do you have the message?”

“Old phone. Maybe.”

“I need it.”

Karim frowned. “Why?”

Marc told him enough.

Not everything. The betting slip. The messages. Claire's pattern.

Karim listened without interrupting.

When Marc finished, he looked tired.

“Henri used to say this club survived because nobody important wanted it,” Karim said.

“My father said that?”

“Yes. It was a compliment.”

“And now?”

“Now people have discovered there is money in being poor if you control who gets rescued.”

He drove away.

That evening Claire came to Marc's house with a laptop and three paper folders. They spread records across his father's old dining table.

She had tracked companies sponsoring regional clubs, betting intermediaries, and municipal grants. One name appeared repeatedly: Meridian Sports Advisory Ltd., registered in Malta.

“That's the company Vautrin mentioned,” Marc said.

Claire nodded. “Officially it does sports marketing, scouting, sponsorship brokerage.”

“Unofficially?”

“It's connected through directors to an online betting platform licensed in Curaçao. Not illegal by itself. But one former director was questioned in Italy over manipulated lower-league football.”

“Convicted?”

“No.”

“So still nothing.”

“Still smoke.”

Marc showed her the messages on his phone.

Claire read them twice.

“Police?” she asked.

“With what? Somebody being creepy?”

“With a pattern and intimidation.”

“I need to know if a player is involved first.”

“Why?”

“Because if I go to police and this explodes, the season is over.”

Claire stared at him.

“There it is.”

“What?”

“The trap.”

Marc's jaw tightened.

“What trap?”

“You're already asking whether the truth is bad for the team.”

He stood. “I'm asking how to protect twenty-three players who may know nothing.”

“And that's reasonable. Until every next compromise is reasonable too.”

Marc looked toward the dark window.

On the hill above town, the stadium lights had just turned on for youth training.

Claire closed the laptop.

“I'm not telling you to burn the club down,” she said. “I'm telling you to notice when saving it becomes the excuse for everything.”

Marc thought of Vautrin on the balcony.

I bought time.

“Find me Meridian's money,” he said.

Claire gave a thin smile.

“Now you sound like your father.”

Karim found the old phone in a drawer beneath expired insurance papers and three chargers belonging to devices nobody could identify. The message thread was still there.

The number had no saved name.

YOU WANT YOUR BOY NOTICED? SEND TEAM NEWS EARLY. 500 FOR USEFUL INFO.

Karim's reply had been immediate.

GO TO HELL.

The sender answered with a laughing emoji and a photograph of Yannis playing for the Castres academy.

Marc photographed the screen.

“Why didn't you report it?”

Karim looked embarrassed by the question rather than by the message. “Report what? A stranger offering money for gossip? Police would tell me to block it. Club would tell me not to make noise. And I wanted Yannis away from all this.”

“You still want that.”

“Yes.”

“Then why keep him here?”

Karim folded his arms. “Because leaving after injury is not the same as earning another chance. He needed to know whether he loved rugby or loved being told he was talented.”

Marc looked toward the kitchen, where Yannis was pretending not to listen.

“Did he?”

Karim smiled. “Ask him after a bad match.”

Yannis entered. “I can hear you both.”

“Good,” Marc said. “Then hear this. Talent is the least interesting thing about you now.”

Yannis looked offended. “Thank you?”

“Your decision-making will determine whether you leave. Your reliability determines whether anyone wants you after the first month.”

“Still inspiring.”

Karim pointed at Marc. “Listen to him. He made a career out of being too slow for his position.”

“I was a flanker.”

“Exactly.”

Marc laughed for the first time that day.

On his way out, Karim stopped him at the gate.

“There is another thing,” he said.

“What?”

“Two seasons ago, Vautrin asked the school transport department to change Sunday youth routes so buses could be used for senior away matches. Saved the club money.”

“That's illegal?”

“No. Council approved it.”

“Then why tell me?”

“Because that's how people become loyal. Not envelopes. Favors. You remember who arranged your son's apprenticeship, your wife's clinic hours, your club bus. Then one day someone asks for something and calls it gratitude.”

Marc thought of the mayor's map, Maret's calm hands, Jean's exhausted accounts.

The betting network might be criminal.

The town's deeper network was social.

That would be harder to uproot because nobody wanted to live without it.