Chapter 5: The Bargain
The quiet of your apartment lasted precisely forty-seven minutes. The buzzing phone finally stopped, then started again with a different, foreign-ring tone. You let it go to voicemail, staring at the crumpled shirt on your kitchen table like it was a discarded snake-skin. You made tea. You didn’t drink it.
Then your intercom buzzed, a harsh, electric sound that jolted through the stillness.
You didn’t move. It buzzed again, longer this time, insistent.
Walking to the panel felt like wading through deep water. You pressed the button. “Sì?”
“Posta,” a man’s voice grunted. “Firmare.”
A delivery. At seven-thirty in the morning. Your heart did a slow, sick roll. You buzzed him in. You waited by your cracked door, listening to the heavy footsteps on the marble stairs. When they reached your landing, you peered out.
It wasn’t a postman. It was Marco, holding a long, white box tied with a silver ribbon. He looked utterly at home in the dim stairwell, like he belonged in any space he entered. He smiled, that easy, public smile. “Special delivery.”
You went to shut the door. His foot, clad in a stupidly pristine white sneaker, shot out and blocked it. “Aw, come on. I’m playing courier. It’s undignified enough.”
“What do you want?”
“To talk. Without you stealing my phone and sending saucy selfies to my best friend. Which, by the way, he loved. Pissed him off, but he loved it. He’s framing it.” He hefted the box. “This is a peace offering. From him. Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Fine.” He leaned against your doorframe, ignoring the pressure you were putting on the door. “He wants the shirt back. Personally. Not through me, not dropped at a concierge. In person.”
“Why?”
“Because you took it. Because he wants to see you again. Because the game’s more fun when both players are on the field.” He shrugged. “Take your pick. He’s at the training facility until noon. Garage C. He said to give you this.” He shoved the box toward you.
You didn’t take it. “I’m not going.”
“He thinks you are.” Marco’s smile faded into something more calculating. “Look, you sent a picture. That was a move. This is the counter-move. You don’t just get to walk off the board. It doesn’t work like that with him.” He set the box down just inside your door, on the floor. “Wear that. Be there by twelve-thirty. Or don’t. But if you don’t, this ends. He’ll write you off as a weird girl who stole a shirt. And you’ll always wonder what the next move was.”
He turned and walked back down the stairs, his footsteps echoing. You stared at the white box on your floor like it might be wired to explode.
You left it there for an hour. You drank the cold tea. You watched the morning sun climb the opposite building.
Finally, you crouched down and pulled the ribbon. The lid came off with a whisper. Nestled in tissue paper was a dress. Not the club-night glitter you’d worn before. This was simple, expensive. A slip of deep emerald silk, cut on the bias. It felt like cool water in your hands. There were no tags. There were also, tucked beside it, a pair of delicate black sandals, your size.
It was an uniform. An invitation. A challenge.
The anger came back, clean and hot. Who did he think he was? Sending his friend to your home, prescribing clothes, summoning you to a garage?
But under the anger was that other thing, the magnet-tug you’d felt in the club, the one you’d run from. The curiosity. What was the next move?
You showered. You let the steam wash away the last of the previous night. You looked at the dress laid on your bed. You put it on. It fit as if he’d been in the room when you bought it.
The training facility was on the city’s outskirts, a sprawling complex of low, modern buildings behind high fences. Garage C was around the back, away from the main gates where fans clustered. You’d taken three separate trams to get here, the silk dress feeling absurdly out of place next to commuters in sensible coats.
The garage entrance was an anonymous rolling door, half-open. Inside, the air was cooler, damp. It hummed with the low, rhythmic pulse of distant traffic and the occasional shout from faraway pitches. The space was vast, cavernous, lit by buzzing fluorescent strips that cast a sickly greenish light on the concrete floor. It smelled of cold cement, of engine oil and exhausted air.
And there, parked in a pool of clearer light, was a sleek black Ferrari. It looked less like a car and more like a predator, resting.
Leaning against the driver’s side door was Matteo.
He was still in his training kit, damp with sweat, grass stains on his knees. He was scrolling through his phone, the glow illuminating the sharp angles of his face. He hadn’t seen you yet.
You stopped just inside the doorway, the heels of the black sandals clicking softly on the concrete. The shirt was in your hand, a soft, wrinkled ball of cotton.
He looked up.
For a long moment, he just looked. His eyes traveled from your face, down the emerald silk, and back up. There was no smile. No greeting. His expression was unreadable, a flat, assessing calm.
“You came,” he said finally. His voice echoed slightly in the empty space.
“You sent a delivery man who’s bad at his job.”
A flicker of something at the corner of his mouth. “Marco has many skills. Subtlety isn’t one of them.” He pushed off the car door and took a step toward you, then stopped. He nodded at your hand. “You brought it.”
“You asked for it in person.”
“I did.” He took another step, closing the distance slowly. “I wanted to see if you’d come. And I wanted to ask you why you left.”
The directness of it threw you. You’d expected games, teasing, more of Marco’s smug propositions. “I woke up. I left. That’s what people do.”
“Not from my bed, they don’t.” He was close enough now that you could smell him—the honest sweat of physical work, the sharp, clean tang of sports wash. It was utterly different from the nightclub scent. More real. “Not without a word.”
You held out the shirt. “Here. All returned. Game over.”
He didn’t take it. He looked at it, then back at your eyes. “Is it?”
From the shadows behind the Ferrari, another figure emerged. Marco. He’d been there the whole time, leaning against a rusted metal pillar, watching. You felt a spike of irritation, and something like betrayal, though you had no right to it.
“See?” Marco said, pushing off the pillar. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting his moving shadow on the slick wall. “Told you she’d come. Even dressed for the occasion.” He walked toward the car, pulling something from his pocket. A key. He tossed it once, caught it with a casual snap of his wrist. The key fob glinted under the lights. “He’ll call off the hounds if you return his shirt in person,” Marco said, his tone mimicking an official decree. He stopped next to Matteo, his eyes on you, sharp and knowing. “But we both know you’re not here for the fabric.”
Your fingers tightened around the cotton. The silence in the garage thickened, broken only by the hum of the lights and the distant, muffled sound of a coach’s whistle.
Matteo’s gaze hadn’t left you. He was waiting.
“Why did you send the dress?” you asked him, ignoring Marco completely.
“Because I wanted to see you in my color,” he said simply. “Green. It’s mine.”
It was such a blatant, arrogant claim that you almost laughed. Almost. The rawness in his voice stopped you.
Marco dangled the key fob between his fingers. “You could just get in the car. See where it goes. He drives scarily fast. It’s a thing.” He threw the key to Matteo, who caught it without looking.
Matteo turned the key over in his palm. “I’m not asking you to get in the car,” he said, his voice lower now, almost lost in the vast space. “I’m asking you to tell me to fuck off. Properly. To my face. So I can stop wondering.”
He took a final step. He was right in front of you now. You could see the individual blades of grass stuck to his shin guards, the pulse at his temple, the gold flecks in his brown eyes. You could feel the heat coming off his body.
You looked from his expectant, tired face to Marco’s cunning, watching one. You looked at the monstrous, beautiful car. You thought of your quiet apartment, the cold tea, the silent phone.
You didn’t tell him to fuck off.
You dropped the shirt. It landed soundlessly on the oil-stained concrete between his feet.
Matteo let out a breath, a short, sharp exhale that wasn’t quite a laugh. He bent, picked up the shirt, and held it for a moment. Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, he brought it to his face and inhaled, his eyes closing briefly. When he opened them, the flatness was gone, replaced by a fierce, blazing focus.
Without a word, he turned, opened the driver’s door of the Ferrari, and slid inside. The engine roared to life, a violent, throaty sound that tore through the garage’s hum and filled the space, vibrating up through the soles of your feet.
Marco grinned. He walked to the passenger side and opened the door. He didn’t get in. He just held it open, the gesture an obvious, waiting question mark in the roaring silence.
The engine rumbled, impatient, alive.
You looked at the open door. You looked at Marco’s smirk. You looked through the windshield at Matteo’s hands on the steering wheel, his profile outlined against the garage’s gray light.
You walked forward. The silk of the dress whispered against your legs. You didn’t look at Marco as you passed him. You gathered the fabric in your hands and slid into the low, leather passenger seat. The door shut behind you with a solid, expensive thud.
The interior smelled of leather, of him, of cold, controlled power.
Matteo didn’t look at you. He was staring straight ahead at the bare concrete wall. “Seatbelt,” he said, his voice barely audible over the engine’s growl.
You pulled the belt across, the click loud and final.
Marco tapped on the roof twice, a sharp rap of his knuckles. Matteo nodded once, a tight, minute dip of his chin.
Then he turned his head, finally looking at you. His eyes were dark, intense. “Last chance,” he said, the words almost lost in the engine’s roar.
You said nothing. You just held his gaze.
A slow smile touched his lips, nothing like his public one. This was private, dangerous, and full of promise.
He faced forward, slammed the car into gear, and hit the gas.
The tires screamed against the concrete, and the black car shot forward, out of the garage and into the blinding white of the afternoon sun.