I was on my feet before I could think anything else. The alcohol humming under my skin and fresh rage—as all the articles flashed in my mind's eye—made me a slave to my emotions.

He was, thankfully, sitting alone, wiping his mouth with an intricately embroidered napkin.

"Mi scusi, le dispiace?"

He looked up, his eyes flashing in recognition for a second before a leering smile broke on his face. "Ah! Luca Moretti! I did notice you rather—" he glanced behind me to where I had been sitting, "Ahem, busy."

"I'm gonna cut to the chase," I said, taking the seat across from him. "You're a fucking asshole."

He blinked, leaning backward. "Come, scusa?"

"You are an asshole," I repeated. "Calling Hayes a hobbyist? What the fuck do you know about him?"

He pushed his glasses up his oily nose that shone from the ceiling lights. "Enough to know that a player whom a club buys for one hundred and ten million pounds should be performing better. You cannot deny that him dropping out during a charity match of that magnitude—"

I bit my tongue. I wanted to tell him Elliot was overwhelmed, dealing with sensory issues. But I doubted that would help. I could imagine tomorrow's headline being about how he wasn't suited to be a professional football player because of his 'condition'. 

"Maybe," I gritted my teeth, leaning closer to him. "But have you seen him training? Have you seen him drawing up immaculate plans for me—my team—" I corrected quickly. "Have you seen him play on the pitch?"

"I am aware that I do not know Elliot Hayes as—" he smirked, looking behind me again, "intimately...as you seem to. However, as a professional football player, he is under scrutiny as much as you are. This is not high school football, and you do not get to have off days."

"You fucking—" I couldn't speak, my vision white with rage. The absolute audacity of the fucking little rat to sit there and talk about Elliot like he was some stupid child playing street soccer. "You ruin the integrity of this game. You have zero sense of sportsmanship. You were quiet when he pulled the victory for England out of his ass, but the one day he doesn't perform according to what? Your fucking standards? You start leeching on him like an opportunistic weasel?"

"You seem... rather agitated on your teammate's behalf," he continued, the infuriating smirk still plastered on his face. "I must warn you, adding emotions to the mix—"

He was trying to get a rise out of me. I knew that much. So I bit my tongue. And I might have even succeeded if he didn't open his mouth again.

"I understand your... demeanor is rather normalized in America. However, here in Italy, as you shall learn soon—"

"What the fuck do you mean?" I asked, my voice trembling, leaning over till he was covered in my shadow. He was wiry and thin—but seemingly unswayed by my physical intimidation. I could feel my pulse throbbing near my temples as a strong whiff of nicotine assaulted my senses. 

"Your kind—" he tilted his head to the side. "I believe you do know what I am referring to. So...angry and passionate. Perhaps...a little too much so? Maybe—" he leaned back with a shrug and pursed lips, "—trying to...closet a secret too scandalous for Serie A?"

"You think I am afraid of you?" I challenged, even though I was barely holding myself up as the implication of his words landed like icy water. I leaned closer to him, making sure his eyes were on me. "Write more shit about me then. But try writing one more word about a man who's forgotten more about this game than you'll ever learn—" I nodded back at Elliot, who, I now knew, was looking at the unfolding scene."—and see whose name people actually remember in ten years. Yours won't be the one on the shirt."

For a second—just a second—I thought I'd landed it. His jaw tightened. The smirk flickered.

Then it came back, wider, and I understood with a sick lurch that I'd given him something better than an argument.

"You know," he said slowly, setting down his napkin and folding his hands on the white tablecloth like a man settling in, "I have covered this league for nineteen years, Signor Moretti. I have watched a great many young men come through it." He let his eyes drift, lazily, over my shoulder—to the corner booth, to the empty seat where I'd left a half-finished glass of wine and a boy who couldn't hear us from here. "And I have learned that when a player defends a teammate this... passionately, over a single missed exhibition, it is rarely about the football."

My stomach dropped, my knuckles white on the table under my death grip. My ears rang as he continued. 

"I do not know what I saw tonight," he continued mildly, picking his glasses off the table and polishing them on the corner of his napkin. "Two colleagues at dinner. Perfectly ordinary. But you should know, Luca—" and here he finally looked up at me, and there was nothing oily about it anymore, nothing clumsy, just a man who had done this a hundred times and knew exactly what he had— "a journalist notices what a man is willing to lose his temper over. It is, frankly, the most honest thing about him."

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

Because there was nothing to say that wouldn't be worse. If I denied it, I was protesting too much. If I threatened him again, I was proving his point. If I sat back down and finished my wine like a normal person, he'd already seen my hands shake. Every road out of this ended with him holding a little more.

He slid his glasses back on, the ceiling light catching the lenses.

"Enjoy your evening," he said. "Send my regards to Mr. Hayes. Tell him I look forward to watching him prove me wrong."

I stood there a moment longer, my pulse roaring in my ears, my fists useless at my sides. Then I turned and walked back across the restaurant on legs that didn't feel like mine, past the actor and the director and the supermodel, back to the dim corner where Elliot sat waiting, tilting his head up at me with those pale, guileless eyes, entirely unaware that I had just walked over to the most dangerous man in the room and handed him a loaded gun with my name carved into it.

"Is everything all right?" Elliot asked. "Your heart rate appears elevated."

"It's fine," I said, sliding back into the booth beside him, my voice steady even as everything under it came apart. "Just needed to say something to someone."

I picked up my wine. My hand wasn't quite level.

I glanced back across the room, where Riccardo Bellini was already typing something into his phone.

So what do we all think of Riccardo Bellini? Isn't he SOOOOO sweet and cute and fluffy and punchable <3