The morning mist hadn't lifted yet.
It sat low over the training pitches, thick and grey, clinging to the grass like it had nowhere better to be. Luca could see his breath. He stood outside Rossi's office door, kit bag hanging off one shoulder, studs clicking against the concrete corridor floor with each small shift of his weight. Through the frosted glass panel, the silhouette of the manager was already visible — seated, elbows on the desk, head down.
Six forty-seven in the morning.
Rossi had texted him at six-thirty. Come to the office before the others arrive. No punctuation. No explanation. The kind of message that didn't need one.
Luca knocked twice.
"Come in."
The office smelled of cold coffee and cigarettes, which meant Rossi had been here since before dawn. The ashtray on the windowsill held three stubs. The fourth was still burning. Rossi didn't smoke during the season. Luca filed that away without comment and dropped his kit bag by the door.
The manager looked up.
He looked terrible. Not sick — just hollowed out, the way men look when they've spent the night arguing with someone who holds all the money and therefore all the cards. His eyes were red at the rims. His collar was open. He hadn't shaved.
"Sit down, Luca."
"I'm fine standing, Mister."
Rossi exhaled through his nose. He picked up the cigarette, took a slow drag, and set it back down. "Della Valle called me at midnight."
Luca said nothing. He already knew where this was going. He'd known since Tuesday, when the contract meeting ended and the President's legal team had started cc'ing the club secretary on emails that had no business involving the club secretary. Paper trails. Bureaucratic pressure. The kind of thing you do when you want a paper record of your dominance.
"The order is—" Rossi stopped. Pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's absolute, he said. His word. Absolute. You are not to train with the first team. You are not to be named in any matchday squad. Not the bench. Not the stands as a guest. Nothing." He looked up. "Not until you sign."
The mist outside pressed against the window.
"He said that," Luca said.
"He said that."
"At midnight."
"At midnight. Yes."
Luca let that sit for a second. A president who calls his manager at midnight to freeze out a fifteen-year-old. That told you everything about the state of the man's ego. Della Valle had built Fiorentina into something respectable again, had spent real money, had cultivated a brand — and a teenager refusing his contract had apparently become the single most urgent problem in his life. That kind of reaction wasn't business. That was personal.
"My hands are tied." Rossi's voice had something in it that wasn't quite shame, but was close enough to be uncomfortable. "If I ignore the order, I'm gone. He made that very clear. You understand what I'm saying to you? I would fight this if I—"
"You don't have to explain yourself, Mister."
"Luca—"
"I mean it." He kept his voice even. No heat in it. "You have a contract. You have a family. I'm not asking you to fall on a sword for me."
Rossi looked at him the way adults sometimes looked at him — searching for the teenager underneath, the one who was supposed to be upset, supposed to be scared, supposed to need reassurance. He didn't find him.
"You're fifteen," Rossi said, almost to himself.
"I know how old I am."
"This is—" The manager gestured vaguely at the air. "This is not how this should work. A boy your age shouldn't have to—"
"Mister." Luca picked up his kit bag. "I understand the situation. I'm not going to make your morning worse than it already is." He slung the strap over his shoulder. "I'll go work with the youth teams. It's fine."
Rossi stood up. "Luca, I'm sorry. I want you to hear that. I am genuinely—"
"I know you are."
He moved toward the door. Hand on the frame. And then he paused — not for effect, not for drama, just because the thought was worth saying out loud.
"Before the session starts," Luca said, turning back, "you should probably tell the captain."
Rossi frowned. "Moretti?"
"He'll want to hear it from you. Not from someone else." A beat. "That's all I'm saying."
He left the door open behind him.
The corridor was empty. His studs clicked. Outside, somewhere across the complex, he could hear the groundskeepers running the mowers on the far pitch, the distant mechanical drone cutting through the mist. The first team wouldn't arrive for another forty minutes. He had time.
The youth academy pitches were on the eastern edge of the facility — older grass, narrower dimensions, goals that were slightly too small because someone had never bothered to replace them after a renovation three years ago. Luca had spent enough time there to know which patch of turf near the left touchline drained badly after rain, and which ball pump in the equipment shed had a slow leak that made the pressure feel wrong after ten minutes.
He knew this place. He'd been exiled to worse.
He pushed through the side gate, let it swing shut behind him, and dropped his bag at the edge of the pitch. The mist was thinner here, broken up by the trees lining the eastern fence. He could see the full length of the pitch clearly. He pulled a ball from the mesh bag clipped to his kit, set it down on the turf, and stood over it for a moment.
Forty minutes until Moretti walked through the main gates.
Luca started to work.