The ball left his instep at the exact angle he wanted. Forty-three degrees. Maybe forty-four. It curled left, climbed, and died precisely where the post met the crossbar — that dead zone goalkeepers pray attackers forget exists. It dropped into the net with a sound like a whispered insult.
Luca walked back to the marker. Fourteen paces. Same fourteen paces he'd walked forty times in the last hour.
The youth pitch was a mess. The groundskeeping budget clearly stopped somewhere around the first team's warm-up area, because out here the grass grew in uneven tufts, and the penalty arc was half-mud, half-gravel. The portable goal he'd dragged to the edge of the box listed two degrees to the left — he'd compensated for it by the third kick, adjusted the plant foot, angled the hip slightly more open. You adapt. You always adapt.
He set the ball down.
His left calf was burning. Not the sharp burn of injury, the slow, deep burn of accumulated work. He'd been out here since the meeting ended. Since the locker room had gone quiet and the senior players had filed out past him without a word, their silence carrying more weight than any speech. He hadn't gone back inside. He'd come here instead, found a bag of training balls in the equipment shed, and started working.
The ball hit the top corner again.
He walked back. Fourteen paces.
The plant foot is still landing two centimeters too far from the ball on the tired reps, he thought, watching his own shadow move across the churned-up grass. Hip flexor fatigue. Compensating by opening the shoulder early. Fix the plant foot first — everything downstream corrects itself.
He heard the electric whir before he saw it. A golf cart, the kind the club used to ferry aging directors between the training complex buildings, came around the side of the equipment shed. It moved slowly, as if the driver was hoping the boy on the pitch wouldn't notice.
Luca lined up another free kick.
The cart stopped at the edge of the grass. Andrea Della Valle stepped out.
The suit was charcoal. The kind of charcoal that costs more than a youth academy player's monthly stipend. The loafers were tan leather, the sort of shoes that had never been designed to touch anything wetter than a marble lobby floor. Luca didn't turn around, but he could hear the precise moment the man's foot sank into the soft mud at the pitch's edge — a small, wet sound, like punctuation.
He struck the ball. Top corner. The net exhaled.
"Luca."
Della Valle's voice carried the practiced warmth of a man who had spent thirty years getting people to do things they didn't want to do. Smooth. Unhurried. The voice of someone who believed, at a cellular level, that he was the most important person in any room he entered.
The problem was there was no room. Just a muddy pitch and a teenager who wasn't looking at him.
Luca walked to the ball bag. Pulled out another. Set it down at the marker.
"Luca, I think—" Della Valle stepped onto the grass. Another wet sound. "I think there's been a miscommunication."
"Fourteen paces," Luca said.
"I'm sorry?"
"I'm counting." He took the fourteen paces back to the ball. "You can talk. I'm listening."
A pause. The kind of pause that meant a powerful man was recalibrating. Luca had heard that pause before — from editors, from club directors, from coaches who'd expected a different kind of fifteen-year-old. They all needed a moment when the script stopped working.
Della Valle cleared his throat. "The decision to move you to the youth setup — it was never meant to be permanent. There was confusion at the administrative level. Crossed messages between the coaching staff and—"
"Who crossed them?"
"I'm sorry?"
Luca turned around for the first time. Not to look at the President. To look at the goal, checking the net's position after the last strike. "The messages. Who crossed them. Was it Rossi? Was it someone in your office?" He turned back to the ball. "Because if it was a miscommunication, there's a specific person who miscommunicated. I'd like to know who."
Della Valle's jaw tightened. Just slightly. "It was a collective—"
"Then it wasn't a miscommunication." Luca planted his foot. Struck the ball. Top corner. "That's just a decision you're unhappy with now."
The net was still swaying when Della Valle spoke again, and the warmth in his voice had dropped approximately ten degrees. "I'm offering you your place back. First team. Immediate reinstatement. I'd have thought that was something a young man in your position would—"
"I don't play for miscommunications, President."
Silence.
A pigeon landed on the crossbar of the listing goal, looked at both of them, and left.
Della Valle took another step forward. His left loafer made a sound that would haunt a cobbler's nightmares. "I beg your pardon?"
Luca finally looked at him. Fully. The way you look at a problem you've already solved and are now simply waiting for the paperwork on. "You demoted me to send a message. The message didn't land the way you wanted. Now you're here." He gestured, briefly, at the pitch around them — the mud, the listing goal, the gravel in the penalty arc. "In that suit. On this pitch. So let's not call it a miscommunication. It wastes both our time."