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The door opened without a knock.
That told Luca everything.
Della Valle entered the way men who own things enter rooms — shoulder first, chin up, the unconscious physics of a person who has never been told to wait outside. He was carrying a box. Dark mahogany, brass hinges, the kind of packaging that costs more than the object inside deserves. A bottle of something. Barolo, probably. The man had one move.
"Luca." He spread his arms as if the hospital room were a boardroom and he'd just closed a deal. "My boy."
Your boy. Luca kept his face neutral. He was lying with one pillow behind his back, the thin cotton blanket folded precisely at his waist, the way a person arranges themselves when they know company is coming and want to look deliberate rather than bedridden. His left thigh still pulled when he shifted his weight. Not pain, exactly. More like a reminder. A small, persistent voice from the muscle saying I remember what you did to me.
Della Valle set the box on the bedside table with the reverence of a man placing an offering.
"Barolo," he said. "2007. You probably can't drink it yet, legally, but—" He laughed at his own joke. Nobody else did. "When you're older. To celebrate. Champions League, Luca. Champions League."
He said it the way priests say the name of God.
Luca looked at the box. Then at the President. "Take it back."
Della Valle blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"The wine. Take it back." Luca reached for the notepad on the bedside table — a plain thing, spiral-bound, the kind a student buys for two euros — and pulled it onto his lap. "Sit down, Presidente. We need to talk about the squad."
A beat of silence. Della Valle was sixty-one years old. He had bought and sold businesses, football clubs, politicians. He had fired three managers in four years. He was not, as a rule, told to sit down by teenagers in hospital gowns.
He sat down.
"The squad," he repeated, carefully.
"We qualified for Champions League," Luca said. He wasn't looking at the President. He was uncapping a pen. "Group stage draw is in August. We could get Real Madrid. Bayern. City." He wrote something at the top of the page. "If we play any of those three teams with our current squad, we lose. Not close. Five-nil. Six-nil. We get embarrassed on European television, we lose our best players in January because they don't want to be embarrassed again, and by March we're fighting relegation."
Della Valle opened his mouth.
"I'm not finished." Luca still wasn't looking at him. "The problem isn't effort. Rossi will have them running through walls by August. The problem is geometry. We have gaps. Specific gaps. The press doesn't cover enough ground in the middle third, we have no one who can receive under pressure and immediately switch the angle of play, and our wide options are predictable." He tore the page from the notepad. Folded it once. Set it on the edge of the bed between them. "Three players. That's all I'm asking for."
Della Valle picked up the paper the way a man handles something he suspects might be a trap. He unfolded it.
He read.
He read it again.
"Luca." His voice had shifted. Something careful in it now. "I don't know any of these names."
"No. You don't."
"This first one — Kanté, N'Golo — he's playing in Ligue Deux. For Boulogne." He looked up. "Boulogne. They were just relegated."
"I know."
"He's twenty-one years old and he's playing for a club that no longer exists in the second division of French football." Della Valle set the paper down. "Luca, I have Corvino. I have scouts across—"
"Your scouts watch the wrong games." Flat. Final. "They watch players who are already being watched. They follow the market. I'm telling you where the market is going to be in eighteen months." Luca met his eyes for the first time. "Kanté covers more ground per ninety minutes than any midfielder in Europe right now. Not Serie A. Europe. He doesn't know it yet. Neither does anyone else. He will cost you three million euros today. In two years he will cost you forty."
Della Valle was quiet for a moment. The air conditioning hummed. Somewhere down the corridor, a trolley wheel squeaked against the linoleum.
"And the other two?" the President asked.
"The winger — Cuadrado — is at Udinese. Already in Serie A, so your scouts have no excuse for missing him. He's been misused as a right back. He's not a right back. He's a carrier. Put him in a system that asks him to run at defenders in the final third and he becomes a different animal." Luca tapped the notepad. "The third one is the important one. Verratti. He's at Pescara. Eighteen years old. He's going to PSG in the summer unless we move first."
"Verratti I've heard of—"
"Then why isn't he signed?"
Della Valle straightened in his chair. A flash of something behind the eyes. Pride, maybe. The reflex of a man who doesn't enjoy being questioned. "Because we have Aquilani. Because our midfield—"
"Our midfield is fine for Serie A." Luca let that land. "We are no longer only in Serie A."
The President looked at the list again. He turned it over as if expecting something on the back. There was nothing. Three names, three clubs, three rough figures in the margin that Luca had written from memory — transfer fees, wage estimates, negotiation windows.
"This is — Luca, you understand what you're asking me to do?" Della Valle's voice had found a new register. Not anger. Something more complicated. "You're asking me to override my Director of Football. To spend — what is this, here — twenty-two million euros on players my entire scouting department has not recommended."
"Yes."
"Based on the opinion of a fifteen-year-old boy in a hospital bed."
"Yes."
Silence.
"Luca—"
"My release clause," Luca said, "is fifteen million euros." He said it the way a person states the time. Informational. No drama attached. "It's in the contract your lawyers drew up. Activatable in August, after the season. Any club in Europe can trigger it." He picked up his pen again. "I would prefer not to leave. I like Florence. I like Rossi. I think we can do something real here." He looked up. "But I need the tools to do it."
Della Valle had gone very still.
The mahogany box sat between them on the table, untouched, the Barolo inside it suddenly looking less like a gift and more like evidence of a miscalculation.
"Buy them," Luca said. "Or I'm gone in August."
The President of Fiorentina looked at the list. He looked at the boy. He looked at the list again.
Then, slowly, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out his phone.