“I’m just an agent. I’m not the one who makes the final decisions. I can vouch for him, but if they don’t see a change in behavior, or any assurance that, in their eyes, he’ll behave properly, they won’t accept it and drop the sponsorship. The big bosses were already annoyed by his two-year break. I had to convince them that dropping him while he was mourning his father wouldn’t reflect well on TerraVive’s image of supporting their athletes’ mental health.”
“What can he do to turn his reputation around?” Gretchen asked, squeezing a stress ball. On tour, she acted like a second mom to him, and she was the one helping him and Amira with the sponsorships, since he had fired his old agent when he took the two-year break.
“I’m not a monster, you know,” he said quietly.
“You’re not,” Jamie assured. “The fans are mostly on your side. But sponsors? They hate this kind of scandal.”
“That’s why if we lose TerraVive, Ilias is fucked. And it could affect Amira’s reputation, too,” Coach reminded them.
Amira bit down her lower lip, nervously torturing her nails too, a bad habit she had since she was a kid. He knew that she felt guilty, because if she hadn’t told him what Steven had done, Steven’s words wouldn’t have had the same effect. But the last thing he wanted was to hurt his sister with his actions. He needed to make up for it, but he had no idea how to show them that the punch was just an isolated case, that he had changed.
“What’s his image to TerraVive?” Alejandra asked.
Jamie leaned back. “Putting aside the fact that he used to party a lot and occasionally ended up in gossip papers, TerraVive always turned a blind eye because he brought home the medals. They consider him a good guy. Environmentally conscious. Family-oriented,” she pointed to Amira as he sighed slowly.
As much as he loved his mother, recent years had grown them apart. They chatted on the family’s WhatsApp chat, and that seemed to be enough for her to keep up with her kids. Amira kept repeating that she was healing, like he had done in the last two years, and to give her some grace. But the fact that she didn’t call him when she clearly knew he was in a bad state of mind didn’t sit right with him. In his mind, his only family member was his sister. TerraVive’s board assumed his two-year break had more to do with his father’s death than the legacy he’d inherited or the guilt he carried for what Ilias’d said to him before he passed.
Jamie continued, “Talented. Marketable in pop markets. Girls love him, and every campaign he’s modeled for has drawn tons of attention. In Morocco, he was a national hero when he won the Olympic medal and helped the sport gain nationwide recognition. That’s why they stuck with him through his hiatus. The only red flag, if you can even call it that, is that they’ve always hinted they’d like to see him ‘settle down’ and stop partying so much. Not that his relationship status is their business, but plenty of other guys on the circuit in their thirties are already married with kids.”
“I’ve stopped partying and I’ve been sober for two years. What more do they want? I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink, I stopped partying,” he repeated, raking a hand through his hair, slightly desperate.
Jamie’s summary grated on him. He wasn’t some villain in need of rehabilitation. He wasn’t a monster. Even if, in the past,he’d sometimes felt like one, but he had worked on it. And he wasn’t a womanizer, not anymore, not since his father’s death. If anything, he had never felt lonelier than he did now. He just hoped the testimony, the video, whatever they’d submitted, would be enough.
“Okay,” Alejandra said slowly. “So basically: temperamental, single, and dangerously irresistible.”
“Thanks, Ale.” He groaned as Jamie and the others nodded in painful agreement. In other circumstances, his ego would have played along with it, but his and Amira’s career could be jeopardized by a fucking punch that too many people had seen.
“Hothead and womanizer,” Amira added, sarcasm spilling from her words. “What a tagline. You should trademark it.”
Ilias flipped her off as silence fell on the room.
How could he rehabilitate an image? How do you convince the big bosses at TerraVive and other sponsors that he was still a good guy? That the punch had been a terrible mistake? If he could go back and rewind everything, he would. He’d go back to the day before his father died, and undo that too.
“I have an idea,” Alejandra said, startling him as she stood up, a glint of worry in her eyes. “But you have to listen carefully. And understand that the person I’m suggesting has no idea I’m even thinking about this. She’ll probably kill me and feed my corpse to the seagulls if she knew I was suggesting it to you all.”
Ilias, curious despite himself, nodded for her to continue.
“You need something—or someone—that stabilizes your reputation while you serve the suspension and then come back to the World Tour. And I know someone who desperately needs a TerraVive sponsorship. If we present it to the bosses as a rehabilitation stunt, it could work.”
His lips twitched; his attention perked. “You’re talking about Sofia, aren’t you?”
“Doctor Sofia?” Jamie deadpanned.
Not encouraging.
“Yes. Clearly.” Alejandra waved her off. “I just read a romance book where the characters staged a PR stunt to help both their careers. Why can’t you do the same? Fake a relationship with Sofia, and TerraVive gives her a sponsorship for Salacia. She has a spotless public image. She’s smart, talented, compassionate, and passionate about the ocean. She lives for her research.”
“But what would TerraVive gain from it?”
“She’s a huge content creator with an immense social media following—you can check, if you haven’t already—and she can bring even more people to TerraVive. I’ve seen her media kit, as you should have, Jamie, and it’s outstanding. Past campaigns she’s done have helped small businesses reach huge numbers. Imagine what she could do with a bigger sponsor.”
“I saw her media kit; it’s impressive,” Jamie noted, “but Salacia is too new, too small to ensure big business. And she hasn’t published anything under her own name in a year or so.”
Alejandra shot her a withering look. “That’s something you should discuss with her. She studied her ass off in Italy, earned a scholarship to the best marine biology school in the States, and became a highly respected member of Neptune before launching Salacia. While she wrote amazing papers, she became super famous online with her videos and grew her community massively in just a few months. And at Salacia’s clean-up, she’s already sold out all the whale-watching tours, clear proof she can attract clients.”
“Which speaks volumes about her,” Jamie muttered, still half-on-the-fence.
“Exactly. Look at what she built in four months, alone, with tiny sponsors. Imagine what she could do with a proper sponsor behind her.”
