Page 37 of Rivals and Liars

"Just tell me why. What were you trying to get out of this?" she asks, her voice breaking.

"To open your eyes."

The answer — and the cold, matter-of-fact way he says it — throws her so completely that the tears stop for a moment.

"To open my—"

"I just wanted to scare you. I knew sooner or later she'd come to you."

Leire feels like her head is about to split open. A steady ache is building behind both ears.

"I don't understand any of this." She drags a hand through her hair, which is a disaster at this point.

Bruno presses his hands together as if in prayer and holds them close to his mouth, exhaling the long, slow breath of someone summoning patience.

"You're going to wreck whatever's left of your career if you keep up this stupid thing you have with Brogan. It's only a matter of time before someone catches you, and when that happens, Costel won't just cancel your contract — they'll sue you and take you for everything you've got. That relationship clearly isn't going anywhere. I just wanted to scare you into ending it once and for all. You've got a few good years left, sweetheart. Use your head."

For several seconds Leire feels as if her tongue has frozen solid in her mouth. She tries to move it, to form a question, to put into words how betrayed and heartbroken she feels — but she can't make a sound.

"I chose Candela because I knew she wouldn't use the photos. That instead of running them, she'd warn you."

"H-how?" she stammers again, feeling cold despite the sweat on her skin.

"Isaac knows a shareholder at her paper. At a lunch after a golf match where everyone had too much to drink, the guy let it slip that he owed Candela a lot — because she'd had a photo of you and Brogan for years and never used it. Look, I know this wasn't the right way to go about it, but if that woman could see you, anyone could, if you keep this up—"

"I want you out of the tournament," Leire cuts him off. "I want you to pack your bags and go home — your home, not mine, because I don't want to see you again for the rest of my life. If I get back to the hotel tonight and you're still checked in, I will report you. Don't come near me again. Ever." She takes one step closer. "And make sure those photos never see the light of day. Because if they do, I will spend the rest of my life burying you in the darkest hole I can find — one that's exactly what someone as contemptible as you deserves."

Leire walks past him without a glance and steps out of the room feeling like she might die from the anxiety alone.

Chapter 18

Leire has been on autopilot since yesterday, and she doesn't even know how she managed to win her match, because she can't remember playing it. She couldn't focus on anything—voices, people talking to her, and she just nodded and kept moving, no longer sure where she was headed.

Her mind was racing, stuck in a loop with the image of the hotel room, with the way her father—in what he'd defended as an attempt to protect her—hadn't just violated her privacy, he'd violated Kate's too, and handed the material over to a stranger. No matter how many explanations she tries to find, none of them hold up, and now she's slipped into a kind of paranoia where she doesn't trust anyone.

She also has to deal with Isaac, because her agent is close to her father and she's sure the whole thing was his idea—that he's probably seen the photos too—but yesterday she didn't have it in her to get through another conversation like that.

She was wrecked when she got back to the hotel, body and soul. She walked into her room, and suddenly the thought of staying there, in a place she knew her father had been able to access, made her feel suffocated. She grabbed her phone and booked another hotel herself, packed her bag, and went down to the front desk to say she was leaving early.

The girl at the desk stared at her like none of it made sense, but thankfully didn't ask questions.

"Can you get me a cab?" was all Leire could manage before turning toward the sofas.

"We have our own car service," the girl said. "Someone will take you wherever you need to go, right now."

The Spanish woman doesn't remember the ride to the new hotel either; she watched cars blur past the window and they looked like shapeless shadows. The worst part wasn't her father's betrayal—it was his reasons, and the calm with which he'd explained himself, as if it had been her fault that he'd felt forced to do it.

When she walked into her new room and shut the door, relief hit her at once. She took a shower, put her clothes away, and picked up her phone. Isaac had sent two messages—one asking why she'd left the hotel, and a second asking whether she still planned to play the tournament.

She let out a short, humorless laugh, told him she was fine, that she'd keep playing, that she was at a different hotel. She didn't offer anything more, and he didn't push. Then she looked at her missed calls: two from Isaac and two from Kate, who had probably already heard she'd checked out.

She thought about calling her, about explaining what had happened and telling her where she was. Knowing Kate, she knew the redhead would come to her if she asked, that she'd do whatever Leire needed—but she couldn't get any of it out loud. The shock had hit so hard that the only thing she was sure of was that she needed to be alone and try not to think about anything.

She opened her conversation with Kate and spent several minutes staring at the screen, not knowing what to write. She didn't want to be cold, because things between them were at such a delicate point that one wrong step could break everything for good—but if she wasn't brief, Kate would ask if something was wrong, if she was okay, and she felt so shattered right then that the tears started falling while she typed.

I'm at a different hotel. We'll talk tomorrow. I'm sorry.

Nothing else. She hit send and stared at the screen. She thought about calling her friend Marta, but if she couldn't talk to Kate, she couldn't talk to her either, so she turned off her phone and crawled under the covers to keep crying.