ACE OF DECEPTION

"Your father already agreed to it." Naomi didn't even have her bag off her shoulder. She stopped halfway into the chair across from Julian, the sound of the practice court cameras still ringing faintly in her ears from twenty minutes ago. "Agreed to what?" "Sit down first." "I am sitting." She wasn't, not really. She hovered half an inch above the seat, every nerve in her body telling her this wasn't a schedule meeting. "Julian. What did he agree to?" Julian laced his fingers together on the table, the way he did when he'd rehearsed something and it still wasn't coming out easy. "The board thinks your image is going stale. Ratings on your matches are down eight percent this season. Somebody in that meeting used the word unrelatable. Not me." "Unrelatable." She said it flat, turning it over like she was checking it for the blade she already knew was hiding somewhere inside it. "Because I don't cry for the cameras?" "Because people don't feel like they know you." He didn't blink. "A brand with a backhand. That's an actual sentence someone said out loud in that room, Naomi, and your father sat there and let them say it." Something cold moved through her chest. Her face didn't change. It never did anymore, not in front of anyone who might repeat it later, and lately that felt like everyone. "And he agreed with them," she said. "He called the meeting." For a second neither of them spoke. Somewhere behind her a chair scraped, laughter rose and died at another table, somebody else's ordinary afternoon happening two feet from the wreckage of hers. "So there's a fix," she said finally. "There's always a fix, right before you tell me there's a problem." "Damon Ellery." Naomi let out a laugh with no humor in it at all. "You're joking." "I'm not." "He cost me the Everline deal. Three years ago, in a match that meant nothing, and you want me to what exactly?" "I want you to date him." Julian said it fast, like tearing a bandage off in one motion instead of easing it. "Publicly. For the cameras. His team has the opposite problem, too blunt, can't get through a press conference without losing another sponsor. Put the two of you together and the story writes itself. Rivals become something more. Easiest headline either of your teams gets all year." Naomi stared at him. "That's not a pitch. That's a plan you've already started building." "Because it's already moving." Julian glanced at his phone, then back up at her, and something in his expression shifted from careful to urgent. "He's downstairs." Naomi went very still. "Say that again." "Damon. He's downstairs right now. His team told him to come in and hear it out, same as your father told me to come in and pitch it to you." Julian's jaw tightened, the closest thing to guilt he ever let himself show. "I needed him on board before I brought it to you, or you'd have said no before I finished the sentence." "I'm about to say no anyway." "Are you?" He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Because your dad already told the board it's happening. If you kill it now, it's not you turning down an idea, it's you contradicting him in front of people who already think you're difficult to manage." There it was. The real shape of the trap, laid flat on the table between them. Naomi felt the old familiar tightening behind her ribs, not surprise, never surprise anymore with her father, just the dull exhausted recognition of being handled instead of asked. "He didn't even ask me," she said quietly. "I know." "He agreed to put my name next to a man I can't stand, in front of every camera on this tour, and it didn't occur to either of you that I might want a say in that." Julian's throat worked. "I was trying to make it easier on you." "You made it a done deal before I walked in the door." She stood, and the chair scraped back hard enough that a couple of players at the next table glanced over, then quickly looked away, the way people always did when a Sterling conversation got interesting enough to want and dangerous enough to avoid. "You know what the worst part is? I'm probably going to say yes." Julian blinked, caught off guard by how fast that landed. "You are?" "Not because I like it." She hitched her bag higher on her shoulder, hard enough the strap dug into her collarbone. "If I say no, it's a headline about me being difficult. If I say yes, at least it's a headline I chose to walk into with my eyes open instead of one handed to me." She was three steps toward the door before Julian said her name again, quieter this time, careful in a way that made her stomach drop before she even turned around. "Naomi." "What." "There's one more thing you should know before you go down there." She stopped with her hand already on the door. "What is it." Julian hesitated, and in six years of working together she couldn't remember the last time he'd actually hesitated before telling her something. "Damon didn't just agree to come in and hear the pitch," he said slowly. "He specifically asked to see you before anyone announces anything. Alone. Before your father's even in the building." Naomi turned the rest of the way around. "Why would he ask for that?" "I don't know," Julian said, and for once he sounded like he meant it. "But he was very clear it had to be before Richard got here. Whatever it is, Naomi, I don't think it's about the deal." She stood there a second longer, feeling the particular kind of dread that came from knowing something was waiting on the other side of a door that had nothing to do with the conversation she'd just walked out of. Then she pushed it open, and Damon Ellery was already there, leaning against the far wall of the hallway, arms crossed, watching the door like he'd been standing there long enough to hear every word through it, and like whatever he'd come to say weighed more than any headline either of their teams had ever pitched.