The Football King’s Secret Heir

Shattered focus

Mateo’s POV

One Month After the Penthouse Incident

The roar of eighty thousand fans inside the stadium is a deafening, vibrating wall of sound, but to my ears, it feels miles away.

I am running on turf, the grass slick beneath my studs, but my legs feel like lead. The ball is zipped toward me from the midfield—a perfect, weighted pass that I should control with a single, effortless touch. Instead, my foot misses the mark. The ball bounces off my shin, rolling straight into the possession of the opposing defender.

“What is Moretti doing?” the commentator’s voice booms over the stadium loudspeakers, dripping with disbelief. "That's three uncharacteristic turnovers in the first twenty minutes. He looks completely detached out there."

I don't look at the sidelines. I don't look at my manager, who is already pacing the edge of the technical area with his hands thrown in the air.

I can’t concentrate. Every time the ball comes near me, my mind slips. Every time I look up at the bright stadium lights, they morph into the dim, golden ambiance of the penthouse suite. I don't see the defenders closing in on me; I see dark, tear-filled eyes staring up at me in terror. I see a trembling shoulder. I see the crumpled envelope of cash I threw at her.

"Mateo! On your left!" a teammate screams.

The warning comes too late. I try to turn my mind half a second behind my body. I don't see the opposing midfielder launching into a desperate, sliding tackle. His boots hit my ankle with a sickening, crunching force.

A white-hot spike of agony shoots straight up my leg. My knee twists awkwardly under my weight, and I hit the turf hard, clutching my joint as a primal scream of pain tears from my throat.

The referee blows his whistle, brings out the red card and shows it straight to the offender. Players crowd around me, calling frantically for the medical staff. Within seconds, the team doctors are on their knees beside me, pressing down on my swelling knee.

"Don't move, Mateo," the doctor says, his hands steady. "It's the ligament. We need to get you off the pitch."

I lie flat on my back, staring up at the grey sky as they lift me onto the stretcher. The crowd is applauding in a somber, worried hush, but I barely feel the throbbing pain in my leg. All I can think is: This is my punishment. This injury is the universe starting to collect the debt I owe for what I did to her.

Two hours later, the private clinic room is dead silent. My leg is heavily wrapped and elevated, the MRI machine still humming in the next room.

Liam, my personal assistant and closest confidant, stands by the window, his arms crossed over his chest. He looks at me with a mixture of pity and deep frustration.

"The doctors say it's a Grade 2 MCL sprain, Teo," Liam says softly. "You're out for at least six to eight weeks. No training. No matches. The press is already demanding a statement. They want to know if this is the beginning of the end for your career."

"Let them write whatever they want," I mutter, my voice raspy. I run a hand over my face, feeling the rough stubble of my jaw. "Liam. I don't care about the knee."

"Then what do you care about, Mateo? Because you haven't been yourself for a month. You're losing sleep. You're missing meetings. And now, you're getting yourself wrecked on the pitch because you can't focus."

I take a deep breath, the guilt inside my chest feeling heavier than any physical injury. I close my eyes, and instantly, I am back in the penthouse the morning after.

I remember waking up with a blinding headache, the alcohol slowly clearing from my system. I had rolled over, expecting to see the girl who had supposedly been paid to slide into my bed—the girl my cynical, paranoid mind assumed was a gold-digging blackmailer. But the bed was empty.

When I pulled back the heavy, silk duvet, my heart had stopped dead.

Right there, in the center of the pristine white sheets, was a dark, unmistakable stain of fresh blood.

The breath had left my lungs in a cold rush. A virgin. She had never done this before. The realization had shattered my arrogant, angry assumptions into a million jagged pieces.

Her quiet weeping, her trembling hands, the way she had shrunk away from me—it wasn't an act. She wasn't a professional. She was completely innocent, and I had treated her like a transaction. I had taken her first time with cold, unyielding anger and left her with a pocketful of dirty money.

"Mateo?" Liam’s voice breaks through my memory.

I open my eyes, looking directly at him. "I need you to find her."

Liam blinks, taken aback. "Who? The girl from the hotel? Teo, we went over this. The agency said her name was Ana. They said she was a high-class escort who—"

"It was a lie," I interrupt, my voice shaking with a rare flash of raw emotion. "The agency lied. The hotel lied. She wasn't an escort, Liam. I... I saw the sheets. She was innocent. And I ruined her."

Liam’s expression shifts from confusion to grave concern. "What are you saying?"

"I need to find her," I repeat, my grip tightening on the bedsheets. "It’s been a month, Liam. Every single day, I wait for the hammer to fall. I wait for a lawsuit. I wait for her to go to the media, to expose me, to ruin my reputation, to take everything I have. But nothing has happened. No lawyers have called. No tabloids have run a story. She just... vanished. She didn't want my money. She didn't want my fame. I need to find her," I whisper.

Liam studies me carefully. "To protect your image?"

I shake my head. "No."

For the first time in my career… I don't care what the headlines say.

I care about the girl who disappeared because of me.

Liam sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. "Mateo... we tried to look into it quietly right after she left. The hotel thought she was up to something because she came out of your room after spending the night there looking terrified. They were about to call the police and have her arrested right there in the lobby."

My stomach drops. "They almost arrested her?"

"Yes," Liam says, nodding. "But my security team stepped in. We told the hotel management to let her go because we didn't want a public scene. But when we went back to trace her... the trail went completely dead. The name 'Ana' was a fake. The agency she allegedly came from was a front."

"There has to be something," I plead, sitting up despite the sharp pain in my knee. "A real name. A phone number. Anything."

I lean back against the pillows, closing my eyes as the silence of the clinic room presses down on me. No name. No address. Just a ghost born out of my own cruelty, drifting somewhere out there in the world while I sit trapped in this bed.