Sure Thing • Gavi

Chapter 123: The Article That Wreaked Havoc

🎶 The Great War — Taylor Swift 🎶

Third Person POV

On Wednesday morning, the city of Barcelona was trembling. As the newsstands were opening for the day and pulling out the papers' advertising stands, people stopped, especially attracted by one headline. And La Vanguardia's sales that day were already going through the roof after just one hour out.

Like every morning, Kike opened up his apartment door at 7.30 to fetch his daily newspaper to read during breakfast before having to head to his dull and boring job. But when he picked up his newspaper and read the headline, especially the name of the author underneath it, he forgot about his coffee inside and knocked on his sister's apartment door. Vicky was standing in her kitchen herself, already on her second coffee, since she hadn't been able to close her eyes all night.

So she went over to her door, and after a quick look through the peephole, to make sure that it wasn't an unwanted visit from Pablo, she opened the door. Kike held up the front page and looked at her with a questioning face.
"The Barca Downfall: An In-Depth Analysis by Victoria Hernandez?" he asked with an amused tone in his voice.
"Have you read it already?" his sister asked as she walked back to her open kitchen and started brewing a coffee for her brother.

"Nope, but I'm about to. Thanks for the coffee" he said and sat down at her table.
"A streak of embarrassing results, a trainer announcing his departure mid-season, a stack of unlucky injuries, teenagers doing adults' work and a wide range of incompetent staff in the background. What has happened to last season's champions?" he started reading and snickered after the first paragraph. "Oh Luis will not be happy about this!" he commented but his sister only rolled her eyes.
"I am just doing my job" she replied sternly.

As her brother continued to read the article in her presence, at the Barca headquarters, the board had assembled for an emergency meeting. Everyone arrived with steaming heads, anger boiling inside of them as they sat down around the conference table.
"What the hell has happened, for her to write such an article?! The whole world is laughing at us! They're hosting a party at the Bernabeu after reading this!" President Laporta shouted at his colleagues and everyone's heads turned only to one person, his nephew. Everyone knew how close he was to the journalist, more than half of them actually believing they were in a relationship.

"Don't look at me, you guys!" he defended himself and raised his arms in surrender.
"Well, since you're spending so much time with her lately, it seems crystal-clear to me that she got most of her informations in this article from YOU!" Juli Guiu, responsible for the marketing area exclaimed.
"I can assure you that I read the article and none of the claims have come from me!" he replied sternly. When Luis had seen the front page of the newspaper, he had gotten half a heart attack himself. How could his best friend betray him this way? But after reading it, he had to admit that she was actually right about everything and he had a whole lot of work to do inside the walls of this club. His best friend had not betrayed him - sure, the article was not nice and the club would face harsh and heavy criticism, but in the end, she was a journalist, and had only done her job. After some digging, he had found out what had happened yesterday when she appeared at the Ciutat Esportiva - and he was furious at how his PR department could be this incompetent.

"Well then, Mr Finance, can you tell me where she got this from, if not from you? 'Players' salaries are an Achilles' heel. Footballers think they are Gods, that they stand above everyone and everything thanks to their mere skill of being able to keep a ball at their feet. And for that, they should be paid millions. Even if they're not even able to do that because of an injury. The finance department had to actually beg one of their players, who had torn his ACL and was out for the rest of the season, on their knees, to reduce his salary by 50%.'?" Deco now asked.
"We all know she's talking about Gavi. Who is her ex-boyfriend. She must have gotten it from him" he shrugged. At least that was his only theory, but when had she had that much contact with him?