Page 35 of Rivals and Liars

"I just want to warn you that whatever's going on between you and Brogan is going to come out at some point," she starts, trying to keep her voice steady.

"W-what?" Leire stammers. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do, and it's okay — I don't need you to confirm anything." She holds Leire's gaze and bites her lip, fighting the urge to reach out as she watches the color drain from the tennis player's face. "There are photos of you and Brogan. They're sharp, Cobos. You can both be clearly identified. I'm not going to publish them, but if they found their way to me, they can find their way to someone else who won't hesitate."

Leire pulls out a chair and sinks into it, shaken. Candela grabs another and sets it beside her.

"What photos? That's impossible — we're careful."

Candela exhales slowly.

"Thinking you're being careful is one thing. Actually not slipping up is another. I've known for two years. I saw you myself at a hotel — I was coming out of a room and Brogan was coming out of yours. I saw you kiss in the hallway."

She opens her phone and pulls up the image in her gallery.

"Look at it yourself. The quality isn't great, but it's clearly you. You can't really make out Brogan, but we both know it's her — and anyone who saw it would've had enough to make something of it, because she's a woman."

The air leaves Leire's lungs as she tries to process what she's being told.

"Is that the photo that's going to come out?"

"No. That's the one I took, and I promise you'll never see it published. I haven't used it in two years and I'm not going to now. The ones I think could actually surface are these."

Candela opens the conversation with the unknown sender and shows her the first image she received — the one from the locker rooms. Leire's throat goes dry and she lets out a sound somewhere between a breath and a sob, pressing her hand over her mouth.

"That one came in a few weeks ago, around the time there was talk of your Costel contract running out."

Leire tries to get her mind working, reaching back for that moment — barely a few lines in the press, never even a headline. By the time it was published, she'd already signed the preliminary agreement with them. But she can't see what one thing has to do with the other.

"And this one came in this morning."

"Oh my God." Leire's eyes go wide. "That's my room in Paris. How the hell—"

Candela just looks at her and presses her lips together in a quiet, sympathetic grimace.

"Who has access to your room, Leire? Because someone had to plant a camera in there before you arrived."

The tennis player's head is spinning. She feels dizzy, like she's trying to wake up from a nightmare. She can't think of anyone. The idea that it could be someone close to her doesn't even cross her mind.

"Maybe hotel staff—"

"I doubt it," Candela cuts her off, firm. "It's a real stretch that whoever photographed you in a locker room in one city would also plant a camera in your hotel room in a completely different country."

Disoriented, Leire takes the phone from her hands to get a closer look at the locker room photo and try to place it — and that's when she understands. It was her father. Not because of the sender's number, which means nothing to her, but because of the tiny dark smudge above Kate's shirt. It's a small dark circle, barely noticeable, but she knows it by heart because it shows up in every single photo her father's phone takes. To make sure she's not imagining things, she pulls out her own phone, opens their conversation, and starts zooming in on match photos he's sent her over the months. The smudge is in all of them, in the exact same spot — because her father dropped his phone a while back and something in the camera lens got damaged, leaving that mark that he never bothered to fix and that has now given him away. She doesn't have the hotel room photo on her phone, but she's already certain that one could only have been taken with a hidden camera — which is why one image has the mark and the other doesn't.

"Do you know who it is?" the journalist asks when she sees her expression of disbelief.

Leire nods, her face so flushed her pulse is visibly beating in her cheeks.

"My father," she says, her voice cold and flat, and Candela decides the player doesn't need to hear that she'd suspected him too. "But I don't understand — why would he do this?" she asks, trying not to think yet about the violation of her privacy, about how many images of them he might have, about what he's seen, about what he's done with it.

"This kind of thing is always about money, Leire. Think about that and you'll figure out the motive," Candela says.

"That doesn't make sense — this will cost me the Costel contract. Not that I care about that, but I still don't—"

Leire can't finish. Her mind is a complete mess, too chaotic to think straight, let alone decide what to do first — kill him or report him to the police.

"Listen," Candela says. "I know this is awful, but you need to focus."