Become A Football Legend-Chapter 262: Familia (3)

Quietly. Carefully.

Archived interviews. Old regional articles. A grainy hospital mention from nearly two decades ago. A custody filing reference buried in a local Bremen news snippet.

The deeper he looked, the more the numbers lined up.

It wasn’t one single revelation.

It was accumulation.

The age matched.

The timeline matched.

And once he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it.

He never told Lexi.

He never confronted Jane.

Because by then, he had already decided—years earlier—that reopening that wound would only cause damage. If Jane had chosen to close that Chapter, he would let her.

He told himself it was settled.

That she had moved on.

That he had moved on.

But tonight—watching her turn around in that parking lot, watching her walk back toward the stadium instead of toward their car—

He knew she hadn’t moved on.

She had been holding her breath for sixteen years.

And now the air had run out.

Roger leaned back slowly against the headboard.

He wasn’t angry.

He wasn’t even surprised.

He just knew this wasn’t going away anymore.

The resemblance he’d noticed in Frankfurt had been a quiet suspicion.

Tonight, in Old Trafford, under those lights, with Lukas’ face filling the giant screen and Lexi laughing about how similar they looked—

It had stopped being suspicion.

And Roger understood something with a calm certainty that unsettled him more than anger ever could.

The past was no longer folded away.

It was walking toward them.

* * *

Morning came slowly.

Grey London light filtered through the curtains in thin, reluctant streaks. The room was cool. Too cool for the way Jane’s body was reacting.

Roger woke first.

For a few seconds he simply lay there, staring at the ceiling, letting the weight of the previous night settle back into his chest. The match. The loss. The parking lot. The way she had turned and walked back toward the stadium.

He hadn’t said anything when she finally came home.

He hadn’t asked. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

They had gone to bed with their backs to each other.

And sometime in the dark, he had heard it.

The quiet sobbing.

Not dramatic. Not loud. Just the restrained, shaking kind. The kind you make when you don’t want to be heard.

He had kept his breathing steady.

Pretended to sleep.

He hadn’t known what he would say if she realized he was awake.

Now, in the morning light, something else felt wrong.

There was a faint sound beside him. Not crying this time. Uneven breathing.

He turned.

Jane was curled slightly toward her side of the bed, hair damp and stuck to her temple. The duvet was twisted around her waist. Her skin glistened.

She was sweating.

Not lightly.

Profusely.

Roger frowned.

It wasn’t hot. The heating had shut off hours ago. The room was cool enough that he himself had pulled the covers up during the night.

He leaned closer and placed the back of his hand gently against her forehead.

He froze.

She was burning.

"Jane," he said quietly.

No response.

Her lashes fluttered but didn’t open.

He sat up immediately.

"Lexi!" he called out toward the hallway, his voice sharper now.

There was a thud from down the corridor, then hurried footsteps.

Lexi appeared in the doorway, hair tied messily into a bun, still half asleep. "What? What’s wrong?"

"Your mum’s got a fever."

Lexi’s expression shifted instantly from groggy to alert.

"What?"

"Get a bowl. Warm water. And a towel."

She didn’t question it. She spun and disappeared, the sound of cupboard doors and running water echoing faintly from the kitchen.

Roger turned back to the bed.

Jane stirred slightly, whispering something incoherent under her breath.

He knew.

He didn’t need a thermometer.

He didn’t need a diagnosis.

He knew exactly why she was sick.

Sixteen years of holding something in.

One stadium.

One face on a screen.

One name spoken out loud.

The body can only contain so much before it rebels.

Lexi returned with a bowl balanced carefully in both hands and a folded towel draped over her shoulder.

She placed the bowl on the bedside table and dipped the towel in, wringing it gently before laying it across Jane’s forehead.

Jane winced slightly at the contact.

Lexi wiped carefully along her mother’s temples, down her cheeks.

"Has she been like this long?" Lexi asked quietly.

"Just noticed it now," Roger replied.

But his mind was elsewhere.

He had already emailed his office that he was taking the day off for a family emergency.

He stood there for a long moment, watching Lexi dab her mother’s skin.

He knew what had to be done.

He didn’t want to do it.

But he knew.

He placed a hand on Lexi’s shoulder.

"Stay with her."

Lexi looked up. "Where are you going?"

"I’ll be in the study."

She nodded, trusting him.

Roger stepped out into the hallway and closed the bedroom door softly behind him.

The house felt too quiet.

He walked to his home office at the end of the corridor.

Inside, everything was orderly. Structured. Controlled.

Unlike the rest of his life at the moment.

He shut the door, crossed to his desk, and knelt slightly to unlock the bottom drawer.

The metal clicked open.

Inside was a thin, plain booklet with slightly worn edges.

He took it out and sat down.

For a moment he just stared at the cover.

Then he opened it and began flipping through.

Property records. Old legal correspondences. Copies of agreements he had insisted on reading long ago.

And then—

A page with a single number written neatly in blue ink.

He stared at the number for a full minute.

He wasn’t shaking.

He wasn’t angry.

He was calm.

Calmer than he had expected to be.

He reached for his phone, which lay face down on the desk.

Picked it up.

Unlocked it.

His thumb hovered over the keypad.

Then, slowly, deliberately, he dialled.

He lifted the phone to his ear.

And listened as it began to ring.

* * *

The Lowry Hotel was quiet in that late-morning lull, the kind of quiet that followed a historic night.

Inside one of the rooms on the private floor Frankfurt had booked, father and son sat across from each other in a space that suddenly felt much smaller than it had an hour ago.

Javi was leaning forward in the armchair by the window, elbows on his knees, fingers interlocked. Lukas sat on the edge of the bed, hoodie pulled over his head, forearms resting on his thighs. Between them hung the question neither had fully touched yet.

"So," Javi said carefully, lifting his eyes. "What do you want to do?"

Lukas didn’t answer immediately.

Outside, Manchester moved on. Cars passed. Distant sirens. The world unaware that in this room, a sixteen-year-old boy was being asked whether he wanted to meet the woman who had left him before he could remember her.

Javi exhaled slowly. "If you want to see her, we arrange it. If you don’t, we don’t. There’s no pressure from me. I meant that."

Lukas swallowed, eyes fixed on the carpet. His mind was racing, but his voice hadn’t caught up yet.

Just as he parted his lips to speak—

A vibration cut through the room.