Chapter 118: [118] "Top scorer is not Beaumont"
He stepped into her expansive office, the massive glass windows offering a panoramic view of the training pitches. Valérie walked straight to her desk, and sat at the chair behind it.
"Sit," she commanded.
Luc remained standing, crossing his arms over his chest. "What is it, Valérie? If you’re going to yell at me for forcing Henri into a lie with the 4-4-2, you can save your breath. It won us the game."
"Yell at you?" Valérie laughed, a sharp, genuinely delighted sound. She stood up while giggling, walked over to her personal bar and poured herself a glass of sparkling water. "Beaumont, the look on the faces of the Paris Royal board when you buried that penalty was the single greatest moment of my professional life. I don’t care if you told Henri to play a 1-8-1 formation or whatever. You humiliated Royal. I am not going to yell at you."
She turned around, leaning against the bar mini-table, her dark eyes locking onto his.
"I am here to elevate your spirit. We did good," she said.
She pointed at the glossy folder on the table. "Open it."
Luc walked over, his curiosity piqued. He flipped the folder open. Inside were mock-ups of a magazine cover. It wasn’t a sports magazine. It wasn’t L’Équipe or France Football.
It was the French edition of GQ. The premier, apex publication for men’s fashion, culture, and absolute mainstream dominance.
The mock-up featured a blank silhouette of two people standing back-to-back with each other, beneath bold, aggressive typography that read...
THE NEW KINGS OF PARIS.
"GQ?" Luc asked, looking up. "I thought Fontaine had an exclusive media lock on the mainstream covers."
"He did," Valérie smiled, her teeth flashing white like a shark. "Until last night. Until you and whatever the La Masia kid’s name is, rainbow-flicked their golden boy into the mud. The media narrative shifted at midnight. Fontaine is no longer the untouchable god of French culture. There is a vacuum, Luc. And we are going to shove you right into the center of it."
Luc looked back down at the folder. He tapped the second silhouette on the mock-up cover. "Who will be the other guy?"
"That," Valérie said, her voice dropping into a reverent, deadly serious whisper, "will be Fresko."
Luc’s brow furrowed. "Fresko?" the name hanging in the air of Valérie’s expansive office.
He stared at the cover as he tried to reconcile the image Valérie was pitching with the reality of the league. Stade Phocéen was a direct rival. They were sitting at 2nd, still tied on points with SC Valois, and their star player was the last person Luc expected to share a media campaign with.
Valérie took a slow sip of her sparkling water. She looked at him over the rim of the glass, her dark eyes glittering with ruthless corporate amusement that usually meant someone was about to be deeply humbled.
"You look confused, Captain," Valérie said smoothly.
"I am," Luc admitted, dropping the folder back onto the mahogany desk. "Why would I share a cover with the franchise player of Stade Phocéen? If this is about dethroning Fontaine and Paris Royal, shouldn’t the cover just be me? I’m the one who just put three goals past his goalkeeper."
Valérie let out a sharp laugh. She set her glass down and walked slowly back to her desk, leaning over it so she was eye-to-eye with her twenty-year-old striker.
"You currently have 21 league goals this season, Beaumont," Valérie said, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp cadence. "It is an astonishing, miraculous number for a young player such as yourself. It is the reason we are in a Champions League spot. It is the reason I tolerate your ultimatums from time to time...to time."
She tapped a manicured fingernail against the GQ folder.
"Olivier Fontaine," she continued, "has 20 league goals. You have officially overtaken him. The wager you made in August, remember that? If it was still on, you’d currently be winning. You have shattered his aura, you knocked him out of the Cup, and you are currently outscoring him in the league."
Luc’s jaw tightened. "Then why Fresko?"
"Because," Valérie stated coldly, "you were so obsessed with captain’s responsibility...which is good, that you forgot to look at the rest of the country. Fresko has 23 goals."
Luc stood perfectly still, his mind instantly racing through the league tables and the matchday summaries he had neglected in his war against team cohesion. He had been so focused on the team’s chemistry and then on Paris Royal, that he had fundamentally ignored the other top strikers.
"Fresko is the top scorer in Ligue Alpha," Valérie said, straightening up and folding her arms. "He has twenty-three goals. You have twenty-one. Fontaine has twenty. That is the current reality of the Golden Boot race. You aren’t the top scorer, Luc. You are second."
Luc stared at the desk. The ache in his lower back, a souvenir from his ninety-four-minute war the previous night, suddenly felt a lot more pronounced. TES hadn’t warned him about the danger that was Fresko. The system only cared about the parameters of his team since his wager with Fontaine ended. It didn’t track the entire league.
"Fresko plays in a system built entirely to feed him," Luc muttered, more to himself than to Valérie. "Phocéen plays a high-line possession game. He gets more than five clear chances a match."
"I don’t care if he scores them with his eyes closed while drinking a macchiato," Valérie interrupted sharply. "The history books only record the numbers, not the difficulty of the chances. He is the top scorer. But he also understands business. The GQ cover is a joint PR venture orchestrated by my team and his agency."
She walked around the desk, standing beside Luc.
"Think about the narrative, Beaumont. For years, Olivier Fontaine has been the sole, undisputed face of French football. Every brand, every magazine, every headline. He was the sun, and the rest of the league just orbited him. But last night, you proved the belief in him was misplaced, and currently Fresko leads the ranks for most goals in the league."