Chapter Text
My eyes snapped open to the sharp, annoying beep of my old phone alarm. The sound always felt too loud for the tiny room. The thin, lumpy mattress made my back ache even as I lay on it for a long moment, staring up at the ugly, yellowish water stain on the ceiling. It had been spreading for months now, looking more like a hand reaching down every time I woke up. I worried it would turn to mould soon—another drag on my failing health.
The air in the room was thick with the cold, grey smell of damp concrete and the sour tang of forty-eight-hour-old black beans. Through the plasterboard wall, the neighbours were right on schedule, their voices rising and falling in the same bitter, circular argument they’d been having since winter. Same script. Different sunrise.
Eventually, the squalor stops screaming at you. It becomes a low hum. You develop a twisted kind of affection for the lumpy mattress, the perpetual throb in your joints, the predictable geometry of your own failure. There’s a sick luxury in a life that has completely bottomed out: it loses its ability to surprise you. The misery is a reliable clock. It’s always the same temperature, always the same weight.
So you stop moving. If you stay perfectly still in the dirt, you can’t fall any lower. You tell yourself you were simply miscast for glory anyway, and you let the rot take over. I had gone entirely numb. If you’d asked me just twenty-four months ago, I would have sworn on my mother’s life that the universe was finally tilting in my favour. Things were aligning. The momentum was real. But a life built on a fraction of a second only takes one bad pivot to collapse, and when the dust settled, I didn’t just land back at zero—I buried myself beneath it.
I finally sat up, wincing as my right knee immediately protested with that deep, familiar grind. Seventeen years old. That’s how old I was when everything ended. For years, I'd felt like a shell of myself. A ghost haunting my own life.
And then, at twenty-four, I’d gathered up the courage to reach for the light again. I’d actually succeeded, too. For a brief, intoxicating second, I thought I’d found a backdoor back into the world of noise and crowded rooms. I’d told myself I was finally going to make it—and then the sky fell a second time. Things folded, people deserted, and I was left entirely alone in the wreckage to pick up the pieces. I’d wallowed for two years after that, paralysed by the realisation that lightning could strike the exact same spot twice.
But the delusion of a former prodigy is a hard thing to kill. At twenty-eight, I dragged myself out of the dirt for one final, desperate play. I changed my tactics. I hid my face, stopped asking for credit, and just chased the momentum.
And this time, the success had actually stuck. I’d ridden that silent, lucrative wave right up until two years ago, and God, it had been glorious. I’d genuinely believed that obscurity was a shield, that if the world couldn't see my face, it couldn't hurt me. I hadn't even realised the tide had turned, hadn't even felt myself crashing to the ocean floor, until the floor was already rushing up to meet my face. One night you’re celebrating a victory you can't even talk about, and the next, the money has vanished like smoke, leaving you with nothing but a bitter taste in your mouth and a landlord screaming through the drywall.
The transition from the top of the world to the bottom of the food chain happens fast enough to give you vertigo.
I swung my legs out of bed, my feet hitting the freezing floorboards. The first thing I saw was a folded piece of paper on the dirty tile floor right by the door. Another eviction notice. This one looked more serious than the last few. I already knew what it would say before I even picked it up.
“Neymar da Silva Santos, this is your final warning. You owe €1,780 in back rent. You have until Friday, 5 p.m., or I will change the locks and dispose of your belongings. I am not a charity. Pay or leave. — Sr. Morales”
I read it twice, then let it fall onto my lap. My hands were shaking slightly as I opened the banking app on my cracked screen. €640.23. That was literally everything I had in the world after a full week of work.
I let out a short, bitter laugh that echoed pathetically in the small studio. Then I buried my face in my hands, elbows resting on my knees.
Seventeen.
That number still haunted me like a ghost that refused to leave.
2009. My debut season with Santos. I was just a skinny, flashy seventeen-year-old kid with a buzzcut and ridiculous confidence. I came off the bench in my first match and never looked back. Fourteen goals and nine assists in 49 appearances. Best Young Player of the season. The entire country lost its mind over me. “The new face of Joga Bonito,” the newspapers said. Girls screamed my name outside the stadium. Old men cried watching me play. For one beautiful, shining season, I was everything Brazilian football wanted — flashy, creative, arrogant in that charming way.
Europe had been knocking since age 15. Big clubs. Serious money. Contracts that could have changed my entire family’s life. But Santos fought hard to keep me. They'd offered me a deal — big money for a kid in Brazil back then — and I stayed. Loyalty, they called it. Love for the club. I was young and stupid and believed every word. I thought the dream would wait for me if I were patient.
One bad tackle in a youth match right after the season ended destroyed everything. My knee and ankle were both shattered. Two long surgeries. Months of painful rehab. The club eventually let me go quietly. No new contract. No second season. No European fairy tale. Just silence.
One season. That was all I got.
I dragged myself out of bed, limping heavily as I made my way to the tiny bathroom. The mirror above the sink was cracked in the corner from when I punched it six months ago in a drunken rage. I still forced myself to look.
Thirty-three years old.
The face was still decent. Sharp jawline, full lips, those big expressive eyes that once made stadiums chant my name. But there were tired lines now. The sparkle was fading. I shaved slowly and carefully, taking my time like it was some kind of ritual. Every stroke of the razor felt like I was trying to carve the old Neymar back into existence.
After my shower, I stood in front of my small wardrobe and picked out my best remaining clothes. The black Balmain shirt from 2019 — the fabric was starting to fray at the collar, but still looked expensive if the lighting was forgiving. A pair of worn Amiri jeans that I’d had for years. They were baggy enough that the current fashion trend actually made them look intentional again. I turned sideways in the mirror, sucking in my stomach even though I was still relatively lean.
“You still look good, Ney,” I whispered to my reflection, forcing a smile. “You still clean up nice. You’re still that Neymar. The one they used to scream for.”
I didn’t believe it. Not really. But saying it every morning was the only way I could walk out the door without wanting to disappear.
I grabbed my keys, stuffed the eviction notice deep into my pocket like it was something shameful, and stepped out into the sticky Madrid morning.
Another long, soul-crushing day of work waited for me.
But tonight I was still going to the club.
Because if I stopped going… then it would really be over.
The morning commute on the metro was its usual nightmare. I stood the entire way, gripping the overhead rail as the train jerked through Madrid, my bad knee screaming with every sudden stop. By the time I reached Chamberí, it was already throbbing like a heartbeat.
I had a split shift today—typical Spanish restaurant schedule. Lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., then a three-hour break I couldn’t afford to go home for, followed by dinner service until midnight. Going back to my apartment between shifts made no sense. The metro ride was too long, and I’d just have to come right back. So I usually killed the break in the tiny staff room or wandered around the neighbourhood like a ghost.
The restaurant smelled of grilled meat, garlic, and bleach when I walked in. I tied on my black apron and tried to put on the polite mask I wore six days a week.
Lunch service was hell from the first table.
A group of six Germans sat down at 12:15 and immediately began dissecting the menu like scientists. The woman with the sharp bob complained loudly that the feijoada wasn’t “authentic enough,” even though she’d never been to Brazil. When I tried to explain the recipe, she waved me off like I was stupid. They sent back two plates. Left a €2 tip for six people.
I smiled the whole time.
By 2 p.m., my knee was already burning. Standing for hours on the hard tile floor always made it worse. I tried to shift my weight, but there was nowhere to hide the limp when I walked back to the kitchen.
Then came the Spanish influencers.
Two girls and one guy, all in their mid-twenties, cameras out, filming everything. They ordered the most photogenic dishes and spent twenty minutes arranging the plates before taking videos. When I brought their caipirinhas, the guy looked me up and down and said, “Can you smile bigger? We’re filming.”
I smiled bigger.
They tipped nothing.
The real gut punch came at 3:15 p.m.
A table of five — four Spanish guys and one very excited Brazilian man in his late forties wearing an old Santos jersey under his button-up shirt. The Brazilian was clearly on vacation, loud and happy, talking about how this was his first time in Europe.
He froze when I approached to take their order.
“Espera aí…” he said, eyes widening. “Você é o Neymar? Da base do Santos? 2009?”
I felt my stomach drop.
“Yeah,” I said quietly, forcing a smile. “That was me.”
The man’s face lit up like he’d seen a ghost. He immediately started talking rapidly in Portuguese, telling his Spanish friends how he used to watch every Santos game in 2009, how I was “the brightest talent in Brazil” that year, how everyone thought I was going to be bigger than Ronaldinho.
“Caralho, you had fourteen goals as a kid! What happened, brother? Injuries?”
His Spanish friends looked confused at first, then amused when he explained who I was. One of them laughed and said, “So you went from future superstar to… this?”
The Santos superfan tried to be nice, asking for a selfie and telling me he still had my rookie poster at home. But the pity in his voice was worse than mockery. He tipped €8—the biggest tip I’d gotten in weeks — and kept glancing back at me for the rest of their meal like I was some tragic museum piece.
I smiled through all of it.
By the time lunch service ended, I had made €13 in tips total. Thirteen euros for five hours of standing, smiling, and being reminded of the life I lost at seventeen.
During the break, I sat in the hot, windowless staff room eating leftover rice and beans. My knee was swollen. I pressed my thumbs into the muscle, trying to ease the pain that never fully went away. I put in my earphones and played one of my old tracks—the anonymous funk song I made years ago under a fake name. It had over two million streams. No one knew it was me.
I heard it faintly playing from the kitchen speakers a few minutes later. One of the cooks must have put on a Brazilian playlist. For thirty seconds, I felt something close to pride. A small, secret victory. That song was mine. Even if no one in this restaurant would ever know the broke waiter who made it used to be somebody.
The feeling didn’t last long.
Dinner service was even worse.
A rich couple in their fifties spent the entire meal treating me like furniture. The woman snapped her fingers every time she wanted something. The husband complained that the picanha was “too salty” and made me take it back twice. They left no tip.
Near the end of the night, another group of young footballers came in—mid-tier players from a lower division team. They were loud and cocky, throwing money around. I served them with the same smile I always wore, but every time one of them bragged about his new car or the girl he was fucking, I felt the old wound rip open again.
This could have been me.
Not at Mbappé’s level, maybe. But somewhere. I could have been the one sitting at the table instead of standing beside it.
My body felt like it had been dragged behind a bus. My lower back was tight, my feet were swollen, and my right knee was pulsing with that deep, angry heat it always got after long shifts. I smelled like grilled meat, sweat, and the faint sweetness of caipirinha mix that had spilt on my sleeve.
I slipped into the tiny staff bathroom, locked the door, and changed out of my work uniform. The black Balmain shirt went back on. I splashed water on my face, ran wet fingers through my hair, and tried to make myself look like someone who belonged in a club instead of someone who had just spent thirteen hours serving it.
I stared at my reflection.
Go home, Ney.
The voice in my head was tired. Logical. I had €19 in tips. Rent was due in four days. I should take the metro straight home, eat whatever was left in the fridge, and try to sleep so I could survive tomorrow’s lunch shift.
But the eviction notice stayed on the table, a white rectangle glowing in the dark like a blade. If I went home, the silence would swallow me whole. I’d just sit there under that yellow hand on the ceiling, replaying the Santos fan’s face—the heavy, suffocating weight of his pity. His friends’ laughter would echo in the corners until the walls moldered.
I couldn’t do it. Not tonight.
I needed the noise. I needed the violent, flashing distortion of a bassline to drown out the sound of my own breath. I needed to see people who didn’t look at me like a corpse.
My fingers dragged across the cracked screen, pulling up a ghost from a decade ago. Hey man, any chance of a guest list spot for Opium tonight?
Ten minutes later, the screen lit up. For you? Always. Come through.
It was a pity invite, wrapped in a polite memory, but I swallowed my pride because pride doesn’t buy a ticket out of a hellhole.
The metro ride to Chamberí was a blur of fluorescent lights and the greasy smell of the underground. My knee didn’t just protest; it ground like broken glass with every step down the concrete stairs. I stood near the doors, gripping the cold steel rail, watching my reflection warp against the pitch-black tunnel outside.
Tonight might be different. It was a pathetic, rhythmic mantra. Tonight, someone looks at you. Tonight, you aren't invisible. Thirty-three, washed, a broken-down waiter clinging to fourteen goals from a lifetime ago. It was pure delusion. But delusion was the only thing keeping me from stepping off the platform.
When I hit the pavement outside Opium, the bass vibrated right through the soles of my worn-out Nikes. The line snaked down the block—hundreds of beautiful, disposable kids begging to get in. I forced my shoulders back, locked my jaw, and put on the old armour. The Balmain shirt was fraying at the collar, but in the dim streetlights, it still looked like money.
The bouncer unclipped the rope with a curt nod. "Rico's list. Go ahead."
Inside, the heat hit me first. A wall of perfume, expensive sweat, and vaporised alcohol. For a split second, the eviction notice vanished. I bought a single gin and tonic with my last ten-euro note, holding the glass tight just to give my shaking hands something to do.
I found a spot near the bottom of the VIP stairs. Twenty minutes passed. The ice melted, turning the gin watery and warm.
My heart hammered against my ribs. It was a suicide mission. A broke waiter approaching Kylian Mbappé? But then I saw the €19 in tips sitting in my pocket. I saw Sr. Morales changing the locks on Friday.
Fuck it.
I dropped the empty glass on a ledge and took the stairs before my blood could run cold.
The upper deck was a different country. The air was cooler, smelled of premium wood and five-hundred-euro champagne. Mbappé sat in the corner booth, a dark hoodie pulled low, but he practically radiated gravity. The people around him were just background noise; he was the sun they orbited.
I walked straight up to the leather booth. His eyes snapped up. Sharp. Assessing. He looked at me the way a scout looks at tape—measuring the frame, reading the posture.
"Hey," I said, letting the Portuguese warmth soften my Spanish. "I'm Neymar. Saw you from downstairs. Looked like you could use better company than these serious faces."
A beat of tense silence. Then, a slow, predatory smirk spread across his face.
"Neymar," he said, the name sounding heavy in his mouth. "Sit down, man."
The shift from the booth to the floor was a haze. The conversation didn’t just flow; it felt like being pulled into a current. He was hyper-attentive, his eyes tracking the movement of my lips, the way my hands moved when I spoke about Brazil. When the reggaeton dropped, he didn’t invite me to dance—he commanded it with a jerk of his chin.
On the floor, he stayed entirely too close. Every turn brought the scent of his cologne—something sharp and metallic. A hand on my shoulder here, a low laugh vibrated against my ear over the music. I told myself it was just the casual, arrogant intimacy of superstar athletes. I knew that world. Or at least, I used to.
"I'm heading out soon," he murmured, his face inches from mine as the strobe lights cut across his cheekbones. "Back to my place for a proper after-party. No bullshit. You should come."
"Yeah," I breathed, the alcohol and the sudden, intoxicating rush of validation making my head spin. "I’m down."
The drive to the outskirts was quiet, the Madrid skyline shrinking in the rearview of a blacked-out Mercedes V-Class. The mansion was a monolith of glass and concrete, buried in the hills. Inside, the trap was already set. Three models, champagne chilling on marble islands, the music low and bass-heavy.
Within an hour, the lines blurred entirely.
It wasn’t just a party; it was an erasure of the last fifteen years. The champagne flowed like ice-cold gold until the persistent, grinding ache in my right knee simply dissolved into the background. Larissa and Sofia pulled me down onto the massive leather sectional, their fingers sliding under the fraying Balmain fabric with an effortless, predatory hunger. Their skin was impossibly hot, smelling of high-end vanilla and expensive sweat. For the first time in a decade, I wasn’t a ghost haunting the corners of a Madrid dining room. I was a man being devoured, and God, I wanted to be consumed.
When the scene shifted upstairs, the room felt less like a bedroom and more like a monolith. It was vast, dominated by a low, dark platform bed that seemed to swallow the dim amber lighting. Clothes hit the polished wood floor in a tangled, laughing heap. I lost myself entirely in the friction of it—the sweet, sticky taste of Larissa’s lip gloss, the sharp, grounding dig of Sofia’s long nails into the meat of my hip. I fucked with a frantic, desperate energy, pouring every ounce of my remaining strength into the mattress, trying to claw my way back into my own youth, back to the version of me that the world actually cared about.
Then, through the heavy haze of the music and the alcohol, the heavy bedroom door clicked.
Mbappé didn't join immediately. He just stood there in the shadow of the doorway, his broad silhouette imposing against the bright hall light. He didn’t strip. He didn't laugh. He just watched, his posture perfectly still, radiating the cold, quiet confidence of an owner inspecting a new piece of property. When he finally stepped onto the platform bed, the playful, lighthearted dynamic of the girls instantly fractured. The temperature in the room seemed to drop and spike all at once.
His touch wasn't like theirs. It wasn't a suggestion; it was an anchor.
While I was buried inside Larissa, my mind floating in a warm, drunken fog, a sudden weight crashed down on me. Mbappé’s hand locked onto my lower back. His grip was immense, his fingers digging in so hard they bruised against my hip bone, pinning me into place with terrifying ease. I froze for a fraction of a second, a sudden jolt of confusion cutting through the champagne. Why is he holding me like that? It wasn’t a casual, party-goer’s caress. It felt heavy. Restrictive.
Before I could process it, he leaned down, pressing his chest flat against my bare back. His breath was hot, a sharp contrast to the cool air of the room, puffing violently against the sensitive skin of my neck. He didn't just touch me; he took up my entire perimeter.
Then his hand moved up, thick fingers wrapping firmly around my jawline, forcing my head around with a casual, unyielding strength that made my breath catch. He pulled my face toward his and pressed his mouth over mine.
The kiss was deep, possessive, and entirely devoid of hesitation. It wasn't the soft, teasing affection I’d been exchanging with the girls; it was dark and deliberate. Sofia was beneath me, Larissa’s hands were on my shoulders, but the entire room suddenly felt completely occupied by him. I couldn't move my head. I couldn't turn away. Through the blur of the drugs and the alcohol, a faint, instinctual alarm bell started ringing in the back of my skull. This isn't right. He's not sharing. He's taking.
But the heat of his body was suffocating, a heavy blanket that kept me grounded in the euphoria. I was too drunk, too desperately high on the sudden, intoxicating return of my own godhood to read the signs, to see the walls closing in on me. I wanted so badly to belong here, in this house of gold and glass, that I pushed the confusion down. I took it. I let out a low, breathless laugh into the dark, letting the sweat and the expensive champagne wash away the memory of the restaurant, ignoring the phantom pressure of his fingers still burning into my jaw.
By dawn, the sky through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows was a bruised, heavy purple.
I dragged my clothes back on with unsteady legs, my limbs feeling leaden and shaking violently from sheer exhaustion. Larissa kissed my cheek—a sleepy, sweet gesture that smelled faintly of the night before. Mbappé escorted me down the grand marble staircase himself. He didn't say a word as we walked, but his hand rested firmly on the small of my back, his palm heavy and warm, guiding my pace, steering me toward the exit like a prized horse being led back to its stable.
At the massive, reinforced front door, he stopped me. I turned to look at him, expecting the hazy, exhausted look of someone who had just survived a twelve-hour bender. Instead, his eyes were completely, terrifyingly clear—dark, piercing, and totally devoid of the night’s debauchery. He looked like he hadn't even started his day.
"You’re good company, Neymar," he said, his voice dropping into a low, resonant register that made the hairs on my arms stand up. A strange, sudden stiffness shot straight down my spine, a phantom echo of his fingers gripping my jaw upstairs. "I like your energy. We should do this again soon."
Before I could answer, he pulled out a sleek, unreleased iPhone. He didn't ask for my number; he just held it out, waiting. I took it with hands that were still slightly shaking from the residual high, typing in my digits. A second later, my own cracked screen buzzed in my pocket.
KM: Ney.
Just three letters, but seeing them on my lock screen felt like a physical weight.
I looked up, trying to shake the weird, heavy tension in the air. Surely I was just overthinking it. The suffocating grip, the unyielding kiss, the way he had hovered over the bed like a ghost—it had to be the champagne talking. The drugs playing tricks on a tired, thirty-three-year-old brain. Rich guys in Madrid played hard, that was all. It was just an after-party. He was just being a good host.
"Yeah," I forced a grin, desperate to keep the illusion alive. "Definitely. Let me know when."
Mbappé didn't blink. Instead, his eyes dropped to my wrist, then up to the fraying collar of my Balmain shirt. A subtle, almost imperceptible tilt of his head followed, as if he was calculating my exact net worth in a single glance.
Without a word, he reached down and unclasped the watch from his own left wrist. It was a heavyweight piece of black ceramic and gold—a Hublot Big Bang that probably cost more than my restaurant made in a legal fiscal quarter.
He took my hand, flipped my palm up, and dropped the watch into it. The metal was still hot from his skin.
"For the vibe," Mbappé murmured, his thumb brushing over the inside of my wrist just a half-second too long before he let go. "A reminder."
My throat went entirely dry. "Kylian, I can't—"
"Take it," he commanded, his tone leaving absolutely no room for negotiation. It wasn't a generous offer; it was an executive order. "I have twenty more. See you soon, Neymar."
He gave me a light, casual fist bump, but his eyes never left my face. He stood under the frame of his monolithic house, tracking me with an unblinking, predatory stare all the way down the long, cobblestone driveway to the waiting Uber.
As the car pulled away, the Madrid sun finally broke over the horizon, painting the sharp, cold angles of the glass mansion in a brilliant, blinding gold. I leaned my forehead against the freezing glass of the window, staring down at the fortune resting in my lap. The weight of the watch was staggering.
My mind was a chaotic battlefield. Part of me was screaming that this was wrong, that people didn't just give away thirty-thousand-euro watches to waiters they met in VIP. But then I remembered the eviction notice sitting on my tile floor. I thought of Sr. Morales changing the locks on Friday. I thought of my ruined knee, the smell of grease, and the €13 in tips.
This watch was my salvation. I could take it to a jeweller near Sol, liquidate it, pay off the €1,780 in back rent, and still have enough to live like a king for months.
I clutched the gold-and-ceramic casing tight against my chest, a small, triumphant smile finally breaking across my lips. The paranoia from the bedroom faded into the morning light. What happened upstairs didn't matter. The dark, heavy possessiveness didn't matter. I had been wrong about him. He wasn't a threat; he was a lifeline.
I thought my luck was finally turning.
I had no idea the Beast had just paid the first instalment on my collar.