Page 169 of The Penalty

Unreal.

As much as I wanted to stay in our blissful post-sex bubble, there was still one thing we had to resolve.

“Tori.” I held her tight. “Please tell me what you meant by Jordan is as common as you and me.”

“I meant exactly that.” She traced along my scar. “He’s not noble born or whatever you call it. He has zero ties to the McKennie bloodline.”

Well, this is a proper mind fuck. “What do you mean?”

“The man who raised him, Samuel McKennie, isn’t his biological father. Someone named Daniel Southgate is.”

I stared at her, slack-jawed. “How…how do you know this?”

“I saw his birth certificate.” She leveled a determined stare at me. “The person who has bullied and tortured you since you were teenagers is a nobody. A fraud. Everything about his life is a lie. That’s why he’s trying to blackmail me. He has no claim to the McKennie fortune.”

Victoria

Fifty direct messages in less than five minutes.

None of them were particularly kind.

Neither were the dozens and dozens of comments on any of the photos in my feed.

Maybe I’d been a little too overzealous when I insisted we let Jordan go through with his alleged smear campaign. The first so-called article exploded Friday afternoon, followed by two more on Saturday.

Photos of me and Tre Gideon from about a year ago saturated every gossip site imaginable. Most were harmless, but a few showed us getting more than cozy at a nightclub. One in particular caught us in the middle of a not-so chaste kiss.

That headline was eye roll inducing.

Tongues WAG Over Sultry Moments Between The Keeper’s Girl and Past Lovers

Being called a WAG wasn’t the worst thing I’ve experienced. The tabloids use it to refer to most wives and girlfriends of high-profile footballers. Can’t get any more high-profile than England’s number one.

Additional pictures featured me with other famous American football players. Only a handful of them were genuine. Those, again, were harmless.

Most of the artificially generated pictures were salacious.

The narrative was pretty clear. Some commenters labeled me as a “jersey chaser.” That seemed to catch fire and showed up in multiple headlines.

“Shutting off your notifications will help,” Hannah said, standing next to me on the sideline.

“I did.”

“Then put your phone away. Torturing yourself won’t make it any better.”

Hannah didn’t know what Xavier and I had planned. I had to play along like this was a burden, rather than exactly what I’d expected.

I tucked the phone in my pocket and watched some of the players do their pre-game warm-ups. The Legends were set to take the field for their highly anticipated international game later this afternoon. For his part, Tre remained professional and ignored the noise.

Granted, there wasn’t much noise swirling around him. The British press found me much more interesting. Xavier morphed into protector mode the second the stories broke. He’d been traveling for his away game in Bournemouth but managed to text and call as much as he could.

He’ll arrive here shortly, and then phase one of the plan will be set in motion.

When warm-ups finished, I escorted Noah, Jax, and Dante to the gaggle of reporters waiting in the end zone. Most of the questions for the guys were generic and simple. They could rattle off the answers in their sleep.

This was only a brief interview session, lasting about ten minutes.

Polite as always, the guys thanked the reporters and left. I hung back to finalize the post-game arrangements for locker room access.

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