Greatest Of All Legends

403  What If II

"Does no one else know about the matter?" Adele asked Jason, her hands coiling and snaking around in his hair.

"Not that I know of… I don't exactly find it fun to share this information. If anyone else knows about it, then I wasn't the one who told them," Jason replied, enjoying this unexpected head massage.

"I don't think Viera or Pepe would share the information around nonchalantly as it could cause problems in the team and neither of them has a loose mouth, but I think the manager would have to tell the club management as it is a pretty big issue for the team," he explained further as he thought about the situation.

"Then that makes no sense…" Adele muttered in a low voice almost as if she was talking to herself earlier.

"What makes no sense?" Jason asked instantly, recognizing a negative tone in her voice.

"... Ok… I didn't tell you earlier, but I already contacted the club regarding the article, as while it does contain some truth regarding the truth, it also contains a lot of speculation that is damaging to your reputation as a person and as a professional," Adele began explaining.

"I asked if it was possible to have them take down the article and sue for defamation as it contained too many false truths, but the reaction I received was ambiguous and I was told that the reporters usually play around with the truth every now and then, hence it was best to just leave the matter alone and let it blow over,"

"But considering that it was their fault that the matter leaked when such matters were supposed to be kept under wraps, I didn't like that response at all,"

"However my problem is,"

""Why is their response like this in the first place?"" Jason and Adele asked each other at the same time.

"It seems you've started thinking along the same lines I am," Adele nodded thoughtfully.

"I'm not sure where this is going either, but now that you mention it, a lot of things are suspicious about this whole fiasco," Jason said as cogs in his head started turning sharply.

"This may sound like a conspiracy theory, but let me start by saying the article itself is kind of suspicious and it's almost entirely like something made to make you seem like the bad guy when both us and the club management know that is not the case… so why are they not even reacting appropriately to such an article," Adele started speaking again. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"... Continue," Jason muttered, not liking the angle that this seemed to be going towards.

"... To make any further conjunctures, let's put the whole situation on the table," Adele continued.

"You and Mylo have an almost irreconcilable quarrel which the management knows and they also know that this matter getting out is of no benefit to anyone, especially the club itself, and the only way to solve this problem is by getting rid of either one of you… or even both of you, and the earlier the better as your quarrel will mess up the team chemistry which needs to be avoided if the team has any plans of winning any trophies,"

"However, getting rid of both of you right will be an irreconcilable loss, because you both are currently the top performing members of the team… attacking wise,"

"So supposing they have no choice but to get rid of one of you soon, then a profitable choice would be to get rid of the more expensive one and use the money made from the sale to plug the hole you will leave behind, and they might even make a little extra money to bolster other parts of the team,"

"If we suppose that that is the decision made by the club management, then all this would make sense,"

"... I don't quite follow," Jason was a bit stunned.

He was smart and usually very quick on the uptake, but everything Adele had just said was making a mess of his thoughts.

"*sigh*"

"... If they decided to get rid of you, then this article would be a good place to start as it would infuriate you who is already angry even further,"

"This is probably the first step, but I suppose their end game is to get you to decide that you want to leave and make it known,"

"They can then make a show of you being the one that wants to leave and sell you for less than the 100 million Euros that they quoted before,"

"it's basically a completely risk free business as they had paid literally nothing to get you, and you have performed well for them, helping them to win three trophies already,"

"... Of course, this could all be me thinking too much and this could all just be a case of bad coincidences and the club has no hand in it,"

"... But what if?"

"Just what if?"Adele's question was met with no response from Jason who was now deep in thought.

It wasn't that he was shockec by this line of thought or thought it to be completely impossible… in fact, he knew that there was a good chance that that was the case, after all, he had been in the professional sports world for the same number of years that Adele had spent just breathing, and he knew that in the end, the players were just commodities to the club.

Depending on their results, they were either assets or liabilities and in a business, liabilities were usually gotten rid of with the business trying to make as much profit as they could while getting rid of said liabilities.

That was the cold hard truth of the professional sports world and it was a truth that Jason had accepted long ago, so he wasn't shocked by Adele's conspiracy theory idea, but he was considering the plausibility and surprised at how quickly something like this was happening.

If Adele's conspiracy theory turned out to be correct, then it meant that in less than a day since the incident, the club had decided to get rid of him.

Even for him, that was a bit too short an amount of time for the club to decide to throw him away.

"Damn… that's a bit disheartening," he sighed tiredly.