Chapter 2

The Derby

Karol Kensington POV

Three days before the break-in.

If you want to know what real hatred feels like, stand on the sidelines of the Estadio Atanasio Girardot during a Medellín derby.

The air was thick. It smelled like trampled grass, stale beer, and the sharp hum of the stadium floodlights and was heavy with eighty thousand screaming fans. To my left, our bench was a bundle of nerves. To my right, a wall of rival crimson jerseys filled the stands.

I stood at the edge of the field with my hands shoved deep into my jacket pockets, forcing my back straight. As the chief sports therapist for the Kensington Institute, I wasn't just part of the medical staff. I was a walking, talking billboard for my family's massive sports science empire. I had to look cold, clinical, and entirely untouchable.

I'd spent all twenty-six years of my life perfecting that icy facade. But the second the tunnel gates opened and the opposing team ran out, it all started to crack.

Leading them was Ciro Restrepo.

The crowd erupted into a deafening wall of boos and cheers. Ciro didn't even flinch. At six-foot-four, he walked onto the grass like he owned the entire stadium. Billionaire heir, star striker, and the absolute bane of my family's legacy, he was everything I was raised to hate.

So why did my chest get tight every time he got close?

During the pre-match lineup, he stopped. Ignoring the cameras and the screaming fans, he turned his head. Across fifty yards of turf, his dark, bronze eyes locked right onto mine.

My breath caught. His stare felt like a physical weight; he wiped some sweat off his jaw and gave me that slow, arrogant smirk of his. It wasn't a hello. It was a challenge. A direct hit to my professional armor, basically saying, I know you're watching, Doctor.

I refused to look away. I gripped the inside of my pockets until my knuckles hurt, lifting my chin to give him back a blank stare. A muscle twitched in his jaw, his smirk dropping instantly, replaced by a dark look that sent a totally unwanted jolt of heat straight down my spine. We’d been playing this dangerous, silent game for two years, a slow burn of nasty press conferences and stolen glances that neither of us ever talked about.

The referee blew the whistle, Ciro snapped his focus back to the game, and I finally let out a relieved breath, stepping back into the shade of the medical tent.

The game was a total bloodbath right from kick-off.

Derby matches are always rough, but tonight everyone was playing dirty. Cleats tore up the grass, elbows flew, and yellow cards didn't mean a thing anymore. Through it all, Ciro was unstoppable. He cut through our defense with speed and brutality, outsmarting them. Every time he got the ball, the crowd held its breath. When he took a heavy hit, he just smiled, feeding off the anger of the stadium.

By the seventy-eighth minute, the score was tied, and the stadium was filled with intense tension, suspense, and emotional energy felt by those on the sidelines.

Ciro pulled down a long pass at midfield, dropping it to his feet in one smooth move. Three of our defenders panicked and swarmed him. He spun past the first, cut left to dodge an ankle-breaking slide tackle, and planted his left foot twenty yards from the goal to wind up his right leg.

Then our center-back came flying in from his blind side.

It wasn't an attempt at the ball. It was pure malice. The defender threw his whole weight, cleats up, right into the side of Ciro's planted left knee.

I didn't just see it. I heard it.

Over the roar of the crowd, a loud crack cut through the air, the unmistakable sound of ligaments snapping under massive force.

Ciro didn't even yell. His body just crumpled, twisting in the air before he slammed into the dirt.

The whistle shrieked, and the stadium went dead silent.

Nobody moved; the rival medics were too far away, and my own team looked at me, waiting for instructions. 

We do not fraternize with the enemy, Karol. We do not touch them. We let them break.”

My mother's voice echoed in my head, cold and sharp. If I crossed that line and touched a Restrepo, Esperanza would pull my credentials before the final whistle. I was a Kensington, the face of our family's massive sports science empire.

Ciro was the enemy; standard protocol meant we let his own people handle him. Touching him was a massive liability.

But looking out at the field, seeing him twisting and turning his body with violent, continuous, painful movements in the dirt and clutching his knee, all that didn't matter anymore. His skin had gone completely gray from pain.

My heart raced. Protocol didn't matter. The rivalry didn't matter. All I saw was a guy whose career was ending right there in the mud.

"Karol, wait!" my assistant shouted, grabbing my arm as I picked up my trauma kit. "He's not our player!"

I jerked my arm away. "Grab the board," I snapped, keeping my voice steady even though I was panicking inside. "Now."

I crossed the boundary line and sprinted onto the pitch, ignoring the referee yelling at me to get back. I dropped hard to my knees beside him in the mud.

"Restrepo," I breathed, hovering my hands over his leg. "Don't move. Stay still; I'm right here."

His head snapped toward me, eyes blown wide with pain and shock, sweat pouring down his face as he fought for air.

"My leg," he choked out, his voice raw. "Karol... my leg."

He actually knew my name.

Before I could even process that, his hand shot out, wrapping around my wrist in a crushing grip. He pulled me closer; his breath was hot against my cheek.

"Don't let them touch it," he whispered, his eyes rolling back slightly. "Only you."

"I've got you," I promised, my voice shaking as I reached for his knee.

But when my fingers brushed against the custom strap holding his protective gear in place, I was chilly to my bones.

The thick material hadn't just ripped from the tackle. It is melted. The edges were blistered and coated in a weird, sticky residue that was burning right through the fabric.

I stared at it, an intense wave of anxiety rising in my chest. I knew that smell. I knew that exact chemical.

It was a classified corrosive polymer made exclusively in the private labs of the Kensington Institute.

Someone in my family hadn't just wanted him off the pitch; they had sabotaged his gear so his knee would completely shatter on impact. They had tried to end him for good.

And as Ciro's grip finally went slack and he passed out in the mud, his heavy hand slipping from my wrist, I realized with absolute terror that the second I touched that evidence, my life was over.