The post goes up at 9:14 the next morning, Vittoria Milano's official account, a photo of Marco holding up a shirt with no name on it yet, smiling the careful smile of a man who has been told exactly how to hold his face for a camera and is still learning it.
@VittoriaMilano: "Benvenuto, Marco Santos. 🖤🤍"
Lucas likes it within four minutes, then comments underneath it, nothing clever, just three emphatic exclamation points and a Queensgate City badge emoji. Rico likes it and says nothing else, which is its own kind of statement from a man who has never once needed to perform enthusiasm publicly. Emma likes and then reposts it to her own page with a single line.
@EmmaSantos: "So proud of you. Go show them."
Klaus does not like it.
Nobody says anything about this out loud in the family group chat, but Rico notices, and by the second day the silence has become its own small headline in the corners of the internet that track this sort of thing.
@SantosWatch: "Interesting that Klaus hasn't acknowledged Marco's move at all. Lucas, Rico, Emma all showed up. Klaus, radio silence. Draw your own conclusions."
Marco sees the thread. He doesn't reply to it, doesn't screenshot it, doesn't mention it to Rico when Rico calls that evening. He just closes the app and goes back to unpacking a suitcase in a serviced apartment that still smells like paint.
The football coverage, when it comes, is not unkind exactly. It's just uncertain, which in its own way is worse.
GAZZETTA (translated): "A GAMBLE ON THE UNKNOWN — Vittoria Milano bet their season on a defender nobody in Italy has seen play a full ninety minutes since October."
The panel shows run the story for two nights in a row. The framing is always some version of the same question, dressed up differently each time: is this a smart piece of business, or is a club in genuine defensive trouble reaching for a name because they couldn't afford anyone better?
PANELIST 1 (translated): "You're asking someone who was frozen out by his own club to organise a back three in Serie A. If it doesn't work, this is the signing people point to in May."
PANELIST 2 (translated): "And if it does work, it's the signing people point to as the smartest one of the window. That's the whole gamble. There's no middle version of this story."
It's a third voice, a younger reporter who has clearly done more homework than the other two, that ends up quoted everywhere by the end of the week.
REPORTER (translated): "People keep asking if he's ready. I don't think that's the right question. His father survived worse than a difficult transfer window. If Marco Santos is actually a Santos and not just carrying the name he'll survive this too and I don't think he'll just survive it. I think he'll show all of us exactly what he's got, and I think it happens sooner than people expect."
The line gets clipped, translated, subtitled, reposted with his father's Ballon d'Or photo next to it before the day is out.
The shirt number is his to choose. The name on the back is not.
AGENT (Patrick, on the call): "Commercially, it has to say Santos. I know how that sits with you, I know the history, but the club's been clear the marketing around this signing is built entirely on the name, and there's no version of the contract where that's negotiable."
MARCO: "I know. I stopped fighting that part a long time ago. The number's mine, though?"
PATRICK: "The number's yours."
He doesn't take a number that means anything obvious. Not his father's old number, not anything with a story attached that a journalist could turn into a headline. He picks a plain, unremarkable number a squad number, the kind you wear because it was simply available and lets the shirt itself do whatever explaining is going to happen.
@VittoriaMilano: "Numero 14. Santos."
Training tells him within the first week that he is not playing the same sport he left behind.
The ball moves differently here less patience for it sitting on the floor, more appetite for the physical duel that decides who gets to have it in the first place. Strikers here don't drift and wait for a mistake; they arrive early and often, shoulder first, testing him the way a boxer tests a jaw in the opening round. He comes off the training pitch on the third day with a bruise on his hip he can't remember earning.
RICO (on the phone that night): "How's the body?"
MARCO: "Sore in places England never made sore. It's not more skillful, exactly. It's just relentless in a different way. Less elegant. More like a fight some days."
RICO: "Good. Learn the fight. The elegance, you already have it wherever you go. Nobody has to teach you that part again."
The bigger adjustment isn't physical. It's the job itself.
Vittoria Milano play three at the back, and the two men either side of him are still finding their own feet Enzo Rinaldi, twenty-one, quick and raw and still capable of the kind of mistake that comes from thinking one action ahead instead of two, and Daniele Conti, twenty-four, solid but quiet, a defender who does what he's told and has never once been the one doing the telling. Neither of them has organised a back line under pressure before. Neither of them, until now, has had to.
That job belongs to Marco. He is the last man. He sets the line, calls the shifts, reads the striker's run half a second before it happens and tells Rinaldi where to be before Rinaldi has worked it out himself. For the first time in his career, the one other defenders are supposed to trust with the shape of the whole team.
MISTER GRECO (at training, translated): "You've played centre-back all your life. Now you're going to learn the role of a last man. There's a difference, and you're about to find out what it costs."
He trains harder than he has ever trained anywhere, staying late to walk Rinaldi through positioning on a half-empty pitch after the rest of the squad has gone in, watching video with Conti in a small room off the changing area until neither of them can keep their eyes open. Rico calls two, sometimes three times a week now, not to check on his mood the way he used to, but to talk shape, timing, the specific discipline of organising two other men from thirty yards behind the ball.
RICO: "The hardest part isn't reading the game anymore. You've always been able to read the game. The hardest part is trusting your voice enough to say it out loud before you're sure. You'll want to wait until you're certain. Don't wait. Say it early, say it loud, and if you're wrong, say the correction just as loud. A back line that hears silence from its last man panics faster than one that hears a wrong call."
MARCO: "That's the part I'm struggling with. Being loud."
RICO: "You've never had to be loud before. You've always just been good enough that being quiet worked. This is a different job. Learn to be loud. It'll come."
By the time the cup tie arrives, every outlet covering the club has landed on the same framing: this is the first real look at whether the gamble was a good one.
Vittoria Milano are drawn against Adriatica FC in the early rounds of the Coppa Italia, a lower-division side with nothing to lose and no name recognition outside their own region. On paper, it is the easiest possible fixture to hand a debutant a comfortable first ninety minutes without real jeopardy attached to the result.
Nobody frames it as comfortable anyway. Every preview mentions his name before it mentions the scoreline anyone expects.
GAZZETTA (translated): "The result is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether Marco Santos looks like a Serie A defender or a very expensive experiment."
MISTER GRECO (pre-match press conference, translated): "It's too early to draw conclusions from one match, and I won't pretend otherwise. But I've watched him train every day since he arrived. He understands exactly what's being asked of him. I believe in him. Tomorrow, everyone else gets to start finding out why."
He starts. Wears the fourteen, wears SANTOS across his shoulders, walks out from the tunnel in a stadium roughly a third full, mostly for the occasion of him rather than the opponent.
The match itself is exactly as one-sided as the previews promised. Vittoria Milano dominate the ball from the opening whistle, score twice in the first half through a striker who barely needs the service to find room, and add a third midway through the second when Adriatica's resistance finally breaks. 3–0. Comfortable, forgettable, exactly the kind of result nobody will remember by Christmas.
Marco plays the full ninety. He does his job. He organises the line, calls Rinaldi across twice to close a gap before it becomes dangerous, wins two clean headers, makes no mistake that costs anything. Nothing spectacular. Nothing that ends up as a highlight clip. Just competent, first minute to last.
PANELIST 1 (post-match, translated): "Solid. Unspectacular. Exactly what you'd want from a first appearance and exactly what tells you nothing yet. Adriatica aren't a test. We'll know more when someone actually attacks him."
@SantosWatch: "Played the full 90, did the job, no mistakes. Boring in the best possible way for a debut. Now let's see him against someone who can actually hurt them."
A reporter finds him in the mixed zone after, notebook already half-filled with the same question asked six different ways by six different people.
REPORTER: "Do you think you're actually ready for Serie A? Tonight was an easy opponent. People will want to see it against a real test."
MARCO: "I know tonight doesn't answer that question for anyone. I'm not going to pretend it does. But I'll tell you this I grew up watching this league. I grew up wanting this league before I even understood what wanting it meant. This is my home whether people believe that yet or not. So just wait. You'll see."
END OF CHAPTER 35