Page 43 of Going for Gold (Sweet Cravings 3)

I pulled the phone out that Rodrigo had given me. There weren't any new messages in the drafts folder. Maybe he'd never send anything. Was it possible he had more operatives? I couldn't be the only one. How was I supposed to get any results by myself? And if I got caught sabotaging the games, I'd end up in some Brazilian prison. I wasn't Tim. I wouldn't do well in prison.

What the fuck was I going to do?

Chapter 18

Tuesday

Bryce

My morning walk over to the practice arena had quickly become one of my favorite parts of my daily routine at the ITAs. I would always leave a few minutes before Tim and Alex and grab a breakfast bar at my favorite food stand and then take the long way to the practice arena. They were both awesome, but living with them was a little much. These few minutes every morning were exactly what I needed to stay sane.

But today, my walk served another purpose. It was the first time I could look at Rodrigo's phone since last night without Tim and Alex looking over my shoulder.

I took a deep breath and pulled the phone out of my backpack. Maybe there won't be any messages. Maybe Rodrigo will have forgotten about me. I clicked on the email folder and smiled when it came up empty. Then I remembered that he said we'd be communicating through drafts to leave less of a trail. Damn.

I opened up the drafts folder and clicked on the message:

Your expertise is required for two events taking place tomorrow. Win your race, and make sure that Marco Kramer loses in the Table Tennis finals. I don't think I need to remind you what's at stake here.

I already intended to win my race, but knowing that Em's life depended on it did make me slightly more nervous. Sabotaging the competition crossed my mind for a split second

, but I quickly buried the thought. I had worked my whole life for this race. I could do this.

Marco Kramer was a whole different matter though. A quick Google search told me that he was heavily favored to win gold. How was I going to sabotage him with only one day of planning? For Yao Kai, we had done a week of surveillance and learned his every move before breaking into his room. Not to mention that I had the help of my friends. I was going to have to go solo on this one since it was going to effect an actual event.

Shit, shit, shit. How am I supposed to do this alone? And how will I live with myself knowing that I robbed a man of his dream just so fucking Rodrigo can make a few bucks?

The morning air suddenly felt stifling. I sat down on a bench and tried to regain my composure. There had to be a solution to this. I just had to think.

I sat there for a good five minutes thinking through every possibility, but nothing was coming to me. It was all too risky or too awful or both. Sometimes I found that I thought best when I wasn't actively trying to think about something, so I pulled out my other phone and started scanning the news. The top story was about Liam being missing, and the second story was something about the ITA Committee announcing that Germany, China, Russia, Brazil, and the USA will take part in a tiebreaker event if necessary at the end of the games. I clicked on the article and read it on my way to the practice arena. There was a list of events that experts were hypothesizing Brazil might choose to be the tiebreaker. Since they were the host nation, they got to choose. The most popular theory was that they would choose footvolley, which as the name would imply is volleyball played only with feet.

The end of the article mentioned that the odds of the tiebreaker actually happening were extremely small, which made me think that maybe the tiebreaker was Rodrigo's ultimate goal. After all, if he wanted to make money fixing the ITAs, the best way to maximize his investment would be to bet on the outcome least likely to happen.

I got up and started walking toward the practice arena. Luckily there was something else that helped distract me from Rodrigo. Or someone else, rather. Alina. I knew that she needed time to get over her ex. It was good that I hadn't gotten to say goodbye to her last night, because I would have ended up kissing her goodnight. And if I gave into kissing her, I knew it would lead to more. I wouldn't be able to stop myself. It wasn't the sex ban that was getting to me, though. It was more so the fact that I hadn't had sex since I broke up with my last girlfriend six months ago. I guess it was a self inflicted sex ban.

It wasn't just a lack of sex that I wanted Alina, though. I had never been so attracted so instantaneously to anyone. And it wasn't just physical. She was easy to talk to and funny. I'm sure we didn't have similar childhoods. I wouldn't have wished my childhood on anyone. But she seemed to understand me. Maybe it was because of what happened between her and that bully at NYCU. Or maybe it was something else. But I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to take the time to get to know those things.

Certain parts of my anatomy disagreed with me. And I could tell that the same thing was on Alina's mind. The way she pressed her thighs together when Tim was talking about devil's threesomes. The way she reacted to my hands on her hips. The way she looked at me when she bumped into me in the locker room. The way she looked at me even when I was fully clothed. I knew because I was looking at her the same way. Like I wanted to rip all her clothes off and fuck her wherever the first place we could find to be alone. And now I was starting to get hard. Shit. I shifted my athletic shorts. They were horrible at hiding boners.

I opened my locker and saw a flyer for a prostitute laying on top of my stuff. There was a message written on top of it: "Dude, I think I found the one!"

It took me a second to realize that Alex had put this here. Why didn't Rodrigo kidnap him instead? I was sure he would have loved to help Rodrigo in exchange for some quality time with Rodrigo's girls. It was a match made in heaven.

Wait a second! That's it! All of a sudden, a plot started for form in my head. I knew what I had to do. And it was absolutely perfect.

I pulled out my burner phone and created a new draft:

Consider it done. I need your help though. Send Isadora to the north village exit tonight at 8. Have her bring her favorite sex toys.

The sound of wet feet slapping against the tile floor made me hit save and throw the phone in my locker. I looked up just in time to see Tim skid to a stop at the end of the hallway. He put one hand on the wall to stop his slide and grabbed the top of his towel with his other hand, just barely saving me from getting an eyeful of his junk.

"Dude, you've got to come see this!" he yelled.

"What is it? A naked girl?" I hoped the answer was yes, because that was the only acceptable reason for a man to be so worked up after coming from the showers in the men's locker room.

"No time to explain. Just come look."

"Oh God, did you find Liam? Please tell me he's alive."

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