The Greener Grass

He crossed a desert and a sea for a field of green grass. The past crossed them too.
At seventeen, Chimwemwe "Zulu" survived the journey out of a red-dirt village in Zambia — across the sand, through the connection houses of Libya, over a black sea with no stars — carried the whole way by a single stolen emerald his uncle tore out of the dark to buy one boy a way out, and stayed behind to pay for it.
Seven years later he is the leading scorer in Italy, the man a whole city sings to, one match from carrying Roma to the summit of Europe. He has a name, a fortune, a woman he loves, and a fat, foul-mouthed Sicilian doctor who once fished him off an island and never let him drown again.
Then, in a stadium of seventy thousand, one man stands perfectly still — and the past, which does not shout, which is patient, which always knows exactly where you are, comes to collect. On his name. On his money. On the life of the uncle who stayed behind.
They want him to lose one match. Just once. Just a little less than himself. He has survived everything by keeping his head down — but now, with everything he loves on the line, he must decide the one thing he will not sell, and what winning will cost him.
"A man can survive almost anything if he has somewhere to go that is not death."