Focus.
I don’t think about the airport. I don’t think about the way she looked at me in the glow of campus. I think about the bite point of the clutch and the hundreds of meters of tarmac between me and the first corner.
The lights go out.
The launch is clean—aggressive, bordering on reckless. The G-force slams me back into the molded seat, a familiar, crushing weight that usually settles my mind. I wedge the nose into the first high-speed bend, forcing the red car on my left to lift off the throttle or risk a collision.
For the first several laps, I drive like someone trying to outrun his own shadow. I’m hitting every apex with a violence thatusually wins races, but the feedback through the steering wheel is getting sharper, uglier. The tires are screaming. I can feel the rubber graining through the very soles of my boots, the car starting to slide where it should grip.
I’m winning the battle, but I’m losing the car.
“We’re seeing a spike in surface temps on the rear left,” Landon’s voice crackles in my ear. It’s calm. Too calm. “You’re over-driving the entry. Bring it back half a step. Let the car rotate on its own.”
Usually, this is where I tell him to mind the telemetry and let me mind the road. My thumb hovers over the radio toggle, the plastic edge biting into my glove. I want to tell him that if the car won’t turn, it’s because the setup is stiff, not because my right foot is heavy. I want to cut him off before he can find a rhythm, just to prove I’m the one in control of the air I’m breathing.
For you to start listening to my father. Or at the very least, stop dismissing him before he even finishes a sentence.
Carter’s words suddenly hit me with more force than the G-pull in the hairpins. It wasn't a request; it was the price of her presence.
I look at the steering wheel—the complex array of buttons and dials that represent my entire life. She’s here. She lost the wager, she hated the event, she could have walked away—but she’s wearing the team uniform.
More than that, she’s wearing my name. Every time she turns her back to the track, the word Valerio is stretched across her shoulder blades in bold, white letters. It’s a claim I didn't know I wanted to make until I saw it there, branding her to the paddock, branding her to me.
She kept her end.
I don’t toggle the mic. Instead, I do something I haven't done in years.
I exhale. I lift my foot a fraction of a second earlier into the next complex. I don’t wrestle the wheel; I let it slip through my fingers, allowing the car’s natural weight to carry the turn.
The change is immediate. The vibration in my teeth smooths out. The car stops fighting me and starts... gliding.
“That’s it,” Landon says, and I can hear the suppressed surprise in his tone. “Gap to P1 is closing. Three-tenths a lap. Stay there. Be the hunter, not the hammer.”
I stay there. For multiple laps, I am lost in the blur. I’m not forcing the win; I’m letting the win come to me. It feels foreign. It feels smart. It feels like something a champion would do, rather than a survivor. For a moment, the friction between me and the guy on the other end of the radio disappears, replaced by a terrifyingly efficient synchronicity.
Then, on the main straight, I look.
The pit wall is a blur of sponsors and monitors, but I find her. It’s like a reflex now, one I don’t remember developing. She’s standing near the edge, her eyes fixed on the track. Carter looks... proud. For a heartbeat, I think it’s for me.
But then the camera on the big screen shifts as I roar past. Luka is there, leaning over her shoulder. He’s laughing—that easy, effortless Valerio laugh that I never inherited. He says something in her ear, and her mouth curves. Not the sharp, defensive line she gives me, but something soft. Genuine. She bumps his arm with her shoulder, a casual intimacy that feels like a physical blow to my chest.
The "gliding" stops.
The calm fractures into a thousand uneven pieces. Why does he get the laugh? Why does he get the ease while I’m out here bleeding seconds for someone who doesn't even want to be in the same room as me?
“Stay on the line,” Landon warns. “The blue car behind is closing. Don’t defend yet, just focus on the exit. We have the pace.”
“I’ve got it,” I snap.
I don’t have it. I don’t want the hunter’s patience anymore. I want the hammer. I want to remind everyone—her, Luka, the cameras—why I’m the one in the suit and he’s the one in the button-down. I want to be so fast they can't see me, so fast her eyes can't wander to my brother.
The car behind ducks inside. It’s a move he’s entitled to, a standard challenge, but in my head, it’s an insult.
“Let him have the line,” Landon’s voice is urgent now. “Back off, we’ll get him on the straight. Don’t kill the tires.”
Don't kill the tires.It’s sound advice. It’s the right advice. But all I hear is another man telling me to yield. All I see is the blur of Luka’s smile in my peripheral vision. If I hadn't "glided," if I hadn't listened to Landon’s "half a step" earlier, I would have had enough of a gap that this wouldn't even be a fight.
“Dominic, he’s coming across—yield!”
