We sit. Arthur and me on the long couch, the two men on twin chairs. We’re the only people out here besides a couple bored influencers charging their phones and a waiter on their lunch break, lemonade in hand. Arthur’s arm loops around the back of my seat, and his thumb taps above my shoulder to the soft piano music. “Where’s Mum?”
Mr. Bianco’s brow creases. “Back at home. She didn’t share my… concerns.”
And away we go. Holmes lifts two fingers, flagging down a staff member, and asks for a bottle of red wine with an intimidating Italian name. “And I do apologize for calling this last-minute meeting,” he says, glancing at me with his curious, burnt-chocolate eyes. “It’s a busy week—but great to see you back at Monza, Arthur.”
“I’m excited to be here,” he says, a canned interview answer if I ever heard one.
“And you, Lilah. What a nice surprise to have our camera girl here.” I inhale, mustering up a pleasantry that definitely isn’tdon’t call me a camera girl, but Holmes slips right back into the conversation before I can speak. “It seems like you two may have lied to me about this little fling, hmm?”
“Uncle,” Arthur mutters, frowning.
“What? It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Arthur takes a long, silent breath. “So, concerns. What brings you to Monza, Dad?”
“This and that.” Mr. Bianco picks up his damp cocktail napkin and slowly smooths out the wrinkles. “I thought it would be nice to visit. I never see you in person.”
“Sure.” Arthur’s jaw shifts. “The three of us haven’t been in a room together since Holmes retired.”
I squeeze my mouth shut to hide my surprise. Holmes left driving to become a team principal after Arthur’s accident. Which means… “I visited the hospital while you were out, to see my brother, of course, but you were asleep,” Holmes says. “What’s done is done. And family is family, right, little pigeon?”
Pigeon.I rest the side of my ankle against Arthur’s foot. “What does that mean?”
Arthur pulls his foot from mine and flashes me an apologetic look. “Nothing.”
“Aw, humor her.” Holmes’s eyebrows rise. “It’s an old poker term. A ‘pigeon’ is a player with a bad strategy.”
Mr. Bianco laughs. “He did always love those birds.”
Arthur tenses beside me. “Dad.”
“No, it’s sweet. You always had a fondness for animals,” Mr. Bianco says warmly. “Do you still bird-watch in the different cities you travel to?”
“No,” Arthur says, but it sounds like a lie. My mind races backward—to breakfast on the roof, all the birds flying overhead. When he’d said he’d wanted to show me the view, I’d thought he’d meant the buildings and clouds. The golden hour.
Holmes nods, smiling. “Pigeons are wonderful animals. Lovely and obedient. Back in the day, they were bred to race. Now? They’re useless without direction—thus the term.”
My spine tingles as a pattern solidifies in my brain,somethingto grab on to in this weird conversation. “I guess Arthur isn’t good at cards?” I say tentatively.
“Horrible.” Holmes laughs.
The wine arrives. Holmes talks with the waiter about the year it was from, tannins, coloring, and I study Arthur. There’s a low flush on his face, and he’s removed his hat and pushed back his hair, revealing the sheen across his forehead. He’s nervous, clearly. I don’t need to riddle that out. But this is beyond anxiety. I saw his resolved, dissociated frown on a thousand faces when I was younger; it’s the frown of a child doing their very best to put up with a guardian who’s made their life a living hell. It isn’t his dad that he keeps looking at, either. It’s Holmes, in shifty glances and finger-fidgeting peeks, like Arthur can’t take in the whole weight of the older man’s silently crushing disappointment.
I rest my hand on his arm and take a sip of wine, since I can’t do what I want to do: dump the glass on Holmes’s head and pull Arthur out of here. We’re stuck until Holmes frees us. All four of us know that.
I don’t have to play as nice, though.
After swallowing the liquid courage, I say, “Let’s get to it. We know you saw those photos, Holmes. Tell us what’s actually on your mind.”
Arthur’s arm twitches under my fingers, but Holmes’s mouth only quirks in a bemused smile. “Maybe I just wanted to talk to the girl my nephew likes so much.”
“Holmes, she’s right,” Arthur says, more sure of himself, like my confidence is feeding his. “I’m respecting your wishes to meet. Please respect our time. I have other meetings today.”
“Son, you know I’ve never liked telling you what to do, and that’s why we sent you to study with Holmes. He always knowsbest,” Mr. Bianco says, leaning to rest his elbows on his knees. He’s in dark suit pants, the sleeves of his cream-colored button-down rolled up, and I can picture the annoyingly vague lectures Arthur must’ve gotten ages four through eighteen, sat down at a dining room table by a father who didn’t want to father. “But I’ll say it. We wanted to meet you—I did—because you just can’t date this girl right now.”
This girl.My stomach plummets. I don’t know what I expected, after months of being on the team, in the garage, but it wasn’t that.
“It’s not appropriate,” Holmes adds breezily, clearly used to taking the Arthur reins. “You’re aBianco. The world watches what you do. And now with the changes Formula 1 has made in recent years—catering to ‘mental health’ and ‘equality’ and theatrics from underqualified female racing drivers—you want to have an affair with an employee? A girl who was hired to film you for the most important marketing project in American Formula 1 history? This is insanity. You’ll grow tired of her, like you do all the others.”
