Page 33 of Full Throttle

Scorching heat beat down on the track. Someone had brought a fire extinguisher and was blowing white foam over the car. Juliette’s heart was beating so fast that she wondered if it might catch fire too. She couldn’t work with Dominic. She would rather drink gasoline. Like, directly from the nozzle at a petrol station.

“Hastings?” Ranya prompted.

Dominic held up his hands. “I can’t teach an unwilling pupil.”

Juliette resisted the urge to scoff. Brilliant. So he was making this her problem then. Surprise, surprise.

Ranya leaned on her cane. “Do you know what today’s incident just cost us?”

Dominic said nothing. Juliette looked at the crumpled car. Five hundred and thirty thousand. Maybe slightly less, if the endplate had held up.

“Five hundred and twenty-five thousand,” Ranya said, without waiting for a reply. “We’re a midfield team. We don’t have that sort of money.” She gestured to the car. “This crash is all you get. You might be new, Marchmont, but I expect results.”

Juliette’s chest tightened. “I’m sorry.”

Ranya grimaced. “Stop apologizing. Look, I had to fight to get you on this team. There were plenty of people who told me it was a bad idea.” The cane was in the air again. “You see that man over there?”

Juliette followed her gaze to where a middle-aged man stood by the cooler. He was whistling softly, an eerie, lilting tune that reminded her of a child’s wind-up toy, and the hair on the back of her neck rose.

“Yes.”

“Do you know who that is?” Ranya asked.

That was like asking who Voldemort was. “That’s Robert Von Galen. Our head strategist.”

Ranya dropped her voice. “I’m going to tell you something that I shouldn’t. When I put you forward as a candidate to the board, just under half thought it was a bad idea. Robert Von Galen led that charge. He despises women in motorsport. He sees it as the liberal agenda gone mad and thinks that you’re a PR hire to make us look better.”

Juliette tensed. “That’s not—”

“I don’t agree, obviously,” Ranya said, “but some of the board members do.”

“What are you saying?”

Ranya held her gaze. “I need you to finish in the top ten during the opening race. Do you understand?”

Juliette turned her balaclava over in her hands. She was painfully aware of Dominic standing there, his dark gaze burning into her. Unsurprising. He was like the opposite of a good luck charm. A backward horseshoe.

She stuffed the balaclava into her pocket. “He wants to replace me with Baz, doesn’t he?” It made sense. Baz was the Taurus reserve driver, which meant he was already in the family. All it would take was a phone call.

Ranya’s mouth puckered. “Robert wants to replace you with anyone.”

“Any man, you mean,” Juliette said, and she couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice this time. Ranya’s face tightened, but she didn’t deny it.

“Accept Hastings’s help.”

So they were back to this. “And if I don’t?”

Ranya shielded her eyes. “I don’t want to replace you. But if you continue performing like this, there’s only so long I can defend you to the shareholders. Look, I’d train you myself if I could, but…” She gestured to the cane. “I know you and Hastings have history, but he’s an exceptional driver. You could learn from him.”

“He,” Dominic said, “is standing right here.”

He was looking down at her, and heat prickled along the back of her neck. He’d always looked at things with that sort of singular focus: cars, recipes, a new camera…it was as if he could unravel it just by looking at it.

Dominic sighed. “Don’t look at me like that, Marchmont. This one’s on you. What do you say?”

She grimaced. “We’ll kill each other.”

Ranya frowned. “You’ve gotten along before, haven’t you? Found some…er…” She seemed to be treading carefully. “Common ground?”