Read Chapter 10: The Dinner

The private dining room at Le Cabanon sat on a cliff edge above the sea, all glass and white linen and the kind of quiet that money buys. Jack had been to a dozen of these team dinners over the years—always as the guest of someone else, always watching the top drivers get buttered up while he worked the room for scraps. Now he was the one being buttered. It felt wrong on his skin.

Alain Moreau raised his glass before the first course arrived. "To a new era," he said, smiling with all the warmth of a man who'd calculated the cost of the gesture. "Scuderia Fenice has found its fire again."

Philippe Dubois didn't lift his glass all the way. He held it at chest height, studying Jack with the flat, appraising look of a man who reads people the way Jack read racing lines. "Fenice's future depends on cooperation," Philippe said, the words slow and deliberate. "We are a family here. And families look after one another—when they don't, accidents happen."

The pause hung in the air like exhaust smoke. Jack's fork stopped halfway to his mouth. Beside him, Viktor Petrov smirked into his wine glass and took a long, theatrical sip.

"Accidents," Jack repeated. He set the fork down and reached for his water. "Like the one that killed Luca?"

Viktor's smirk died. Philippe's eyes narrowed by a fraction, nothing more. But Alain's hand—resting on the table beside his glass—gave the smallest twitch.

"Luca's crash was tragic," Philippe said carefully. "But we are speaking of the future now. Of cooperation." He finally lifted his glass. "To those who choose the right path."

Jack raised his glass. The crystal felt brittle in his grip. "To the right path."

He drank. The wine was expensive—a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, something a sommelier would weep over. Jack couldn't taste a thing.

For the rest of the meal, Jack played the part. He laughed at Alain's stories about the team's glory days. He nodded when Philippe spoke about sponsorship obligations and media commitments. He even asked Viktor a question about chassis setup—a peace offering the Russian accepted with visible reluctance, like a dog deciding whether to take a stranger's treat.

But Jack watched. He catalogued the way Philippe's eyes kept drifting toward the hallway that led to the private study. He noted the ledger peeking from beneath a stack of documents on the desk when a waiter opened the study door to fetch a bottle of cognac. Leather-bound. Red. The kind of thing an accountant uses, not a team principal.

The blonde seated beside Alain—some marketing executive whose name Jack had already forgotten—leaned toward him. "You're very focused tonight," she said. "Usually drivers are relaxed by the second course."

"First time in a red car," Jack said, forcing a grin. "Still pinching myself."

She didn't believe him. Her smile was too practiced. Like the rest of this room, she was watching him just as closely as he was watching them.

When the main course arrived—some elaborate fish dish Jack couldn't identify—Viktor finally addressed him directly. "You drove well today," he said, each word dragged out like a confession. "Until the floor broke."

"Funny how that happened," Jack said. "Hit the same kerb I've been hitting all session. Never broke before."

Viktor shrugged. A calculated gesture, too loose, too casual. "Monaco is unpredictable."

"So are some of its drivers."

The table went quiet. Alain coughed. Philippe's jaw tightened. Viktor's hand curled around his steak knife.

"Jack," Alain said smoothly. "Why don't you tell us about your experience with the medium-downforce tracks? Our engineers want to hear your thinking about Barcelona."

The topic shift was obvious enough to be insulting. But Jack took the bait anyway, launching into a technical explanation that ate up the remaining minutes of the meal. When the plates were cleared and the conversation turned to brand-sponsored events and charity galas, Jack made his move.

"I need to find the bathroom," he said, pushing back from the table. "Too much mineral water before the qualis."

Alain nodded toward a corridor. "Second door on the left."

Jack stood. His legs felt heavy, his pulse quickening as he walked past the study door. It was slightly ajar. Through the gap he could see the ledger still sitting on the desk, that red leather binding glowing under a green banker's lamp like something out of a film noir.

He went to the bathroom. Ran the water. Counted to twenty.

Then he walked back, slipped past the study door, and pushed it open just wide enough to step inside. The room smelled of cigar smoke and cologne—Philippe's scent, heavy and territorial. The ledger lay open on the desk, columns of handwriting visible, figures and race names. Jack pulled out his phone and photographed the left page, then the right. His hands were steady. They always were when it mattered.

He heard footsteps in the hallway.

Jack stepped back from the desk, pocketed his phone, and turned. Viktor stood in the doorway, watching him with an expression halfway between amusement and menace.

"Wrong door," Viktor said. "Bathroom is the second one. This is the third."

"Nice place," Jack said, moving past him. He kept his voice even, his stride unhurried. "Lots of character."

Viktor caught his arm. His grip was strong, hand curling around Jack's bicep with deliberate force. "You should be careful, Turner. In a new team, you do not know which doors to open. Which doors to closed."

"And you know all the doors?"

"I know which ones keep me safe."

Jack pulled his arm free. He could smell the vodka on Viktor's breath, see the tension in the Russian's jaw. Here was a man carrying a secret of his own, one that sat heavy enough to make him dangerous.

"Good for you," Jack said. "I'll stick to the track. Racing's all the safety I need."

He returned to the table. Philippe was pouring another round of cognac, his back to the corridor. When Jack slid back into his chair, the old man didn't turn around.

"Everything alright?" Alain asked. His tone was light, but his eyes tracked toward the hallway where Viktor now stood silhouetted against the light from the study.

"Everything's fine," Jack said. "Just getting my bearings in this place."

Philippe turned, raising his glass in a mock salute. "A new era," he said again. "Remember that, Turner. Storms pass. Fire remains."

Jack lifted his own glass. The phone burned against his thigh, its memory filled with numbers and names he didn't yet understand. But he could feel the shape of the truth forming in his mind—something ugly, something that stretched from betting markets to crash sites to the dinner table.

"To fire," Jack said.

He drank.

When he pulled his phone out in the car afterward, he flipped through the photographs. Columns of race results. Dates. Names of circuits. And next to Monaco, a single figure marked in red ink, circled three times.

Luca's last race.

Jack started the engine and drove toward the hills above Nice.