Read Chapter 12: The Turn

The morning air over Monaco carried the sting of salt and burnt rubber, and the Fenice garage hummed with the usual pre-session chaos. Jack pulled on his helmet, the padding still damp from yesterday's sweat, and tried to push the memory of Philippe's ledger from his mind. Red circles. A skull. Luca's name.

He'd barely slept. The meeting with Emile was still hours away—the coordinates burned into his phone like a brand—but first, he had to perform. The car had a new floor section, rushed overnight by mechanics who'd worked through the dark with gritted teeth. Viktor stood by his own machine, arms crossed, watching him with the flat hunger of a man who'd already decided how this story ended.

Saturday practice. Thirty minutes to prove a point.

Jack dropped into the cockpit, feeling the carbon fiber cradle his shoulders. The engine snarled to life behind him, a V6 shriek that vibrated through his spine. Radio check. "Fenice One, clear for out-lap."

"Copy, Jack. Track temp's up, grip should be decent. Watch the kerbs at Turn 14—they chewed up your floor yesterday."

Viktor's doing. He didn't need to hear it in the mechanics' voices—they all knew. The tension in the garage was a living thing, thick as coolant vapor.

Jack pulled out of the pit lane, tires whispering over the painted line. The circuit snaked ahead of him, a ribbon of asphalt coiled around the principality's jewel. First sector clean. The car felt alive under him, the new floor biting into corners with a confidence yesterday's damage had stolen. He pushed through the swimming pool complex, powering out of the final chicane onto the start-finish straight.

Second flying lap. Brake for Turn 1, the Sainte Devote hairpin.

He pressed the pedal at the 100-meter board, expecting the violent deceleration that crushed his organs against the belts. Instead, the pedal sank. Soft. Dead.

"Brakes!" The word tore from his throat, half shout, half reflex. "Brakes gone!"

The car didn't slow. The wall rushed at him with the indifference of geography, a concrete arm waiting to embrace him. He yanked the wheel left, trying to bleed speed through the runoff, but the tires locked at the rears—brake bias gone haywire, all pressure bleeding to the back axle.

The impact came like a hammer through a window. Nose cone crumpled, chassis shuddered, and for a moment, everything was white noise and the taste of copper. His harness bit into his shoulders, and then silence.

Jack blinked. The world tilted. He was upside down, hanging against the straps, the Mediterranean sky a pale smear through the cracked visor. Marshals swarmed the car, fire extinguishers at the ready. He unclipped the steering wheel, twisted the belts free, and fell onto the carbon shards of his own wreck.

He crawled out on all fours. Stadium lights glared down. He stood, wobbly, and waved to the crowd—a reflex, the racer's instinct. They cheered, but the sound felt distant, underwater.

Medical crew descended. He waved them off, too. "I'm fine. Just shook. Give me a minute."

The marshals were already hooking a crane to the injured Fenice. Jack watched them lift the car, its suspension hanging limp like a dead bird's wing. And that's when he saw it: tucked inside the left front brake duct, a small metallic cylinder, no bigger than his thumb, charred but intact. A coil, a scorched circuit board, the remains of a timer.

His blood turned cold.

Not a failure. A detonation. A precise, surgical kill-switch wired into the brake line, set to cook the fluid at a chosen moment, turning the pedal to mush exactly when the corner demanded everything.

He looked around. The marshals were focused on the car. The medical team had stepped back. The cameras, god, the cameras would all be on him, on his face, waiting for a reaction.

Jack forced his jaw to unclench. He walked to the barrier, sat down, and pulled off his helmet. His hands were steady. They shouldn't be. Somewhere in the pit lane, one of his own—or someone who'd paid them well—was watching, waiting to see if he understood.

He understood.

The rule was simple: you never accuse your own team in public. You smile, you blame the data, you let the engineers bury the evidence in a technical report. Jack had been raised on that code. He played by it, even as the metallic taste in his mouth turned to something darker.

Stefano, his race engineer, came jogging over, face pale beneath his headset. "What the hell happened?"

"Brake failure," Jack said flatly. "Pedal went through the floor. No warning."

Stefano's eyes flicked to the wreck, then back. For a split second, something passed between them—a flicker of doubt, or recognition. Then Stefano nodded. "We'll pull the telemetry. Get you back in the spare car for the last ten minutes."

Jack didn't answer. He just stared at the burned cylinder as a marshal nudged it with a gloved finger, frowning at its unnatural shape. In an hour, it would disappear into Fenice's private data collection, filed away in a box nobody would ever open.

He stood, walked past Stefano, and headed for the pit lane. Viktor was there, arms folded at the entrance, a thin smile playing at his lips.

"Bit ambitious, Turner," Viktor called. "Trying to redecorate the circuit?"

Jack stopped. He let the words hang between them, close enough to feel the heat of Viktor's stare. "I'll be in the spare," he said. "And I'll still outqualify you."

Viktor's smile widened, but his eyes were flat as slate. "Accidents happen, Jack. Some more than others."

Jack walked past him, into the cool shadow of the garage, and let the door close behind him. His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from Sophie: *Just landed in Nice. Report local police raised concerns about Emile. No sight of him yet.*

He stared at the screen. Emile was missing. His brakes had been bombed. And somewhere in the hills above Nice, the other half of Luca's bloodline was either hiding or already gone.

The spare car waited for him, gleaming and innocent. Jack climbed in. The engine caught. He drove out on cold tires, heart hammering, and wondered how many more laps he'd get before whoever was pulling the strings decided to aim higher than his brake lines.