Read Chapter 18: The Sabotage in Plain Sight

The grid was a cathedral of noise and heat, a thousand screaming engines tuning to a single discordant hymn. Jack pulled his helmet on, the world compressing to the narrow cone of his vision, the roar of the crowd flattening into a distant white noise. Red and white bodywork flanked him—Steiner on pole, a silver arrow in the Fenice livery, and Masson behind, a snarling Ferrari red. But Jack only saw the asphalt ahead, the first corner’s monstrous plunge.

He dropped into a crouch beside his own car, the spare, the unverified machine they’d rolled out in a panic after qualifying. A mechanic hovered, clipboard in hand, face a mask of professional concern. Jack waved him off.

“Final checks are done, driver,” the mechanic said, voice tinny through the comms.

“Then I’ll do my own,” Jack muttered, running a gloved hand along the carbon fibre floor. It was a compulsion, a paranoid ritual born from years of racing machinery that wanted to kill you. He checked the wing mounts, the brake ducts, the suspension wishbones. Everything felt right. Everything felt wrong.

Then his fingers brushed something alien. A tiny lump of metal, magnetic, no bigger than a fingernail, adhered to the underside of the floor pan, perfectly placed to escape any visual inspection. He pried it off, feeling the cold weight in his palm. A tracker. A fucking tracker.

His heart hammered against his ribs. They weren’t just going to sabotage the car physically—they were going to know exactly where he was on the circuit, every braking point, every corner speed. They were feeding his telemetry to Steiner. The race wasn’t a contest; it was a foregone conclusion, engineered in real time.

He glanced up. Morini’s voice crackled in his earpiece. “Sector one is green, Turner. Box them in. Hold position.”

Hold position. The race strategist’s voice was silk over a knife. Jack’s teeth ground together. He looked at the tracker in his palm, a tiny black spider. His options were evaporating. He could smash it, but they’d know he found it. They’d know he was coming for them.

He closed his fist, felt the sharp edges bite into his skin through the glove, and then dropped his hand to his side. With a sharp, deliberate motion, he brought his heel down on the device. The crack was lost in the din of the engines. A small, defiant act of war. No going back now.

He stood, walking around to the right-rear tyre, his eyes scanning the wheel nut area out of habit. And then he saw it. He froze. The valve cap on the tyre wasn’t the standard machined aluminium; it was a dull, matte black composite. Slightly off. It was barely noticeable, the kind of detail only a driver who had stroked his own race tyres a thousand times would catch.

His blood went cold. The tyre was pressurized with nitrogen, but that valve tip was a different thermal profile. It was a bleed valve. A slow, controlled leak that would drop his pressure at the worst possible moment—a high-speed corner where a soft tyre meant a snapped axle, a wall of barriers, and a headline that read “Mechanical Failure.” It was Luca’s death, rewritten. His own.

He forced a calm, unhurried walk to the pit wall, where his crash helmet bag sat. He unzipped it, pulling out a spare valve cap, a simple piece of rubber and metal he’d never needed before. The irony—a spare from his own bag saving his life because the team’s standard equipment was a trap—wasn't lost on him. He knelt beside the tyre, masking the movement with a lace-tying gesture. He needed seconds. Less than a minute. The mechanics were watching him, but they were watching the screens, the lap times, the strategy boards. Not a driver fussing with his own boot.

He spun the suspect cap off. Inside, a fine lattice of micro-tubing was visible, ready to leach pressure. He swapped it with the clean one, feeling the thread engage with a satisfying click. He palmed the sabotaged valve, slipping it into his suit pocket, a cold fossil of the conspiracy. Another piece of the puzzle. Another nail in the coffin.

He stood, flexing his fingers, and cast a glance down the grid. Steiner’s car was a monument of polished steel. A gesture of calm, of inhuman control. Steiner himself was in the cockpit, visor down, a bronze idol waiting for the sacrifice. He looked at Jack for a long moment, and Jack felt the hatred like a physical pressure.

The comms crackled again. Morini’s voice, smooth as a snake. “Race control confirms five minutes. Confirm final instructions, Turner. Do not challenge Steiner in turn one. Hold your line, concede the inside. Let him take his line into the tunnel. We need a clean formation.”

Jack said nothing. He could feel the team’s eyes on him from the pit wall, the weight of their expectation—not for glory, but for capitulation. His hand drifted to his pocket, feeling the tracker’s shattered remains and the valve cap’s accusing weight. The proof was on his body. The evidence was in Sophie’s hands. And the race was about to start.

He lifted his visor, catching a young mechanic’s eye—Rinaldi, the saboteur. The man’s face was a careful blank, but his knuckles were white on the wheel gun he was carrying. Jack held his gaze for a beat, then let his visor drop, sealing himself in.

The seconds ticked down. The roar coalesced into a single, held note of anticipation.

His radio buzzed with a text alert, a soft chime cutting through the static. He glanced at the small screen in his cockpit. It was Sophie. A photo, taken in harsh light. A red glove, laid out on a table. A close-up of the cuff. A micro-SIM card, the size of a pencil tip, nestled in the stitching.

A second message followed: “Found it. Sewn into the cuff. Decrypted. Two numbers: Philippe’s private line. And Alain’s. This was Luca’s glove. He was building a case. They killed him for it. You’re next. Don’t let them put you in a box.”

Jack’s world narrowed to a single, crystalline point. Luca had been a threat. Luca had the proof. And they had erased him. The tracker, the tyre valve, the order to throw the race—it wasn’t just about controlling an outcome. It was about eliminating a variable. They hadn’t just sabotaged his car. They’d sabotaged his odds.

The five lights flickered to red.

Jack’s fingers wrapped around the gear lever, his thumb hovering over the pit-lane speed limiter. He knew now there would be no safe place on the circuit. Every run-off area would feel like a trap. Every barrier would whisper Luca’s name.

The lights went out.

The engine screamed. The world became a blur of colour and motion. Steiner’s car shot ahead, but Jack didn’t back off. He didn’t hold position. He stayed on the Ferrari’s gearbox, slipstreaming, dancing in the turbulent air, a shadow that refused to be cast down. Morini was screaming in his ear, a frantic, static-laced order to concede, to give way into the tunnel.

Jack’s thumb flicked a switch. He cut the team radio. The silence was deafening.

He had 78 laps. He had a car that was clean. And he had a voice in his head that wasn’t his own—Luca’s, a dead man’s accusation, driving him forward.

The tunnel loomed. Steiner’s car braked, late, desperate. Jack saw the gap—the inside line, a sliver of asphalt no wider than a prayer. He aimed for it. Not for the win. Not for glory. For the truth that was about to cross the finish line ahead of them all.