Read Chapter 19: The Glove's Secret

The vibration against Jack's thigh was almost lost beneath the engine's rumble. Almost. He killed the throttle, letting the car coast as the formation lap flag fluttered in his peripheral vision. Then he risked it—one hand off the wheel, fumbling for his phone in the fireproof layer beneath his race suit.

Sophie's message was three lines.

*photo attached* *Micro-SIM sewn into the glove's cuff. Encrypted. Cracked it.* *Philippe's private line confirmed. Second number matches Alain Rivière. Luca was building a case.*

Jack's thumb hovered over the photo icon. He pressed it.

The image bloomed on screen—a close-up of the crimson glove, its cuff peeled back like a wound. The stitch work was meticulous, invisible until you knew to look. A thin silver rectangle the size of Jack's thumbnail sat exposed in the lining, wrapped in clear film and sealed with what looked like surgical tape. A micro-SIM. The kind you'd use in a burner phone. The kind you'd sew into your glove when you couldn't trust anyone around you.

He zoomed in. Fine white thread, consistent tension. Professional. The cuff had been opened, the SIM inserted, and the seam re-stitched by hand. Luca had done it himself. Had to have. You don't let anyone near something like that.

Jack let the image linger a moment longer, then cleared the screen.

The race was starting. He could see the grid marshals waving the final signal. Steiner sat ahead of him in P1, pointed toward the first corner. Beside Luca's replacement, the engine idling at a perfect, deceptive purr.

The crash at Monza. Luca's car spearing into the barrier at 180 miles per hour. The fireball. The memorials. And beneath all of it—hidden in a dead man's glove, stitched into red fabric and forgotten in an evidence locker—a SIM card holding two phone numbers.

One for the team principal.

One for the man whose company supplied Fenice's suspension parts.

Jack's hands tightened on the wheel. He hadn't believed it. Not really. Even with André's whispers, even with Claire's USB drive, even with Sophie decrypting Philippe's email. Some part of him had clung to the idea that racing was racing, that even the ugliest corners of the paddock weren't *that* dark.

The photo ended that.

Luca hadn't crashed. Luca had been removed. He'd found something—Philippe's private line, Alain's number—and he'd sewn the proof into his glove because he knew he might not get the chance to hand it over. He'd died with that SIM still stitched into the fabric.

Jack pulled his visor down.

Standing water had pooled at the exit of Sainte Devote from the morning's rain. He could see it glinting, catching the low Monaco sun. The sting of ozone filled his nostrils. The start lights would come any second.

He thought of Claire. Her body found in a stairwell, dressed in clothes she'd never worn, with a death certificate signed by a compromised FIA steward. She'd handed Jack the drive and then disappeared into the Nice night because he'd told her to run. She'd run all the way to her death.

Jack thought of Philippe's face when he'd told Jack about Luca's "regrettable accident." The practiced sorrow, the careful distance. He'd looked like a man who'd already buried the truth alongside the driver.

The staggered rows of cars ahead began to crawl forward. The lights were igniting one by one.

Sophie. She was out there now, alone, with the decrypted SIM data and no one to watch her back. Jack had asked her to stay clear of Monaco's circuit, to keep the information close. But the team had eyes everywhere. They'd found Claire in a city of 40,000. Sophie was in a city of millions, and she was still only one person.

He could feel the tracker fragments in his right hip pocket, the plastic bag pressing against him through the suit. The modified valve cap sat in the other. He was carrying murder evidence in his racing overalls while sixty thousand people watched and two hundred million more tuned in on screens around the world.

He was one of sixteen cars, second on the grid, about to race the most dangerous street circuit on the calendar against a man who'd told him—calmly, almost gently—that the weekend was now personal.

The lights went out.

Jack's foot slammed to the floor. The engine screamed. The car surged forward, KERS dumping its stored energy into the rear wheels. He could feel the spare chassis respond, could feel every weld and bolt and unverified component flex beneath him.

Fenice had ordered him to hold position. To let Steiner pass. To play pretend for seventy-eight laps and then trot back to the garage with his tail between his legs and listen to Philippe explain the importance of team orders.

Jack had cut radio. Jack had sabotaged their sabotage. Jack was carrying the final piece of a dead man's evidence in his goddamn pockets.

The needle slid past 180. Monaco's walls whipped past in a blur of red-and-white. He caught Steiner's gearbox ahead, the Red Bull shark fin dancing through the rapid left-right chicane.

Fenice wanted Steiner to win? Fine.

Let them watch Jack take the victory away from him.

The tires bit. The car held. Jack pulled left, drew alongside Steiner's rear wing, and hung there through the descent toward Casino Square—braking impossibly late, the engine bouncing off the limiter, the steering wheel twitching in his hands like a living thing.

And as he nosed ahead for the first time, through the screaming of the engine and the hollow beat of his own heart, he heard Luca's glove whisper its accusation from his pocket.

*They built your car, Jack.* *They killed the last man who drove it.* *What makes you think you're any different?*