Read Chapter 2: The Seat That Kills

The Fenice motorhome sat apart from the rest of the paddock, three stories of black glass and carbon fibre that caught the late-afternoon sun like a blade. Jack Turner wiped his palms on his race suit—still damp from the podium champagne—and followed the representative through the sliding doors.

Inside, the air smelled of leather and ozone. A television on the far wall played a loop of his final-lap pass, the one that had won him the race in the rain. Someone had muted the sound, which made it feel like watching a ghost.

Alain Lefèvre stood at the centre of the room, small and immaculate in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than Jack's last three cars. His hair was silver, parted precisely, and his smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Jack Turner." Lefèvre extended a hand. "You drive like a man who has nothing to lose."

"Because I don't," Jack said, shaking it. "I had a dead sponsor and a car held together with zip ties."

"And now you have my attention." Lefèvre gestured to a seat beside a low glass table. A contract lay on it, slim and white. "One race. Monaco. You replace Luca Moreau."

The name landed in the room like a stone thrown into still water. Jack had seen the crash, of course—everyone had. The burnished orange of the Fenice car cartwheeling through the barriers at Sainte Dévote, the fire that had taken too long to extinguish. Luca Moreau had been dead before the marshals reached him. The broadcast had cut away quickly, but the image had burned itself into Jack's retinas anyway.

"I know who he was," Jack said carefully. "Everyone knows."

"Then you know the car. You know what Fenice can do." Lefèvre slid the contract across the glass. "We need someone who isn't afraid of the walls. You showed us that today."

Jack picked up the contract. One race. A thousand details in fine print. He'd been in motor sport long enough to know that contracts were promises written in disappearing ink, but a chance like this came once in a lifetime. Maybe twice, if you were lucky. He'd been unlucky for nine years.

"Viktor Hauer," Jack said, not looking up. "He's your first driver. How does he feel about a stranger stepping into his teammate's car?"

"He doesn't feel anything about it." Lefèvre's smile tightened. "Viktor is a professional. He understands the machine."

The room cooled. Jack looked past Lefèvre's shoulder and saw him—Viktor Hauer, standing in the doorway that led to the rest of the motorhome. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, with the kind of face that belonged on billboards. His arms were crossed, and his eyes were the pale grey of winter sea ice.

He didn't look like a man who understood the machine. He looked like a man who was watching it.

"You must be the replacement," Hauer said. His accent was faint, German-edged. "I hope you fit the seat better than the last one did."

The comment hung in the air. The crew—the half-dozen engineers and mechanics who had been pretending not to listen—went very still.

"I fit where I'm put," Jack said.

Hauer's mouth moved into something that wasn't quite a smile. He turned and walked out, leaving the door swinging.

Lefèvre cleared his throat. "Viktor is… direct. You'll find him easier to work with once the car is on track. Monaco demands precision from both drivers. There's no room for personality."

Jack looked down at the contract again. The signature line waited at the bottom, blank and patient. He thought about the rain-soaked Tatuus he'd been driving, the one he'd wrenched on himself in the dark hours before the race. He thought about his bank account, which had less in it than a fast-food register on a slow Tuesday.

He picked up the pen.

"One race," he said.

"One race," Lefèvre agreed. "Win, and we talk about the rest of the season. Place outside the points, and we thank you for your time."

Jack signed. The pen scratched against the paper, and the sound felt final. When he looked up, Lefèvre was already handing the contract to a young woman in a Fenice polo shirt who materialised from nowhere.

"Welcome to the family," Lefèvre said. "For the next seven days, you are Fenice. You eat with us, you sleep near us, you breathe our air. Sebastian will show you your quarters."

A stocky man in his fifties stepped forward from the grouping of crew members. He had the worn hands of a mechanic and the weary eyes of someone who had seen too many seasons.

"Jack," he said, nodding. "I'm Sebastian. I'll be your race engineer."

They shook hands, and Jack felt the calluses. Good—this was a man who knew what an engine tasted like.

"This way."

The motorhome was larger inside than it had any right to be—dim corridors, doors opening onto offices and meeting rooms and, deeper in, a garage space with the car under a sheet. Jack caught a glimpse of the Fenice livery—deep crimson with gold accents—before Sebastian steered him past.

"Curfew's at ten," Sebastian said. "Breakfast at six, engineering briefing at seven, seat fitting at eight thirty. You'll be measured, weighed, analysed, and probed in ways you didn't know were possible. On the bright side, the coffee's good."

"Who was he?" Jack asked. "Luca. What was he like?"

Sebastian's stride faltered for just a step. "A good man. Fast. Too fast for his own good, maybe."

"Car failure?"

"That's what the investigation said." Sebastian stopped outside a door with a number plate: 08. "Fuel system fault. A leak that ignited. Rare—almost unheard of in modern cars. But it happens."

The way he said it made Jack think he didn't believe it. But Sebastian's face was closed, and Jack knew better than to push a man who'd be in his ear all weekend.

"Your quarters," Sebastian said, opening the door.

The room was small but clean—a bed, a desk, a window looking out over the marina. Yachts bobbed in the harbour, their lights just beginning to glitter in the fading sun. Monaco was a postcard made of money, and he was about to drive through the middle of it at two hundred miles an hour.

"I appreciate this," Jack said. "I know I'm not who you would have picked."

Sebastian considered him for a moment. "I didn't say anything when they told me they'd signed a privateer. But I watched your race today. You don't give up when the car tries to kill you. That's rare." He paused. "It's the ones who don't give up who usually need to worry."

He left before Jack could ask what that meant.

Jack stood at the window, watching the lights blur on the water. The contract was signed. The dream he'd been chasing since he was eight years old was parked in the garage next door. But something prickled at the back of his neck—the unease in the crew's eyes, the way Sebastian had hesitated, the cold stare from Viktor Hauer.

He'd been in racing long enough to know that teams didn't bring in strangers unless something was wrong.

He unpacked his kit—a worn duffel, a pair of racing shoes with the soles nearly bald, gloves that had seen better days. They looked pitiful against the crisp white of the Fenice bedding. He'd need to get fitted for new gear tomorrow.

A knock at the door. Jack opened it to find a young woman holding a sealed plastic bag. She was about his age, dark-haired, with the efficient air of someone who managed a team's logistics.

"Your race number," she said, handing it over. "We need it on all your kit before Friday."

Jack looked at the number through the plastic. Black on white, simple and stark.

23.

"Luca's number," he said.

The woman's smile flickered. "It's yours now. The team doesn't retire numbers. Too superstitious."

"Superstition seems to be going around," Jack said.

She didn't answer, just nodded and walked away, her footsteps swallowed by the carpeted corridor.

Jack closed the door and held the number up to the window light. Twenty-three. The number of a dead man, handed to him like a baton in a relay race nobody had asked to run.

Outside, the marina lights shimmered. Somewhere up the hill, Viktor Hauer was probably watching the same harbour from his own window, wondering if the new man would be as easy to handle as the last one.

Jack set the number on the desk and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

He'd signed for one race. One chance to prove he belonged at the top.

But the crew's unease, Sebastian's careful words, Hauer's cold stare—they told a different story. Something had happened to Luca Moreau, and the team didn't want to talk about it.

Jack closed his eyes. He'd have done anything for this seat.

Now he just had to make sure it didn't kill him too.