Read Chapter 31: The Grand Prix Day

The air in the Fenice garage smelled of stale oil and burnt rubber. Jack pulled the engine coolant hose through his fingers like a rosary, the black rubber slick with residue. It was Sunday. Race day. The calendar said so, but the only clock that mattered now was the one ticking against Emile’s lungs.

Sophie had found them at dawn. Or rather, she had found the garage—a forgotten service bay hidden behind the main circuit’s maintenance wing, where Fenice used to park old show cars during the Monaco Historic Grand Prix. She’d knocked twice, said “the fishmonger on Rue Grimaldi sends his regards,” which was their code for “no police tail,” and then she’d gone to work.

Now she was zipping Jack into a blue mechanic’s jumpsuit, the kind with FENICE stitched over the left breast. “You’ve got the posture of a driver,” she said, pulling the collar straight. “But you’ll pass. Khakis won’t look at your face. They’ll look at your badge.”

Jack lifted the lanyard around his neck. The badge was clipped from a locker Emile had broken into the night before—belonging to a real mechanic named Dario Bertollini, who had called in sick with a fever that Emile had helpfully induced by spiking his coffee at the local bistro. Verdura’s teammate, actually. Emile had been busy.

“Where is he?” Jack asked.

Sophie tilted her head toward the back office. Through the frosted glass, Jack could see Emile’s silhouette hunched over a laptop, wires running from the machine to a series of adaptors that looked like they belonged in a television repair shop. Emile coughed—a wet, ratcheting sound that made Jack’s gut clench.

“He’s running on fumes, Jack,” Sophie said quietly. “The antibiotics aren’t working. If the fever breaks his kidneys before tonight, he’s done. And so is the plan.”

Jack balled the hose in his fist. “Then we don’t wait for tonight.”

“You mean the race.”

“I mean the formation lap. Quarter to two. The world’s watching the grid. If we hit the broadcast then, everyone sees it. Every camera. Every jumbotron. Not just the pit wall.”

Sophie’s eyes widened. “That’s Emile’s window for the telemetry hack. You pull his power and Viktor’s sabotage window goes dark.”

“Viktor doesn’t need a second window,” Jack said. “He’s already sabotaged his car. He did it last night—loosened the brake balance valve. It won’t kill him, but it’ll force a retirement on lap three. That buys us the chaos.”

“And if they trace the broadcast back to Emile’s laptop before it finishes?”

Jack looked at the frosted glass. Another cough, longer this time, ending in a wheeze. “Then we better make sure it finishes fast.”

---

The walk from the maintenance wing to the paddock was the longest hundred meters of Jack’s life. Every step echoed on wet pavement. The mist off the Mediterranean had rolled in overnight, painting Monaco in grey gauze. He kept his head down, cap low, a clipboard in hand like he was checking delivery manifests.

Security waved him through twice. Both times, the guard glanced at his badge, then at the hair barely visible under his cap, then back to the badge. Bertollini’s photo was close enough—similar jawline, same dark stubble. The lanyard bent the plastic just enough to blur the edges.

He reached the garage’s side entrance with seven minutes to spare. Emile was already there, leaning against a tool cabinet, his face pale enough to pass for a ghost. He was holding a tablet with a single green icon pulsing on the screen.

“Pit wall’s on a separate network,” Emile rasped. “I couldn’t get a full handshake from here. I need to be in the garage itself, or at least close enough to piggyback on the team Wi-Fi.”

Jack’s blood went cold. “The garage is crawling with engineers. And Alain’s probably in the motorhome right above it.”

“I know.” Emile’s grin was thin, cracked. “That’s why you’re going to cause a distraction.”

“What kind of distraction?”

“The loud kind.” Emile reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black remote. “Police-grade stun grenade. Sophie liberated it from a gendarme’s locker. It’s non-lethal. It’s also very, very loud.”

Jack stared at the remote. “You want me to blow up the garage.”

“I want you to make a small explosion in the waste bins behind the hospitality suite. It’ll set off the fire alarms. Everyone runs out. I walk in. Thirty seconds. That’s all I need.”

Jack took the remote. It felt cold and heavy, like holding a lie.

“You’ll have ninety seconds from the blast,” Emile said. “The broadcast starts at the top of the hour. I’ll link the video into the pit wall’s primary feed. If I can’t get the main screens, I’ll hijack the internal channel first—the one the engineers watch. Alain’s in the motorhome. He’ll see it before anyone else. He’ll panic.”

Jack felt his pulse settle into a hard, calm rhythm. The fear was still there, but it had sharpened into something useful. “And when he panics?”

“He’ll cut the feed. That’s your moment. The PA system is on a separate loop from the video network. Same building, different cables. But the PA’s terminal is in the race control booth, and the race director gets jumpy during fire alarms. He’ll be looking out the window at the smoke.”

“So I need to get into race control.”

Emile nodded. “You need to get into race control, plug this into the auxiliary input, and hit play.” He handed Jack a USB stick—black, nondescript, no label. “The video is on there. Luca’s face. Alain’s voice. The whole murder, in his own words.”

Jack pocketed the stick. His fingers brushed against the SIM card in his inner pocket. There was a dark symmetry to it: the confession, duplicated, fragmented, now scattered across two pieces of plastic. The original hidden in the padding of his driving suit at the hotel. The copy on the tablet in Sophie’s care. And now the third iteration, burning in his hand like a coal.

He looked at Emile. The older man’s eyes were glassy with fever, but they were clear. Alert. The same eyes that had looked at Jack twenty-four hours ago and said *I’m going to die for this, and that’s okay.*

“Ninety seconds,” Jack repeated.

“Ninety seconds. Then you’re in, you’re hot, and you’re out.”

“And you?”

Emile shrugged, a movement that cost him visible effort. “I’ll be in the garage, uploading Luca’s face to every screen that exists. If I’m lucky, I’ll also be alive enough to watch Alain’s face when he sees it.”

Jack clasped Emile’s shoulder. There was nothing else to say. He turned and walked toward the hospitality suite, the remote clicking against his thigh with every step.

---

The blast wasn’t loud. It was percussive—a low thump that shook the concrete floor and sent a plume of grey smoke curling from the waste bins. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the fire alarms began to scream.

Doors burst open. Engineers in Fenice red spilled onto the paddock walkway, hands over ears, shouting into headsets. The air filled with the smell of burning plastic and wasted adrenaline. Jack watched the chaos from behind a catering trolley, counting heads as they poured out.

No one went back in. Not yet.

He cut left, through a maintenance corridor that ran behind the motorhomes. Race control was fifty meters ahead. Through the reinforced windows, he could see the race director standing at the glass, staring at the smoke column, one hand on his radio, the other gesturing angrily at someone off-screen.

Emile was already inside the garage. Jack could just glimpse the tablet screen through the gap in the doors—a green icon blinking faster now, tapping into the pit wall’s feed.

Jack reached race control’s side door. It was locked. Of course it was locked.

But the badge. Bertollini’s badge. It had a transponder chip for the garage, not race control. Jack’s mind raced.

He looked up. A window, cracked open just enough for ventilation. He shoved the clipboard through, popped the latch with the corner of the USB case, and vaulted over the sill.

He landed in a crouch behind a bank of monitors. The race director was still at the far window. Two technicians sat at the video mixing panel, headsets on, eyes glued to a pre-race feed of the grid. The podium girls were lining up. The world was thirty seconds from glory.

Jack slid the USB into the auxiliary port.

The main monitor flashed. For a half-second, there was nothing. Then Luca’s face filled the screen—alive, young, terrified. In the background, a voice. Alain’s voice.

“*Make it look like an accident.*”

One of the technicians saw it. He opened his mouth to shout.

Jack pressed PLAY on the PA override, and Luca’s voice—recorded, desperate, cracking—boomed through the entire circuit, across every corner, over every grandstand, through the helmet speakers of every driver sitting on the grid.

The world went silent.