Read Chapter 6: The Official Verdict

The FIA report hit the team server at 9:47 AM, six days before the Monaco Grand Prix. Jack read it standing in the cramped media room off the Fenice garage, still in his running shorts from the morning workout, the PDF glowing on the screen like a verdict.

*“Fatal accident analysis — Driver 23, Luca Moreau. Cause of primary impact: loss of rear downforce at Turn 15 (La Rascasse), resulting in a high-energy collision with the barrier. Contributory mechanical factor: fracture of the left-rear suspension pushrod, consistent with fatigue failure. No evidence of driver error or external interference.”*

No external interference.

He read the line twice, then a third time, feeling the words settle into his chest like cold water.

Henri Vogel was at the back of the garage, hunched over a laptop with a tablet balanced on his knee, wire-rimmed glasses perched low on his nose. Jack approached without saying anything, holding up his phone with the PDF open. Henri glanced at it and went very still.

“I read it this morning,” Henri said, not meeting Jack’s eyes. His French accent thickened under pressure. “They sent it to the team principal at dawn.”

“Says the arm snapped from fatigue.”

“Yes.”

“You were Luca’s chief mechanic. You know that car better than anyone.”

Henri set down the tablet. His hands were raw from carbon fiber work, the knuckles scarred with small nicks from years of wrench work. Those hands now trembled slightly — barely perceptible, but Jack noticed.

“That pushrod was replaced three races before Monaco last year,” Henri said. “Fresh part, from the factory, signed off by two quality engineers. I have the paperwork. The chassis log. It did not fatigue.”

“So what are you telling me?”

“I am telling you what the report says.” Henri finally looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed, like a man who hadn’t slept properly in weeks. “And I am telling you what I know. They are not the same thing. But I have a family. I have worked at Fenice for eleven years.”

Jack leaned closer. “Someone’s threatening you.”

Henri laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “No one threatens anyone, Turner. That is the beauty of this world. No one has to say anything. The message arrives in other ways.” He looked toward the main garage floor, where Viktor Hauer’s car sat under a red shroud, technicians moving around it like ants around a queen. “Luca asked questions too. About parts. About numbers that did not match. And look what happened.”

“The report says it was fatigue.”

“The report says a lot of things.” Henri closed the laptop with a sharp click. “You are driving that car in six days. If I were you, I would spend less time reading reports and more time wondering why the FIA closed the investigation so quickly, and why no one in this team pushed back.”

He walked away before Jack could respond.

---

The espresso bar near the circuit was nearly empty when Sophie arrived, twenty minutes late, a leather satchel over her shoulder and a tablet tucked under her arm. She slid into the booth across from Jack, already talking before she’d sat down.

“I pulled the original accident photographs. High resolution, from the Monegasque federation’s crash investigation archive. Took some serious favors.” She set the tablet on the table between them, swiping through images. “You said the report claims fatigue failure on the pushrod?”

“Left-rear suspension.”

“Watch this.” She stopped on a close-up of the fractured component, still attached to the upright, carbon shards scattered like frozen spiderwebs around the base. “See the fracture face?”

Jack leaned in. The break was clean, angled, with a slight discoloration along the edge. “Looks like a break.”

“It looks like a *snap*.” Sophie zoomed in. “Fatigue cracks propagate over time. They leave striations — tiny ripple marks, like tree rings, where the crack grows each cycle. Even high-cycle fatigue leaves visible bands under magnification.”

“And this doesn’t have them?”

“This has a clean shear face with deformation lines radiating from a single point. That’s what happens when you apply sudden, catastrophic force — like scoring the metal, then bending it until it gives. Or heating it in a localized spot to weaken the crystalline structure, then letting normal load do the rest.”

Jack sat back. The espresso machine hissed in the background, a sound almost loud enough to cover the new implications settling into the quiet between them.

“You’re saying someone cut it.”

“I’m saying a metallurgist would call that fracture pattern inconsistent with the stated cause.” Sophie locked eyes with him. “I’m saying if anyone actually looked at this properly, the official report would have asked a very different set of questions.”

“But no one looked.”

“The FIA’s analysis team signed off on it. Why would they dig deeper? The circuits data showed a sudden loss of downforce, the telemetry showed no driver inputs, and the fracture looked plausible to an investigator who wasn’t looking for sabotage.” She paused. “And there were a lot of powerful people who wanted that file closed quickly. Dead drivers are expensive for everyone.”

Jack thought about Henri’s trembling hands. About Arnaud’s confident smile in the sponsor lounge. About Marco Bellini’s casual reference to a debt paid off by an anonymous benefactor.

“I need to see Luca’s apartment,” he said.

Sophie blinked. “Why?”

“Because the report just confirmed that Luca Moreau was murdered. And in my experience, the person who kills someone usually visits the scene afterward to make sure nothing was left behind.” He stood, reaching for his phone. “And the brother Marco mentioned — he had records. Transaction records. The kind a suspicious man keeps copies of.”

“You’re going to look for Luca’s secret files.”

“I’m going to look for Luca’s *brother*. The records are just a way to find him.” Jack paused, something Marco had said surfacing in his memory. *The brother is likely coming for Jack, believing his sibling's fatal “accident” was murder.* “Unless he found me first.”

Sophie was already gathering her satchel. “I’m coming with you.”

“That’s not —”

“Either I come with you, or I sit here and worry, which means I don’t sleep and I’m miserable tomorrow. Take me.”

Jack considered arguing. He looked at her face and saw the same stubbornness that had kept her alive in the male-dominated world of race engineering, the same refusal to back down that had made her reach out to Monegasque federation contacts when he’d asked her to dig into the investigation.

“Fine,” he said. “But if we find anything dangerous, you run first and ask questions later.”

“Deal.”

They left the espresso bar together, the FIA report still glowing on Jack’s phone — eleven pages of careful language designed to close a door and bury a truth. But fracture patterns didn’t lie.

That arm was cut.

And whoever cut it had been walking the paddock freely ever since, confident that no one would look too closely. But Jack was looking now. And in Monaco, where every corner hid a friend or an enemy, looking could get a man killed just as easily as driving.

He found Luca Moreau’s address in the team directory on his phone — a small apartment in the old town, above a patisserie on a narrow street that smelled of salt and exhaust. The building was quiet when they arrived, the afternoon sun throwing sharp shadows across the cobblestones.

The door to Luca’s apartment was slightly ajar.

Jack exchanged a glance with Sophie, then pushed it open with his elbow, his body tensed for anything. Inside, the room was chaos — drawers pulled out, papers scattered across the floor, a mattress stripped and slashed, books torn from shelves and dumped in piles.

Someone had been here already.

And they might still be.