Read Chapter 13: Aftermath at Monte Carlo

The engineering office smelled of stale coffee and burnt wiring. Elise stood at the window, arms wrapped around herself, watching the cranes lower yachts into the harbor below. Monaco gleamed in the afternoon sun, all polished decks and champagne-colored light. It felt obscene, somehow. The glittering wealth of this place against the hollow pit in her stomach.

Pierre's bag was still on his desk. She'd checked twice. His laptop was gone, but his notebook lay open to a blank page. The pen beside it had rolled halfway off the desk, as if he'd been interrupted mid-thought. Or mid-sentence.

She hadn't moved in ten minutes.

"Elise."

She didn't turn. Julien's voice was quiet, stripped of its usual edge. She heard him cross the room, felt the weight of his presence behind her.

"Pierre's gone," she said. The words came out flat. "Gone gone. Not 'stepped out for coffee' gone."

"I know. I read your message."

She finally turned. Julien stood in the doorway, crash helmet tucked under his arm, still wearing his sponsor polo from the morning session. There was something different in his face. A set to his jaw that wasn't anger.

"I came straight here," he said. "Before debrief. Before anything."

"That's not like you."

"Nothing about this week is like me." He set the helmet down on a workbench and leaned against it, arms folded. "You've been lying to me since Spain. Probably longer. You've been hiding an investigation, hiding a sister I never knew existed, hiding the fact that someone in this team might be trying to kill me."

Elise opened her mouth. He held up a hand.

"I'm not finished. You think I'm angry. And I am. But anger is a thing I understand. I've built a career on turning anger into speed. What I don't understand is why you thought I wouldn't help you."

"Because you doubted me." The words came out sharper than she intended. "Because a year ago, when I was hired, you told the press I was 'inexperienced' and 'unproven.' You said my data was 'theoretical.' You made it very clear you didn't trust me."

Julien laughed wearily. "I said those things because my engineer before you was asleep at the wheel, and I was frustrated, and I was an idiot. Are we even now?"

Elise blinked. "We're not—that's not a thing you just—"

"I nearly crashed at Barcelona. You gave me a two-stop strategy nobody else would've tried. You saved my race with data and nerve, and I gave you a public compliment, and I meant it." Julien pushed off the workbench and took a step toward her. "Then Marco Tessaro made a comment about your sister. And you went white. And a man I've worked with for three years vanished from this paddock. I'm not a detective, but I know when someone is trying to hurt the people around me."

"People around you?"

"You. Pierre. The team. It's not a coincidence that all of it is happening now." He stopped a few feet away. "I want to find him. And I want to root out whoever is doing this. And I want to do it together."

Elise stared at him. The afternoon light caught the faint scar above his eyebrow, the one from his crash at Silverstone in 2019. She'd read about that crash. She'd studied the data afterward. It had taken him eight months to trust the brakes again.

"Together," she repeated.

"As in, no more secrets between us."

"I can't promise that."

"Why not?"

Elise turned back to the window. The harbor glittered below, a thousand tiny mirrors reflecting a sky that had no business being so blue. She thought about Alain, sick in a hospital bed in Lyon, counting on her. She thought about Madeleine, who had trusted too easily and died for it. She thought about the classified file folder still locked in her apartment, the one with the red seal that had cost Alain his career.

"Because some secrets aren't mine to share," she said quietly. "And some of them are dangerous. Not because I don't trust you, Julien. Because I don't want to hurt you with them."

"Pierre disappeared because of what you know. Marco Tessaro threatened you in front of half the paddock. Whatever secrets you're holding, they're already hurting people."

"Right now, they're true." She turned to face him. "I can offer you the sabotage. I can offer you the tire pressure anomaly, the tamper signature, the brake flaw that killed my sister. I can offer you what I know about Carmine and the note Pierre left. But there are parts of my life that I cannot give you. Not yet. Not unless you're willing to accept that."

Julien was quiet for a long moment. A crew member walked past the open door, glanced in, and quickly moved on.

"Pierre is missing because he got too close to the truth," Julien said finally. "If I'm going to help you find him, I need to know what truth he was chasing."

Elise crossed to Pierre's desk. She picked up the notebook, flipped to the last written page. Pierre's handwriting was tight and precise, the marks of a man who did everything methodically. There, at the bottom of the page, in pencil so faint it was nearly invisible: *Carmine. Logistics manifest. Madrid. Check.*

"Pierre was tracking a manifest from Madrid," she said. "Three weeks before the Spanish Grand Prix. A shipment of custom brake components that never made it to Apollon's inventory."

"Brake components."

"Made to look factory-identical. But with a subtle structural flaw that only shows up under sustained load at high temperature."

Julien's face went still. "Like the flaw on my car at Barcelona. The mid-race tire scare that turned out to be a pressure anomaly."

"Same signature. Same manufacturing process. The tire pressure was a cover—someone modified the pressure sensors to read falsely while the brakes were degrading." Elise tapped the notebook. "Pierre found the manifest. He found the connection between Carmine and the supplier. And then he went missing."

"Carmine." Julien ran a hand through his hair. "He's been with Apollon for a decade. He handles travel, logistics, personnel. He's trusted."

"He's also the only person with access to every team movement, every security pass, every unguarded moment in the paddock." Elise set the notebook down. "I don't have proof yet. But I have a correlation that's hard to ignore."

Julien paced the length of the office. Four steps each way, the movement of a man who was used to solving problems with momentum. "If Carmine is the mole, then me going to management would be signing my own death warrant. He's too embedded."

"Yes."

"So we don't go to management. We investigate quietly, we find Pierre, and we expose Carmine with evidence so solid that management has no choice but to act."

"That was my plan."

"Then why didn't you come to me earlier?"

Elise felt a knot tighten in her chest. She could tell him. She could say *because I'm afraid anyone I bring into this becomes a target,* and it would be true. She could say *because I'm still learning to trust you,* and it would also be true. But she couldn't say the deeper truth. The one that tasted like ash when she thought about it.

*Because the last person I trusted with my investigation was Madeleine, and she died.*

"Because the last time I trusted someone in this sport with a problem," she said carefully, "they didn't survive it."

Julien stopped pacing. He looked at her with an expression she couldn't quite read—not pity, not anger. Something closer to recognition.

"My mother used to say that grief is a stubborn passenger," he said. "You can't force it out of the car. You just have to learn to drive with it."

"That's a terrible metaphor."

"It's the best I've got." He almost smiled. "Seatbelt mandatory."

Despite everything, Elise felt something loosen in her chest. "I'm still not telling you everything."

"I know."

"But I'm telling you enough."

"Yes."

She took a breath, and then another. The air in the office felt lighter somehow. "Carmine runs a tight logistics schedule. He's personally responsible for approving all team travel manifests. That gives him a paper trail. I need access to the secure server where those manifests are stored."

"I have credentials."

"Not enough. That server has tier-three access. Only operations heads and above."

"Carmine's level."

"Exactly."

Julien was quiet for a moment. Then he pulled out his phone. "My sponsor runs a cybersecurity division. I've used them before, for background checks on new team members."

"Julien, that's—"

"An off-the-books resource. I know. But if we're going to do this, we need a way to access Carmine's movements without tripping his security alerts." He typed something into his phone, then looked up. "I'll make a call. Tonight. In the meantime, we have free practice tomorrow, and I need to focus on qualifying. Monaco is a track that punishes daydreaming."

"You want to race normally."

"I want to race like nothing is wrong. Because if Carmine suspects we're onto him, Pierre might be just the beginning." He put the phone in his pocket. "The best way to protect you is to act like nothing has changed."

"And the press briefing?"

"I'll handle Okafor."

"How?"

Julien smiled, and for a moment he looked like the man who'd taken podiums at Monza and Singapore. "I'll tell him you've been advising me on a new chassis setup. It's true. I'll tell him you're the best engineer I've worked with. That's also true." He paused. "I might even convince myself that we're not in mortal danger."

Elise found herself laughing, a small broken sound that surprised her. "You're an idiot."

"I'm a champion. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"Find out at Monaco." He picked up his helmet and walked to the door, then paused. "Elise. I meant what I said. About working together. I may not know all your secrets, but I'm beginning to know you. And that counts for something."

She watched him walk down the corridor, swallowed by the shadows of the paddock. When he was gone, she turned back to Pierre's desk. The notebook sat open, the pencil line still faint but legible.

*Carmine. Logistics manifest. Madrid. Check.*

She'd promised Julien the sabotage. She'd given him the outlines of the investigation. She hadn't told him that Alain was dying. Or that Madeleine had been investigating the same brake manufacturer three years ago, when she died at a test track in Hungary. Or that the classified file Alain had given her contained a name written in capital letters at the bottom, a name she'd been trying to forget.

Marco's name. Before he sold his soul to Red Bull. Before he became the sport's loudest mouth. He'd been there, at the Hungarian test track. He'd signed the safety report that cleared the brakes for the next season.

The same brakes that killed Madeleine.

Elise closed the notebook and slid it into her bag. Outside the window, the harbor lights began to flicker on, chasing away the last of the day's gold. She had a briefing to face, a journalist to outwit, a missing colleague to find.

And now, a partner.

She wasn't sure if Julien would survive the truth. But for the first time in three years, she didn't have to face it alone.