Read Chapter 14: Midfield Danger

The roar of Julien’s Mercedes engine was a familiar shriek, but Elise’s eyes weren’t on him. They were on the rear of the Ferrari ahead, a car she’d watched for the past three laps with growing unease.

“Leclerc’s rear-left is cycling,” she murmured into the headset, her voice clipped. “He’s getting graining. Badly. Every time he exits Mirabeau it’s hopping.”

“He’s a second off his best,” Julien replied, his voice calm, unhurried—the voice of a man dancing on the knife’s edge of a street circuit. “I’m catching him.”

“I know. That’s the problem.” Elise’s fingers hovered over the telemetry screen, tracing the cascading data. The tire’s surface temperature was spiking then plummeting in a jagged sawtooth pattern. “He’s going to lose it. Not now—at the chicane. He’s overdriving the entry, trying to make up time.”

“I can see that.”

“You’re going to be right behind him. If he snaps, you’ll have nowhere to go.”

A pause. “What do you suggest I do? Pull over and wave him past?”

“No. I want you to give him room. A lot of room. Back off by two seconds before the entry, let him have his moment. If he makes it through, you eat the gap on the tunnel straight. If he doesn’t…” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to.

Another pause, longer this time. Through the radio, she could hear him breathe, feel the gears turning behind his visor. In the old days, the days before Spain, he would have laughed. *Trust me, Elise.* That was what he used to say, before he had to swallow his pride on pit wall.

But this was the new Julien. The Julien who had walked into the engineering office and offered her his alliance.

“Two seconds is a lifetime,” he said. But his voice wasn’t dismissive. It was calculating. He was considering it.

“It’s a half-second in Monaco traffic. Trust me, Julien.”

*Trust me.* The words hung between them. He’d said them to her once, years ago, in front of a hundred journalists and cameras. He’d made it sound fake. Now, she was the one saying them.

She watched his blue dot on the tracker drift back, subtly, unthreateningly. He was giving the Ferrari its space. She leaned closer to the screen, her heartbeat ticking in her throat.

“He’s two-tenths off his normal telemetry entering the chicane,” she said, breathless. “He’s pushing. He’s pushing. He’s cross-threading the braking zone, the car is sliding….”

The Ferrari snapped. Not dramatically—not a violent spin that ripped debris across the track. It was worse: a sudden wiggle, a rear axle losing its nerve at the most dangerous point on the calendar, the car pirouetting and then slamming its rear wing into the barriers with a sickening, muted *crunch* that echoed through the timing monitors.

The track went yellow. Julien’s blue dot sailed through the chicane, clean as a needle, untroubled, already arcing toward the tunnel ramp.

“Lovely,” Julien said. His voice had a soft, impressed edge. “Like you saw it coming.”

Elise exhaled. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. “Graham’s stopped. They’re going to need a crane. We have time for a cooldown lap before the red flag.”

“Understood.”

The applause came from behind her. She hadn’t noticed the pit wall had fallen silent at some point, everyone’s focus drifting from their own tasks to the drama unfolding on the circuit. Now, team principal Laurent Barbet nodded at her from across the garage, a frown that might be approval carved into his weathered face. Even Pierre’s replacement, a young junior engineer named Coste, looked at her with something other than wariness for the first time.

“Good read, Moreau,” Coste said. Quiet, almost reluctant. But it was there.

Elise allowed herself a smile and turned back to the data. But the moment was short-lived. A stir at the garage entrance caught her eye. A woman in a baggy FIA windbreaker, clipboard in hand, flanked by a man in the dark suit of a federation investigator. They were talking to the marshal at the door. Pointing at her.

“Julien,” Elise said into the headset, keeping her voice even. “When you come in, they’re going to swarm you. Say nothing about Leclerc. Nothing about my radio. We discussed it, and it’s your own observation. Understood?”

A beat. “What’s happening?”

“I’ll handle it. Just stick to the script.”

She unclipped her headset and met the FIA officials at the garage threshold.

“Mademoiselle Moreau?” The woman’s English was crisp, officious. “I am Inspector Renata Vogel. This is Mr. Hale from the technical compliance department. We need to have a conversation regarding your team’s—unusual—awareness of competitor telemetry during this session.”

Elise’s blood went cold, but she kept her expression flat. “I’m sorry, Inspector. I’m not sure I follow.”

“The Ferrari team has filed a complaint,” Vogel said, her tone conveying neither belief nor disbelief. “They allege that your driver was able to anticipate and evade a mechanical failure in their vehicle—a failure that was not visible to the naked eye until it occurred. They believe the information came from an internal source. A data breach. Industrial espionage.”

*Marco.* The thought slammed into her like a wall of water. He wasn’t just threatening her in person—he was threatening her in public, through proxies. The accusation didn’t even have to be true. In the world of Formula One, suspicion was a poison that ate through careers regardless of evidence.

“That’s absurd,” she said. “I was watching the car’s movements on track. It was visibly struggling. Our team isn’t in possession of Ferrari’s telemetry—that would be a breach of protocol and law. You’re welcome to inspect every file, every database, every laptop we operate.”

“We will,” Hale said, his voice flatter. “However, given the allegations, we’ll be conducting a full audit of your team’s communications channels. All of them. Including driver-to-engineer radio transmissions.”

Elise’s stomach twisted. The radio. If they pulled the audio of her conversation with Julien, they’d hear the mathematical precision of her prediction. They’d hear her describe the tire graining patterns in exact detail. It wasn’t evidence of espionage—it was evidence of an exceptional engineer—but it was damning in the court of public opinion. Damning enough to give Carmine and Marco leverage. Damning enough to make her the story.

She looked past Vogel to the pit wall, where Julien had climbed out of the car. His helmet was off, his eyes scanning the garage until they found her. He didn’t need the radio to see the tension in her shoulders. His jaw tightened.

“We have nothing to hide,” she said, meeting the inspector’s gaze. “But I’ll note that the Ferrari allegation comes on the same day their chief engineer—Marco Tessaro—publicly threatened me. I think you’ll find that’s not a coincidence.”

Vogel’s eyebrows rose a fraction. A crack in her bureaucratic armor. “Threatened you?”

“At the Spanish GP. Ask any journalist in the paddock. They have it on tape.” Elise kept her voice level, but her heart was pounding. She was playing her only card. Transparency about Marco’s hostility made her look attacked, not guilty. It was a risk—she hadn’t wanted to make her conflict with Marco public. But cornered cats clawed.

“We will review relevant incidents,” Hale said, making a note. “However, until the audit is complete, Mademoiselle Moreau, you are not permitted to act as primary race engineer for No. 1 car. The team will need a temporary reassignment.”

The words landed like a guillotine. She watched Julien’s face go from concern to fury. He didn’t know what they were saying, but he knew the choreography—the pointing, the clipboard, the official-looking suits. He started walking toward them.

“That’s not acceptable,” Elise said quickly. “The Monaco race is in forty-eight hours. You can’t just—“

“It’s a precaution, not a punishment,” Vogel said. But her eyes were steel. “They were very specific in their accusation, Mademoiselle Moreau. And we take industrial espionage seriously. Very seriously.”

Julien reached her side, still in his fireproofs, sweat beading on his temples. “Elise, what’s going on?”

She looked at him, this man who had once publicly doubted her, who now stood at her shoulder asking questions no one saw him ask before. For a moment, she wanted to tell him everything—all of it, the sister, the investigation, Carmine, Marco, the dying man who held her secrets. She wanted to stop lying to the only person on this grid who seemed willing to trust her.

But behind her, the shadows in the paddock stirred. Alive, silent, watching.

“Nothing,” she said, turning back to the inspectors. “Just a misunderstanding. I’ll clear it up by practice three.”

But the words tasted like ash, and they all knew they weren’t true.