Read Chapter 23: Trust Breach

The knock came at 06:47, which in Elise’s experience meant nothing good ever arrived before seven in the morning in a paddock hotel. She pulled on a hoodie and cracked the door to find Mathis, the team’s PR director, holding a tablet like it was radioactive.

“You need to see this,” he said. “And you need to see it before the FIA statement goes live in forty minutes.”

Elise took the tablet. The screen showed a motorsport news site, headline bold and brutal: *“Former FIA Investigator Elise Moreau Linked to Sabotage Ring – Sources Claim.”* The subheading mentioned her sister’s crash, her audit history, and unnamed team insiders suggesting she had been planting evidence to frame her own driver.

Her stomach dropped. “This is Fischer’s work.”

“It’s your problem, is what it is,” Mathis said flatly. “The team is already fielding calls. The sponsors are nervous.”

“This is bullshit,” Elise said, though her voice came out thinner than she intended. “I have proof. The data chip, the chemical compound, the microphone in the oil filter — I handed all of it to the FIA yesterday. They cleared me.”

“Cleared you internally,” Mathis corrected. “The story hasn’t caught up yet. And by the time it does, the public will have already decided based on this.” He tapped the screen. “You know how this works.”

She knew. She had spent five years in the other seat, watching careers implode in the time between accusation and vindication. The truth never ran as fast as the headline.

“Who’s the source?” Elise asked.

“Anonymous. But the wording is specific.” Mathis scrolled down. “‘Former FIA investigator with a personal vendetta against the sport, whose sister died in a crash nearly identical to the Monaco incidents.’ That language came from someone who knows your file. Someone who worked with you.”

Elise closed her eyes. Fischer. After all this time, he had crawled out of whatever hole he’d been hiding in and decided to finish the job he started when he framed her for the Ferretti audit. The FIA had cleared her name internally yesterday, but that didn’t matter if the media convicted her first.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She ignored it.

“I need to call the federation,” she said. “Push the statement up. Get ahead of the story.”

“Already tried,” Mathis said. “Their legal team wants to review the evidence one more time. They’re worried about exposing the source of the sabotage before they can secure the mole. By the time they finish reviewing, this—” he gestured at the tablet, “—will have run its course.”

A voice came from down the hall. “What’s going on?”

Elise turned to see Julien emerging from his room two doors down, hair wet, shirt half buttoned. He looked from her face to Mathis’s grim expression to the tablet in her hand.

“What happened?” he asked, coming closer.

“Fischer is feeding stories,” Elise said quietly. “He’s painting me as the saboteur. Trying to bury me before the FIA can announce the truth.”

Julien took the tablet from Elise’s hands without asking. She watched his eyes move across the headline, the subheading, the anonymous source quotes. His jaw tightened.

“Mathis, get the legal team on a call in the next half hour,” Julien said, his tone dropping into something command-soft. “I want a response drafted. Not defensive. Offensive. We’re releasing the data chip findings to the press the moment the FIA statement drops. I don’t care what the federation says about timing.”

Mathis blinked. “The FIA asked us to keep that under wraps until they secure the mole. If we release early, we could tip them off.”

“They’re already tipped off,” Julien said flatly. “The microphone in the oil filter proved that. The enemy knows we know. There’s no advantage to silence.” He handed the tablet back to Elise. “We go loud or we go home.”

Mathis looked at her for confirmation. Elise hesitated. For weeks, she had operated in the shadows — the silent investigator, the patient engineer, the woman playing the long game. Going loud meant abandoning the careful strategy that had allowed her to probe the team’s inner circle without suspicion. It meant the mole would know she was hunting them, not just Julien.

But the mole already knew. The microphone had been listening. Whoever had planted it had heard her confess about Fischer yesterday, had heard Julien promise to help bring him down. There was no secrecy left to protect.

“He’s right,” she said. “Release it. All of it. The chip, the compound analysis, the oil filter evidence. I want Fischer’s name attached to everything.”

“We don’t have proof he’s involved,” Mathis pointed out. “Not yet. We have proof the shell company is linked to Tessaro. Fischer’s connection is still circumstantial.”

“Then we make it a matter of public record that the man who blackmailed me is connected to a team with a sabotage operation,” Elise said. “Let the press do what the press does best. They’ll dig until they find the receipts.”

Mathis nodded slowly. “I’ll get ahead of the statement cycle. Give me forty-five minutes.”

He disappeared down the hall, tablet already in hand. Elise stood in the doorway, the hotel corridor empty and quiet except for the hum of the ventilation system. Julien stepped closer, blocking her from view of any eventual camera or prying eye at the end of the hall.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

Elise laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “My former colleague who blackmailed me into taking the blame for my sister’s crash is now trying to frame me for sabotaging you. So no, I’m not okay.”

She said it flatly, but her hands were shaking. Julien noticed. He didn’t reach for her — he knew better by now than to presume physical comfort — but he leaned against the doorframe across from her, putting them at eye level.

“I believe you,” he said. “I need you to hear that. I know what Fischer did. I know why you hid it. And I know this—” he gestured vaguely at the tablet she still held, “—is him trying to win. Trying to make you the story so the real saboteurs stay hidden.”

“If he wins this round, my career is over. The FIA already cleared me, but if the public narrative—” She stopped, throat tight. “I spent five years building my reputation back. One morning of carefully timed leaks and it’s gone. That’s all it takes.”

Julien watched her for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was low and deliberate.

“Do you remember the race in Barcelona last season? The one where my car failed on lap twelve — brakes locked up into turn five?”

Elise frowned. “Yes. You were furious. Thought the team had given you faulty equipment.”

“The press called it a driver error. Said I slowed too late under pressure from Sainz.” Julien shrugged. “I never corrected them. Let them believe what they wanted because I knew the truth — the car was rigged, and I couldn’t prove it. So I sat there in front of God and everyone and ate a mistake I didn’t make.”

He met her eyes. “I hated every second of it. But I survived it, because I knew what the truth was. And I had people who believed me, even if they couldn’t say so publicly.” He paused. “You have that now. Even if the FIA can’t announce it for another day, you have that.”

Elise’s chest tightened. Not from the stress of the morning, but from something else. The realization that Julien — the man who had publicly called her incompetent two seasons ago, the man who had mocked her analytical caution in front of three million viewers — was standing in a hotel corridor at seven in the morning, protecting her from his own team’s PR disaster.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “Stand up to Mathis. Push the release early. You’re taking a risk with your own championship fight by going loud before Monaco.”

“Monaco is already compromised,” Julien said. “Grid penalty, sabotage, listening devices in my engine. The only way I win that race is if the chaos works in my favor. And the only way chaos works in my favor is if I have someone I trust telling me what’s real and what’s noise.” He tilted his head. “That’s you, Elise. Not because you’re a good engineer, but because you’re the only person in this paddock who wants the truth more than she wants to win.”

Elise dropped her gaze. The weight of his words settled somewhere deep in her chest, dislodging a stone she had been carrying since the day her sister died — the refusal to let anyone see her as anything other than clinical, methodical, unaffected.

“When this is over,” she said quietly, “after Monaco. I’ll tell you everything. Not just Fischer and the blackmail. All of it. The Ferretti connection, the audit, what really happened after my sister’s crash. I promised you that, and I meant it.”

“I know you did.” Julien pushed off the doorframe and turned down the hall the way Mathis had gone. Then he paused and looked back. “For what it’s worth? You don’t have to earn my trust back. You already have it. Whatever you tell me when the time comes, I’ll believe it.”

He walked away before she could respond. Elise stood in the doorway, listening to his footsteps fade down the corridor. From the end of the hall came the muffled sound of his voice — Julien calling Mathis, already working the phones on her behalf. No hesitation. No condition. He was all in.

Elise stepped back into her room and closed the door. Her hands were still shaking, but for a different reason now. For the first time in eleven years — since the afternoon the FIA had called her into an interrogation room and asked her to explain the missing brake pressure data — someone had looked at her and decided she was worth protecting.

She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled up the FIA statement draft on her phone, pausing to reread Julien’s words. The media circus would follow. Fischer would fight back. The race at Monaco would be the hardest of her life. But for the first time this season, she didn’t feel like she was racing alone.