Read Chapter 27: Championship Chase

The aero data didn’t lie, but Elise stared at it anyway, willing it to change. Eight tenths of a second per lap. They’d clawed back eight tenths since Silverstone, and Julien had turned that into three consecutive podiums and a win at Spa. The gap in the championship was down to fourteen points with five races left. Fourteen points. A little over half a race win. Every race she’d approached with a surgeon’s precision, finding time where the big teams had none. But Monza was a power track—pure engine, low downforce, no mercy for downforce-heavy machinery that had been made to bite through corners like a wounded predator.

“It’s not enough,” Julien said, reading the data over her shoulder. His fingers brushed the back of her neck as he leaned in, and she felt the familiar spark—the one that had turned a garage into a confessional and a strategy meeting into something far more dangerous. “Ferrari’s going to eat us on the straights.”

“Which is why we’re not fighting them on the straights.” Elise pointed at the chart. “We fight them in the braking zones and under traction out of the chicanes. The rear wing is still too draggy. I want the new element we tested in the wind tunnel yesterday.”

Julien let out a low whistle. “That’s aggressive. We haven’t race-validated it.”

“No. But we validated its numbers. Four points of downforce reduction with minimal drag penalty. It buys us another two tenths on the main straight. If you nurse the tires through the first chicane, you keep that momentum and make it up under braking for the second.”

He was quiet for a moment. The garage hummed around them, engineers tapping at monitors, mechanics talking in low tones. Everyone had learned to move around Elise differently since she'd taken over as interim head of engineering—more sharply, more focused. She’d earned their respect with facts and late nights, with her willingness to get her hands dirty alongside them. But respect could evaporate. She’d learned that from Reynard.

“You’re asking me to over-drive the first sector every lap,” Julien said. “One mistake, and I’m in the wall. Championship’s over.”

“I’m asking you to trust me.” Elise met his eyes. It was the boldest thing she could say, given everything they’d been through. The blackmail, the sabotage, the chaos that had threatened to swallow them both whole. “I know what this car wants to be. It wants to be a scalpel, not a hammer. The Ferrari’s a hammer. We can’t beat a hammer with a hammer.”

Julien broke into a grin. The tension in his shoulders released. “You really are something else, you know that?”

“I’m just an engineer who likes clean data.”

“You’re an engineer who’s going to win me a title.” He squeezed her shoulder, then pulled away, aware of the eyes on them. Their secret was mostly intact—the public narrative saw a driver and his engineer finding chemistry after a rocky start. The nights between races with her hair loose and his arms around her were theirs alone. And they had to stay that way, at least until the champagne sprayed and the contracts were signed.

Monza delivered exactly what the data promised. Julien qualified fifth—better than the car pretended to be—and then drove the most disciplined race Elise had ever seen him drive. He braked deeper than any man had a right to. He carved through the first chicane like a thread through a needle. When the Ferrari ahead of him locked up on lap thirty-nine, Julien was there to collect the position like a debt repaid.

P2. Another fourteen points would have been sweeter, but the podium put a fresh dent in the championship gap. Down to nine now. Nine points. The car was singing.

The celebration in the garage was muted but real. Handshakes. Claps on shoulders. A few engineers looked at Elise with something close to awe. Interim head of engineering. The label still stung, even with the work she’d done. She wasn’t done proving anything yet.

Her phone buzzed as she packed her laptop. The call came from an unknown number, but the area code was London. Team ownership. Her stomach tightened as she answered.

“Elise. It’s Marcus Webb.”

She knew the name—one of the silent partners who held the team’s purse strings. “Mr. Webb. Congratulations on a strong result.”

“That’s why I’m calling.” His voice was smooth, polished, the kind of tone that made deals disappear before you realized you’d lost them. “The board is pleased. But we’re at a crossroads, and I’ll be direct with you: our title sponsor has made their position clear. If we don’t win in Austin, they will not renew. Their marketing team feels we’re not delivering enough return. They want a headline victory on American soil.”

Elise’s blood went cold. “We’re nine points down in the championship with five races left. We can win Austin. We’re trending up.”

“Trending isn’t certainty. We need to show our partners we are a winning outfit, not a scrappy underdog. The commercial reality is unforgiving.” A pause. “I know you’ve been fighting an uphill battle since the... turbulence. I’m sympathetic. But if the sponsor walks, we’re looking at a significant budget shortfall. That shortfall would necessitate restructuring. Our development program for next season would be in jeopardy. And your position—along with several other heads, I’m afraid—would come under review.”

The threat wrapped itself in management speak, but Elise could read between the lines. Win in Austin, or the department she’d fought to rebuild gets dismantled. Her job. Her team’s jobs. Julien’s title hopes surviving on a chassis they couldn’t afford to develop.

“Understood,” she said, keeping her voice level. “We’ll be ready.”

“I’m confident you will be.” Webb ended the call.

Elise stood in the empty office, the phone heavy in her hand. Outside, the Monza paddock was emptying, team trucks rumbling toward the next race. She should find Julien. She should tell him about the pressure, the sponsor threat, Colin’s latest encrypted file she hadn’t decoded yet—the last one, the one that kept blinking at her in the dark.

But that was for later. Austin was three weeks away. Three weeks to unlock something new in the car.

She opened her laptop again. The wind tunnel data was still on the screen. She pulled up the development calendar—her calendar now, her engineering team, her decisions, her risk. What they had at Monza was good. It clawed back two tenths. To win Austin, to run the table in the final five races, they needed more.

She started sketching out the new rear suspension geometry. The design was aggressive. Unproven. If it failed, the car would be undriveable and the season would gutter out. If it worked, it would give Julien the mechanical grip he needed to dance around the high-downforce corners of the Circuit of the Americas.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered the original encrypted chip—the source of so much pain and deception. The one she’d decoded most of. She had one file left on its contents, the last piece of a puzzle that had swallowed her old life whole. She’d put it aside while she focused on the upcoming race. But it kept calling to her, tonight more loudly than ever.

She turned off her laptop and stood.

Tomorrow she would tell Julien about Austin. Tonight, the chassis could wait. Tonight was about finding out who had truly been pulling the strings when her life fell apart—and whether that chess match had ever really ended.

The hotel room was dark when she walked in. Julien was there, sprawled across the bed in his team polo, fast asleep. He’d texted her an hour ago, promising to wait up. He never made it.

She slipped out of her heels and sat on the edge of the bed, watching his chest rise and fall. He’d trusted her with his career, his reputation, his body on the line at three hundred kilometers an hour. And she was still withholding the final truth—not just the blackmail history he already knew, but Reynard’s masterminding of the sabotage. The man who’d tried to kill him.

She reached to stroke his hair, then stopped. No. She pulled out her phone and unlocked the encrypted file app. The last file blinked, waiting.

She typed her passphrase.

In Austin, she would tell him everything. But before that, she needed to know just how deep the betrayal went—and whether the man sleeping beside her had more enemies than he realized.

The file began to decrypt.