Chapter 13
Fia
Livie handed me a headset as I leaned against the winner’s box barrier, trying not to look like I was waiting for anyone in particular.
Journalists were already eyeing the box where the winners would pull in, even though the race hadn’t started.
Their brows lifted at my presence. I didn’t blame them.
Zolt had said — loudly, in English — that I should wait for him at the winner’s box. Like he owned the podium.
Like he owned me.
Our team director had nodded, more to appease him than because it made sense.
In the four races we’d had so far, Zolt had been on the podium once. Third place in Japan. Today, in Malaysia, he’d qualified first. He implied to our team that because he’d raced on this track with MotoBike, he knew it intimately and was going to win.
He looked hurt by my eye roll, but it was all an act because that cockiness turned me on more than I would willingly admit.
But the more he spoke in the pit box, the more I realised… he knew English far better than I’d expected.
“Why am I here?” I asked Livie the second she attached her walkie-talkie to her belt.
“Because your racer’s an asshole,” she said, pulling the pen cap off with her teeth before scribbling on her clipboard. “If he doesn’t win, I’d be so embarrassed if I were him.”
I felt a twinge of discomfort and rolled my shoulders back. He would win.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Why am I in Veltar?”
She frowned, stopped writing, and pulled the cap from between her teeth. “Because it’s your placement. Are you on about switching teams?”
“I mean, no—”
“Because Everly already asked about that. Not particularly nicely, either.”
“Oh?”
“She threatened to release a clip of Dickson being rude to a hotel manager. Told me she would Photoshop a tear in as well.”
I laughed. Yeah, that was my sister, alright.
“I don’t know what is going on there, but she despises Zolt,” she said and laughed. “And you don’t seem heartbroken, so what’s going on?” She herded me into one of the corners, far from the barrier for the press.
“Nothing. Nothing is going on.”
She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t help you if you’re not honest.”
“I’m just moving on.”
Her brows rose. “You look pretty pally with Henrik.”
We’d gone for a drink at the last two races. Purely platonic. He wanted help with his English.
“Relationships in teams are frowned upon,” I reminded her. “So why haven’t you moved me as Everly asked?”
She shook her head, biting down a laugh, and raised her left hand to show a sparkling engagement and wedding ring. “You forget who you’re talking to.”
The roar of bikes sounded in the distance as the warm-up lap started, my attention stolen by the large screens opposite the track.
Zolt, in first place, zoomed along the track ahead of everyone else.
“If I were to move you now, you’d be on the backbench for your entire placement,” she continued, the loud revs second-nature to her . “Every other team already has a translator. And you’re better than that. I need someone who speaks Hungarian and Italian for your team.”
“Zolt doesn’t need a translator,” I argued.
Her eyes narrowed. “He does.”
“He speaks it well. He understands nearly everything that’s said to him.”
Even as I said it, I recalled how he thought Livie had said I could ask him to remove his shirt. But knowing what I did now, that could have been a wind-up.
Her expression didn’t budge. “No, he doesn’t. When I meet with him, it’s painful. And he can’t talk back very well. For the press, and with the potential he has, he needs to understand perfectly.”
I shrugged. I supposed.
“And he reminds me of my husband,” she sighed.
“The pre-me him. He wants to push every boundary until it breaks. And with you translating… I know you’ll go to certain lengths to ensure he doesn’t make himself look like a tit.
” She paused, laughter teasing at the edge of her lips. “What with him being family now.”
I slapped her arm lightly, and she laughed, exclaiming how she was joking.
On the screens, the racers had all returned to the starting line, poised and ready to go. The second the lights went out, they were off, and, even though we were half the track away, I winced before pulling my headphones out of my back pocket.
Livie chuckled, then abruptly stopped when she looked over my shoulder at my phone. “No. Please tell me you don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
She shook her head, eyes intent on the screens. “You listen to Nix’s commentary for the race?”
I laughed, one earpiece already in. “Sorry, I can’t hear you over your husband’s hilarious one-liners.”
She rolled her eyes with a fond smile. “Just don’t tell him that. He’ll never stop gloating.”
Zolt had handled the first three corners with ease, his bike almost taking off, it was so weightless. He’d managed a gap of 0.5 seconds in no time, and I understood the cockiness of him wanting me in the winner’s box. We weren’t even a minute in, and I knew it too: He was going to win.
And he wanted me as his prize.
My whole body clenched at the idea, at the forbidden need in my core. I leaned against the barrier again, crossing my ankles, hardly listening to Nix and his co-commentator, just focused on Zoltán’s leathered soul on that bike, eating the ground like it was nothing.
He’d won MotoBike. I knew he was good.
He’d just never raced on most of the StormSprint tracks.
And with all of those injuries he was still recovering from… he shouldn’t be pushing himself. I didn’t even think he should be racing .
Everything I’d learned about his crash throughout my translations made me want to protect him.
On impact with the ground, his helmet had cracked open.
He’d broken ribs, had multiple small bleeds on the brain, and was in a medically induced coma for a week.
He had to have surgery on his collarbone and spine to put him back together.
And that was just the physical damage.
But I felt guilty even thinking about the rest. It delved deep into his psyche with the therapy that accompanied his treatment, the anxiety he felt, and the continuous pain he couldn’t escape in the months after.
And yet two years later, here he was, on a bike like it had been nothing. Winning a race in StormSprint.
Even Nix sounded impressed in my ears, and he didn’t know the half of it. “The man rides like the finish line owes him money. He’s slicing through those corners like he has something to prove today.”
His co-commentator laughed and briefly explained how Zolt’s racing in the four previous races wasn’t spectacular, but there was excitement in the air.
This was what people wanted — the comeback story. The man who had been in the ICU, winning in a brand new championship. And not just by a millisecond. By a 2.5-second gap on lap seven.
But, still, I felt a shiver of unease slowly creeping up my back. He was so fast. He almost blurred against his surroundings as he whizzed past us.
Normally, that gave me a thrill.
I didn’t worry about the racers. I hardly even worried about Luca.
The knot in my stomach tied itself tighter with every corner, every curve, every rotation of his bike.
I started counting how long it took him to ride each lap, praying we were at the end of the race every time I opened my eyes.
But we weren’t. His wheels could turn at the speed of light, and yet we were going in slow motion. Everything buzzed — my headset, the crowd, my own pulse — and my feet were the only thing keeping me tethered to this plane.
My stomach dropped, gliding, like a dip on a roller coaster. As if I were going down a sharp decline at the speed he was going.
No, that wasn’t true. No rollercoaster went as quickly as he did.
On the screens, it briefly showed the speed of every racer, and Zolt had the fastest lap every single time.
He was out for blood.
There was one second he turned the corner, his knee skidding along the tarmac, he leaned so far over, and then he was straight up, and then he veered. The bike stuttered, rear wheel criss-crossing like it had a mind of its own, as Nix’s co-presenter exclaimed that he was ‘wobbling.’
The back wheel skipped — the bike whipped sideways, skidded, bucked, and I stopped breathing.
He could save it. He could straighten. He could—
But it was like he wasn’t even trying. As if he were there for the ride and the crash.
Then he was on the green, then gravel was spraying, and the bike was on its side, Zolt sliding the other way.
“Shit,” Livie shouted, but I was hardly hearing her.
“And there it is. From absolute control to chaos in half a heartbeat,” Nix said in my ear.
My body felt frozen — then burning. Legs leaden, throat dry. And then I was running, pushing past journalists, ignoring Livie’s shout.
We were close enough to see it unfold. Close enough to run. If he was in pain—if he was disoriented—he couldn’t translate. He shouldn’t have to. He needed me there.
The worst part, though, was that he was just lying there, next to his bike. No movement. When I saw him on the tarmac, through the heads of the crowd, I nearly paused, but my feet tripped over each other as I pushed through the gawking onlookers.
There had been worse crashes. Worse crashes in that race. Three had gone down on the seventh corner, and one had hobbled away, but… he had skidded. Zolt’s hadn’t looked as bad.
But he still wasn’t moving.
Medics rushed forward as I pushed the standing crowd out of my way.
“Got to be a mechanical fault, right? Not — I mean, he was on the straight. The bike just went—”
But I didn’t get to hear if Nix responded because I was at the one barrier I hadn’t yet crossed.
“Excuse me,” I called, trying to be polite to the staff that manned the gates to the track. “Get out of the fucking way!”
I didn’t have the patience.
The men in high-vis removed the bike, and then I was arguing with someone while trying to keep my eyes on the scene on the screen above me.
“I work here!” I shouted, showing my lanyard.