Chapter 4
Fia
Livie had warned me that morning over breakfast, wiping porridge from Avia’s face. “I didn’t know Imre followed the team… I’m so sorry.”
There were a few quiet moments whenever the five of us were together, but I was grateful the conversation was over my overnight oats while everyone else was asleep.
I’d told her it was okay. I’d already considered that Imre, my birth father, might be about. I’d expected at most that he’d be a supportive friend for Zoltán, after they worked together at MotoBike. But for Imre to follow Zoltán to work on the same team? That was extreme.
But turning into the Veltar pit box, knowing he would be there, put me on edge.
And then Zoltán being there nearly threw me off the cliff he’d fucked me on.
I needed to get out.
Zoltán didn’t follow me despite his kind gesture, probably because I was so rude to his brother.
When I heard the footsteps behind me down the tunnel, I expected them to belong to him.
Only to turn and see Imre.
Running would be dramatic… but I picked up my pace as casually as I could manage.
He matched mine.
“Zsófia!”
I didn’t stop until we were in the open air by the trailers. It had been so stuffy in the white, windowless tunnel.
And, the last time things had been good between us, I’d been excellent at hide and seek because I’d been four feet tall. Maybe if I were to hide behind one of the trailers, he wouldn’t find me.
He called my name again, and I stopped, stepping back when he tried to come closer. I owed him nothing. Not my time, my energy, my conversation.
He was breathless, running his gloved hand over his bald head as he gathered himself.
“We should talk,” he said in Hungarian, the same soft tone he would hush me with when I scraped my knees in the playground.
“Fine,” I said. “Talk.”
His brows lifted in shock. Or hurt. “In English?”
Language had become emotional currency. When it came to his power over me, he was bankrupt. I wanted that to be true. As the strong thought built my confidence, I also knew by the pinching of my eyes that he had far too much power over me.
I’d rather bite my tongue bloody than let him know he’d gifted me with anything I cherished.
“Yes.” I crossed my arms. “That or French.”
My step-dad’s language. Imre’s jaw tightened.
The roar of qualifying laps sounded further and further away by the second.
“I’m glad to work together,” he said, stiffly putting his hands in his pockets. “We can fix things.”
“This is work, not therapy,” I snapped, appalled that he thought our relationship could be a side project. “Our interactions will be limited. I’m a translator. You’re a mechanic.”
“Reports are translated.”
“I just happen to be excellent at that, thankfully. I’m getting a master’s degree in languages. I won’t need your help.” I breathed in deeply, the anger settling in my chest. “Good thing too, seeing I haven’t had your help in years.”
He looked pained, his brows hanging low on his face, the wrinkles growing across his forehead. “I want to help now. I wanted to help then. Your mother moved you across Europe.”
“You worked across Europe!” He followed another motorbike racing championship. Every time MotoBike raced in England, I waited patiently for some communication, staring out the window, waiting for him to appear unannounced.
He never did.
“Please,” he begged and stepped forward again. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“And now you do?”
He shook his head. “Still don’t. Just know I want to try.”
Try. Fuck off.
“Trying isn’t good enough.”
“Let me prove myself,” he said, back in his mother tongue. “Zsófia, just give me a chance.”
My mind raced. He was right — there would be reports. And with how technical the machinery was, I may need his help with some of the lexicon.
And he would be there in the pit box, on the grid, on the pit lane every race.
But I’d given him a chance only six years ago, and he’d thrown it back in my face by standing me up.
“Don’t tell anyone I’m your daughter,” I demanded. “I have a different last name. No one needs to know.”
He winced but nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is. We can talk in person, but don’t expect Sunday breakfasts.” Every Sunday, we would have breakfast together. He made the best palacsinta—pancakes like I’d never had from anyone else.
“We’re throwing a team party,” he said. “In Hungary. It would mean the world to your nagyi if you’d be there.” My granny. Four years ago, I found out about my grandad’s death two months after the funeral because no one had reached out.
Imre meant for it to be sweet.
It just enriched the guilt in my chest, my breathing hitching.
I’d been an awful granddaughter. I should let it all go. For them.
It wasn’t Nagyi’s fault her son had abandoned me.
“It’s next month,” he added. “You could stay. She’d love to see you. You can bring your sister too.”
And what about my brothers? It was a spiteful thought, because they couldn’t come seeing as the eldest was fourteen and my parents would most definitely not be welcome.
I was surprised enough that Everly was invited.
“If that would make you more comfortable,” he added. “And Zolt will be there.”
“Okay?” I retorted quickly. Why did he add that? It didn’t matter if he was there or not.
But his shoulders relaxed, and he almost went to hug me.
I realised what I’d said.
I had agreed.
And the people pleaser in me couldn’t take it back now that his face suddenly looked twenty years younger than the fifties he was in.
“Thank you,” Imre said, his voice wobbling with sincerity. “Your nagyi will be so happy.”
He pulled me in a tight embrace, and I let him.
Of course, I gave an inch, and he tried to take a mile.
“We could go for dinner—”
“No. The party is the first step.” We weren’t about to bond. “That’s all you get for now.”
There I went again, giving him that glimmer of hope. I couldn’t stop myself.
“Thank you,” he said again, and when he asked me if I wanted to join him going back inside, I told him I needed more fresh air.
Instead, when he left, almost skipping back to the tunnel, I kicked at the gravel ground until stone sprayed around me and screamed, “Fuck!” My voice was lost in the roar of engines.
This was the opposite of what I wanted.
This was my first job. StormSprint had been my dream since forever.
I wanted to be professional, like Livie and Everly. Sometimes our age difference and how stable their lives were made me realise… how much mine wasn’t.
Retching wasn’t drowned out as much as my swears.
Frowning, I turned down one of the aisles between the huge trailers covered in racers and sponsors.
The gross sound of spitting came from around the corner, and there, on some of the steps, sat Zoltán.
Of course.
I rushed to his side to rub his back. It was a warm day in Southern France, but the heat of his leathers radiated from him.
“Are you… okay?” I asked.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded, looking down at his boots.
“Okay then,” I said, glad that I couldn’t actually see the sick. Or smell it.
I would dry heave.
If he didn’t want to give answers, I wasn’t about to ask. To his face, at least. I happened to share a villa with the queen of StormSprint publicity. She knew everything from breakups to blood types.
If he weren’t in the mood for talking, then I wouldn’t push it.
“You?” he called after me in English.
I turned on my heel. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He shrugged and looked up at me. The glow of his skin had dimmed to something dull and ashy. He spat again.
It shouldn’t have been hot. It was.
“You were arguing with someone,” he said, and waved in the direction I’d come. “You were swearing and screaming louder than I’ve ever heard.”
“You say that like—”
“Like I haven’t heard you scream?”
I pouted, trying to think of a retort. “Yes. I’d hardly call what you witnessed a sob.”
He chuckled and stood, holding the railing next to him. “Sure.”
“Sure,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
He didn’t look right. I wanted to reach forward and offer him a hand, but the last time he’d touched me, it hadn’t ended well.
That was a lie.
It hadn’t ended appropriately for the workplace.
“I’ll have to try harder next time,” he said and brushed past me, towards the tunnel.
There he went again with the ‘next time.’
As if it were more than a one-night stand.
“How much of the argument did you hear?” I asked, rushing after him.
“Not much. Couldn’t make out nearly anything you said. Though I heard my name.”
I stopped, and the gravel crunched under his next two steps before he looked over his shoulder.
“Are you going to Imre’s party?”
“Party?” he questioned, and I panicked that I’d mispronounced it. “What party?”
So he’d lied to get me to Hungary. My hands balled, and if Zoltán thought he’d really heard me scream earlier, he was in for a high-pitched treat.
“Oh. Party.” He nodded as if he’d remembered something. “Next month. Yes. Are you?”
“I guess so,” I said. “Do you know him well?”
“I do. He’s… he was really there for me after the… after the crash. He’s closer with my brother, though.”
Yes, Benedek had somehow climbed the ranks of motor sports, shouting about his grandfather at every opportunity, becoming a spokesperson for the Farkas family. Somehow, he still managed to be his brother’s manager.
I wanted to ask, ‘In a fatherly way?’ but I didn’t know if I could cope with the answer.
Imagining my absent father being more paternal to the man I wanted to fold me up like a garden chair… hit a tender spot.
But I had to fill the silence with something.
“So, we’re not going to talk about how you nearly fainted two weeks ago, and now you’re throwing up behind the trailers like a plague-infested rat?”
He groaned, rolled his eyes, and leaned against one of the trailers.
A grinning Luca Mendes looked down at us in last year’s Ciclati leathers.
“So now we talk?”
My brows pinched. “Huh?”
“Now we talk.”
“I don’t… understand.” Was there some new slang I’d missed out on? Had I missed him saying something to me earlier?