Chapter 36
RED FLAG: RACE STOPPED
Morning comes too fast, and I internally groan because I don’t want our night of celebration to end.
Christin is curled beside me when I awaken. I simply watch her, the quiet rise and fall of her breathing grounding something in me that Silverstone couldn’t shake loose yesterday.
For most of my life, winning felt like the only way to elicit approval. Acknowledgment that I’d earned my place for one more day. One more conversation.
But loving Christin made me realize that glory is fleeting. What is worth the effort is love. She made me fight for it and become a better man because of it.
I think about yesterday, standing in front of her father. Hearing him tell me to make it count. I thought he meant the race because that’s what his crew used to say to him. Now I know better.
It was to make this count. This second chance I somehow earned.
And God help me, I never want her to regret giving it to me.
We leave together, hand in hand, to head to the debriefing.
As we move through the lobby of the Whittlebury Hall Hotel, the low hum of race weekend still lingers in the air. Crew from other teams walk by us. There are more than a few nods of acknowledgment mingled with people stopping us to congratulate the team on yesterday’s win.
It feels normal. Until I feel a chill in the air—a pressure I haven’t experienced in years. It’s sudden and unrelenting. My hand tightens around Christin’s instinctively.
She glances at me, brows drawing together. “Leo?”
I don’t answer. Because I can’t. I already see the threat.
He’s standing just before the exit, acting like the space should revolve around him. Just like he always has. Everything in me goes cold when I see him in my space. My world.
I murmur, “My father’s here.”
Her entire body stiffens like I’ve just told her someone is about to walk in and break me for no reason.
Instead, her focus shifts to the man waiting. Alfred Hawthorne, my father.
He wears the same expression he always does—as if the hotel, the people in it, and the world itself all fall short of his standards.
Like he’s better than anyone in his space simply by showing his presence.
Even from across the lobby, I can tell he’s still the same cold, rigid man from my childhood.
I should be surprised he looks exactly the same as he did when I left home at eighteen, but men like him don’t change. They’re merely suspended in time until they die or become irrelevant. Only at this moment, I glimpse something else on his face.
Expectation.
Before I can urge Christin to escape out a side exit, he’s headed toward us, snapping out my name. “Leo!”
Long-suppressed training roots me in place.
Christin squeezes my fingers. The action isn’t missed by my father, judging by the way his eyes drop to them before his lip curls with disgust. Years of his contemptuous conditioning hold me there before something inside me snaps.
The fear I spent my entire childhood feeling burns away, leaving nothing behind but anger.
When he’s in front of us, he dismisses Christin by saying, “I’d like to speak with my son. Alone.”
But she doesn’t let go of me. Not even for a second. “No. I don’t think so.”
His face turns puce. He looks like he’s about to rip into her when she steps closer to me, supporting me. But her words give me untold strength. “What you have to say to Leo, you can say in front of me, or you can leave. Those are your choices.”
He sneers at her like she’s inconsequential when in my world, she’s the only thing that matters. Still, he ignores her and demands, “You’re coming home.”
No preamble. Just Alfred Hawthorne commanding in the exact same tone as if a decade hasn’t passed since I last saw him.
I don’t speak, which infuriates him. He lashes out, “You’ve embarrassed this family long enough.”
That’s when my heart catches up to my mouth and I retort, “What family?”
He ignores my insult and plows on. “You besmirched our good name for what? A hobby?”
“Racing is not a hobby,” I growl.
For just a moment, I’m transported back into my father’s study where he’s reprimanding me.
“You’ve never been exceptional, Leo. Consistent, perhaps. But not exceptional.”
The words sink into the anatomy of my cells. It’s then I realize I’ll never be free so long as I live this life.
I endeavor to endure another lecture enumerating how I’m an embarrassment to my family. My father doesn’t disappoint me. “You don’t lead; you follow. You always have. That’s why your brother will inherit everything,” he adds. “Because he understands what it means to be more than adequate.”
The memory slams me back into the present so hard it almost knocks me down. I stare at him, not saying a word. Still, he’s contemplating me like I’m someone he can snap his fingers at to get in line.
“You’re coming home,” he repeats.
“No, I don’t think I will. Thank you very much,” I say.
Though my words are polite, their very dismissiveness insults him. But he refuses to let me go despite his irritation. “You don’t seem to understand,” he says. “Your brother is dead. Your sister-in-law and nephew as well.”
Christin gasps. That’s the only sound I recognize in a world that has stopped spinning.
“What?” The word is a breath that escapes my parted lips. “How?”
“A car accident with an out-of-control driver,” he says, tone flat. “No doubt, the other driver was doing something foolish, like your bloody racing.”
My stomach curdles. I try to make sense of what he’s saying. Albert is dead. My nephew is gone. I stagger back a half step when the realization fully hits. Christin’s hand tightens around mine, anchoring me before I can completely lose my footing.
“You will come back,” my father sneers, like that’s the only part of this that matters. “There are responsibilities to assume.”
Responsibilities. His oldest son and his family perished and he’s not here to discuss grief or mourning. Nothing so mundane as humanity. Just the expectation that I’ll give up my life to continue the Hawthorne line.
My vision blurs at the edges, something violent and suffocating rising in my chest. For a second, I think I’m going to pass out until I hear Christin snap, “You don’t get to do this.”
Her voice cuts through the fog I was under.
I turn slightly, barely cognizant of Christin dropping my hand.
It isn’t until she steps forward, putting herself between me and my father without hesitation, that I realize she’s shielding me.
Her voice rises when she rants, “You don’t get to show up after ten years and issue orders like he’s still under your control.
You sure as hell don’t get to deliver news about his brother and his family like that. ”
God, I’ve never loved her more. It makes me want to tear my father apart when her defense of me causes his cold gaze to land on her. “And who do you think you are?”
“Someone who actually cares whether he’s okay,” she fires back.
A hand settles on my shoulder, supporting me. I glance to the side to see Lewis Porter step up, flanking my right side. His presence is solid in a way that feels completely different from Christin’s. It’s almost paternal.
“I think you’ve said enough. It’s time for you to leave. Leo will be in touch,” Lewis grits out.
My father’s expression tightens before he snarls, “This doesn’t concern you.”
“It does now since you’ve threatened my family.”
It’s in the silence that I see and hear them. Cameras. The never-ending sound of shots being taken somewhere around one thousand times per minute. The paparazzi.
Of course this would become something brutally public before I can even assess it privately.
My father glances past us briefly, noticing it as well. Then his attention returns to me. “You will come home and assume your duties. This is not optional.”
I stare at him, really assess him. And I realize I don’t want what he’s trying to hand me. I have the only thing in the whole world that matters staring my father down, doing everything possible to protect me.
“No,” I say more forcefully.
Something in his expression twists. “We’ll see about that,” he says menacingly.
He turns and storms off.
The second he departs, I turn to Christin to say we should leave, but suddenly we’re surrounded by cameras. Reporters call out questions. Questions I don’t have answers to because I can’t breathe.
Because my brother has died.
We weren’t even in touch, but finding out from my father like it’s nothing? Like his death is a small inconvenience?
I’m shattered.
Christin spins before moving to my left side. Her arm slides around my waist. She ushers me back to the lift as her father follows. “I’m here. I’ll call Dario and tell him to get back to the hotel. We’ll figure this out together. Okay, Leo?”
My head turns in her direction, my mouth opens, but the words die before they escape my lips. The look of love and concern on her face breaks through to me. My head drops forward slightly, a sound erupting from me that’s rough and uneven. “I can’t believe Albert’s gone.”
Christin’s grip tightens. “I know,” she says quietly.
I let someone else hold the weight of that announcement with me. The fact that, by this afternoon, the confrontation with my father will be everywhere. That my world has turned from the best night of my life to this.
I can’t escape this. This is truly happening.
And it hurts like hell.