Chapter 36
Travis
I double check my rental car’s GPS to make sure I’m going in the right direction. I’ve been traveling on this isolated road for nearly thirty minutes.
The navigation system tells me that I have another ten minutes before arriving at my destination. My hands squeeze the steering wheel.
Only a handful of people know why I’m in Italy instead of on my flight to Austria for my next Grand Prix. Hours after winning in Barcelona, I received another fucked-up note. This one was a picture of my wrecked car in Monaco with the words:
Did you think this was an accident?
Since the note was left among my belongings in the paddock, it had to have come from someone with easy access.
With over a thousand people on the Amato racing team alone, not to mention the extraneous reporters, track staff, agents, and publicists who pass through the paddock on race day, it could’ve been anyone.
Since then, my Uncle Brutus has made contact with Luciano Farina.
He’s said he wants to meet with me. Which is why I’m in Italy.
“Dad,” I answer the call through the car’s Bluetooth system.
“Are you there yet?”
I drop my gaze to the GPS again. “Seven minutes.”
“I don’t like you going by yourself,” Dad says, his voice sounding grim.
“I’m not alone,” I remind him. My family’s security team can pick out my location right down to within a few feet.
“You know what I mean. What if it’s a set up and no one can get to you in time?”
It’s taken me until now to recognize the tone of fear in my father’s voice. Now that I’m close to becoming a father myself, I understand it a hell of a lot more.
“This isn’t a set up,” I tell my dad. “Farina wants to tell me something in person.”
“Are you sure he’s not the one making these threats?”
“Uncle Brutus checked that when he found Farina.”
“I don’t like it.”
The nervousness in my dad’s voice is the only reason I don’t tell him I know what I’m doing.
“It’ll be over soon.”
A second later the GPS beeps, telling me I’m less than a minute out.
“I’m here,” I respond. “I’ll text when I’m done.”
“Call,” he insists. “Love you. Be safe.”
I make a right turn off of the main gravel road, which is surrounded by forest, onto a long driveway. The asphalt delivers me to a large, two-toned brick and stone house.
The house sits at around six thousand square feet, a huge wraparound front porch and four massive windows in which the main door sits in between.
Out of my car, I glance around at the spread of nature and quiet that surrounds the home. In the distance, I can hear flowing water and the songs of birds in the trees.
The sound of the wooden door opening catches my attention. A woman dressed in white scrubs with a light blue badge clipped to her shirt pocket stands there, awaiting my approach.
My stomach tightens in anticipation. I’ve never seen this woman before but the badge on her shirt says that she’s some sort of nurse.
“Mr. Townsend?” she asks in accented English.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Farina has been waiting for you,” she confirms. “Please come inside.”
A medicinal odor mixed with a heaviness in the air pummels my senses as soon as I close the door behind me. While the outside looks serene, slightly majestic, the inside is a different story.
The entryway leads down the hall to a kitchen where I observe two people, dressed in scrubs talking, while another healthcare worker sits at a dining table, assisting a person in a wheelchair as they eat.
To my right is a small study or TV room. Two more people sit in it watching television, a man, in scrubs as well, sits in between them commenting on what’s happening on the screen and asking for their input.
Their replies are murmured words or simple nods of their heads. Looking away, I notice that the wall to my right there’s a whiteboard. On it is a schedule of times, names, and lists of medications.
What stands out is the third name on the schedule. Farina, L.
“Excuse me?” I ask the woman who welcomed me at the door. “What is this place?”
Her brows knit together. “You weren’t told?”
I shake my head. “I was given an address and told that Luciano Farina wanted to speak with me. But that can’t be ri—”
“Yes, that is correct,” she says. “This is a private facility.”
I glance around again, seeing everything anew.
“Facility,” I repeat. “As in a nursing home?”
She gives me a tight smile. “Perhaps, I should allow Mr. Farina to explain. He has been prepared for your arrival. Allow me to show you to him.”
My mind can’t conceive of what I’m about to walk into. All around me, as I follow the nurse to the second floor, are signs and sights of illness.
I can’t conceive of Luciano Farina needing to be in a place like this. Not unless something severe happened to him after he retired.
The nurse knocks on an opened door. She holds out a hand for me to wait.
“Luciano, your guest is here to see you,” she says, her voice pitching higher. “Can he come in? Are you prepared to see him?”
“Y-Y-es,” comes a reply. It sounds nothing like the Farina I know.
She waves me in, and I enter the large bedroom. “They’ll both see you now.”
“They?”
At the center is a made-up bed on which a man I don’t recognize sits. The left side of the room is a half-empty bookshelf, while the right side houses a large window that looks out onto a stream among the trees.
It must be the same stream of water I heard before entering the house.
Luciano sits in a cushioned chair in front of the window, staring out of it.
“Will you be all right?” the nurse asks him.
He nods.
It’s not until she closes the door behind me that he finally turns to look at me. He’s dressed in an oversized grey sweatsuit, a blanket covering his lap.
My mind fills with the last time I saw Luciano. It was the day he won the championship. The way he looked larger than life as he stood on top of the podium, spraying champagne and cheering for his win is a complete contrast from the man before me now.
“Sit,” he says, his voice low.
I glance at the other man who doesn’t move before striding to the chair opposite him and taking a seat.
“I’m Ciro Russo, Luciano’s health advocate and legal counsel. I’m here just in case he needs help explaining.”
I nod and look at Luciano. “You wanted to speak with me.”
He frowns as he looks around this small space. “This is my room.”
A far cry from the star-studded life he lived in Monte-Carlo.
“Huntington’s disease,” he says.
The confusion must show on my face, because without me asking he elaborates, “Diagnosed more than two years ago.”
“Wait …” Two years ago, Farina was still on the grid, racing.
He nods.
“Explain.”
His eyes drift toward the window again. I don’t know much about Huntington’s disease, but I wonder if he’s having difficulty putting his thoughts into words.
“I started having symptoms a while ago. Shaking hands.” He holds up his trembling hands for me to see. “When I couldn’t ignore it anymore, I went to a private doctor. He diagnosed me.”
He pauses for a long time, looking back out of the window.
“He has difficulty speaking,” Russo says. “I’ll take it from here.” He squeezes Farina’s shoulder.
“He never told anyone,” he explains. “If he would’ve told anyone at Maxim …”
“He would’ve been out.”
Farina drops his head when I look back at him.
“Luciano hid it for as long as he could, telling only his doctors who gave him medications to help deal with the symptoms. It worked for a while, but as the stress of the season continued, the disease worsened.”
“You put your life on the line,” I say to Luciano. “You put our lives on the line. It wasn’t just you on that damn track.”
He flinches as he faces me.
There’s a hollowness in his eyes. The stars of that championship win are long gone. The thrill of racing looks to have never even passed his way.
I should feel some sympathy for him given his current state, but I think about Alyssia and what she suffered.
The selfishness of others cost her parents their lives, almost hers, and a lifetime of trauma and grief.
Luciano’s self-centered behavior could’ve cost any of the other drivers the same type of pain.
“It was my last season,” he suddenly says. “Ten years in the sport, I wanted a championship.” His voice wobbles, and I think the cause is part emotion and part illness.
“How did you win?” I ask, my voice coming out harsh.
His cloudy eyes drop away.
“The officiant,” Russo picks up for him. “Luciano told me that the officiant that made the call in the last race of the season owed a few debts. In exchange for money, throughout the season he was able to …” he clears his throat, “overlook a few of the regulations.”
“Which is why he was able to stay tied with me throughout the season,” I say, not ask. Luciano had always been a top contender, but he’d performed better than ever in his final season, which is unusual in this sport.
He also didn’t have a better car than mine.
Cheating his how he made his victory possible. My stomach rumbles in disgust.
“After he retired, he fell into a deep depression which made his illness worse,” Russo continues. “None of his exes or his kids want anything to do with him. He has no other family.”
I snort.
Couldn’t have happened to a better guy.
“Why are you telling all of this? Why did you want me to come here?” I rise to my feet.
Luciano looks back at me. “I wasn’t the only one cheating last season,” he says.
I narrow my eyes.
“Throughout the season, I would receive notes out of nowhere telling me updates made to your car before a race.”
“My car?” I point to my chest, my voice filled with incredulity.
Car updates are never revealed to the public until race day. That information is kept top secret. Hell, sometimes even from the drivers.
“Someone wanted you to lose,” Luciano says.
“No shit,” I scoff. “What about your officiant friend?”
Shaking his head, he opens and closes his mouth a few times.