Chapter Two
Victoria
“Who the fuck are you?” he demands.
It is very, very tempting to turn and run as far away from him as possible, as quickly as I can. He radiates a mixture of anger and menace, and the way he stares at me makes me wonder if he’ll soon be charged with my first-degree murder.
What the hell have I done to him to get this extra-shitty treatment?
Instead of retreating into myself or straight up bolting, I do what I’ve done every time an asshole gets in my face. I stay calm—just the way Ilya did.
“New hire,” I say calmly. “Race engineering support. Intern,” I add on. Make a good impression, Victoria. Good impression, good impression, good impression, good im—“It’s nice to meet you. What the hell happened on the track?”
Shit. My big mouth has been known to get me in trouble.
As soon as the words are out, I wish someone had cut out my tongue right before I got here.
“Excuse me?” Asher says the words slowly.
Slowly enough that I’m almost certain he’s about to produce a scythe from his jacket and cleave me in two.
My initial attraction to him is swiftly and irreversibly masked with absolute horror at myself and at the scorch mark on the ground I’m about to turn into.
“Asher, go inside for debrief, please,” Thomas says, appearing beside me right in the nick of time. “We need to clarify a few things before finalizing data.”
Asher points a finger in my face. “You’re fired,” he snarls.
“Not how it works,” Thomas states. “She answers to Declan and Ilya. You have a problem with her, take it up with them.”
“I want her gone.” That’s Asher’s parting shot before he storms away, tossing his helmet at the wall.
“Well,” Thomas says. “You clearly have a knack for first impressions.”
Fuck.
“Asher set himself up for failure during qualifiers yesterday,” Thomas grouses as we navigate through the maze of the paddock.
I hum in response. I might not have been here, but I watched and analyzed the qualifiers from afar.
My attention is mostly on the winding hallways and open doors leading to training facilities, break rooms, meeting rooms, team rooms…
the paddock is like a mini village. I’ve watched behind the scenes footage of being in a paddock, but seeing something on screen and actually walking through it are two entirely different experiences.
Thomas glances up from his tablet and gives me a narrow-eyed look. “You know how qualifiers are set up, right?” He asks. “It’s split into quarters. Each quarter, 5 of the slowest drivers are cut. Driver placement in qualifiers determines their placement on the grid at the start of the race—”
“I know,” I say tersely. “I’m familiar with Formula One.” I spent a good portion of my childhood watching old tapes of past races, not to mention each live race.
“Ah.” Thomas shrugs. “Well, you’re American, so I’ll just assume you have bare-minimum knowledge and class.”
I stare at him. “Gaston is headquartered in America—”
“And in the UK, with facilities also in Italy,” Thomas says, finally glancing up as we approach two chrome doors. “If you’re American, most people will assume you’re dumb.”
“You’re American too,” I point out. His facial features hint to Asian heritage, but his accent is American.
“Chinese-American,” he corrects. “And I studied abroad for high school and college.”
“I graduated MIT,” I say flatly. With a master’s, at 24 years old.
“Is that supposed to mean something in F1?” Thomas frowns.
“It’s—”
He raises a finger. “As an intern, you’re here to learn, not to teach.
” He nods at the room. “Since we’re not joining the podium ceremony, and won’t be for the foreseeable future, this is usually our Sunday Debrief time.
Only race-essential personnel sit at the big round table you’ll see in there; the rest of us who are allowed in stand against the walls and observe.
Don’t talk unless you have something immensely important to say.
Even then, it’s probably best to wait until afterwards.
” He ushers me inside with a hand on the small of my back.
The testosterone is what slams into me first. There are far too many men crowded into a single room, yet I don’t think that’s what gives the air an oppressive taste.
The sense of doom hovering above the room like a storm cloud can only be attributed to Asher, who’s seated at the table and baring his teeth at anyone who tries to speak to him.
I wonder if the team’s ever considered euthanizing him, since he behaves like a wild animal.
Ilya takes his seat at the roundtable and calls the room to order by sweeping a single glance around. A hush falls over the room.
Ilya begins running through a broad overview of what went right and wrong, then has Declan speak.
Declan is broad-shouldered and permanently tired-looking, with sandy hair that doesn’t quite sit right and an Irish accent so heavy it’s almost difficult to comprehend his words.
He’s the only man scribbling notes in a notebook instead of using a tablet or laptop.
He talks for a few minutes about race strategy and car alterations that play within F1 guidelines.
Then, Gideon Harrow, the technical director who’s known for staying behind the scenes and out of sight, speaks for a few minutes.
When it comes time for Elio to speak, he congratulates the team on a great race, which prompts a few people to hide sardonic smiles.
Asher’s only comment is a growled demand for his car to be fixed—a car I am itching to inspect.
I want to pull all the data available on the car, the driver, and the team.
I need to record and process all of it, and come up with a list of variables that’ll prep my algorithm to function.
I’ll need data pools from every segment of the team—analysts, strategists, engineers, leadership, and drivers.
That’ll require shadowing and observing several people…
something I was in a prime position to do when I was offered a strategy internship.
Now that I’ve been downgraded, it’ll take convincing to get people to acknowledge me.
“Linden,” Ilya says, snapping me out of my thoughts and sending me boomeranging back to the present. Thomas stiffens beside me, casting me a look that transmits, how the fuck does he know your name?
The more pertinent question is why the hell the trackside engineering director is putting me on the spot during a debrief. Is he about to fire me? Oh god, is this my first and last day in F1?
It can’t be. I’ve wanted to be here since I was a child, and I have worked extremely hard for the privilege.
The room falls silent so quickly I can hear my blood rushing in my ears. All eyes turn to me, and I feel like I’m back at the only holiday party I ever attended with my father’s side of the family, where I was stared at and murmured about until I ran home, choking on tears.
Back then, the scrutiny was born of me being his only biological bastard. Now, it’s because I—an intern, a nobody—have been recognized by someone so high up the leadership totem pole, they shouldn’t be aware of my existence.
I can feel Asher’s glare boring into my skull most of all.
If looks could kill, I’d be dead and buried, and nobody would’ve had the strength to attend my funeral for fear that they’d be next.
I can’t understand what prompted his instant and vehement hatred of me, but it’s making me want to blacken his eye and run away like I’m on fire.
“How did our race stack up against your forecasting algorithm?” Ilya asks.
Oh, shit. Our interview was months ago, and back then, I’d told him I expected to have my system ready to go before the season commenced.
That was before I realized that I still needed to gather essential variables, translate them into equations, and train my system on them by feeding it mountains of data.
I’ve done exactly zero of those steps, because it requires two things; being trackside, and having access to aforementioned data in HQ.
I swallow thickly. “I haven’t finished setting up the program.”
The silence that follows is even more pregnant than the first, and this time, it’s entirely due to Ilya’s scrutiny.
“You haven’t finished setting up the program,” Ilya repeats softly, his tone deadly.
No wonder he’s in leadership; he could fell armies with his flat gaze and the softest murmur spoken in that tone.
“This is our first race of the season. We are entirely unprepared to compete in any real way for several glaringly obvious reasons—and many more variables that most people can’t identify.
” He leans forward. “You promised you’d have them identified.
” A loaded pause, during which I feel my cheeks heat with embarrassment.
“Remind me, Linden, why did you get offered a position here… twice?”
I’m lost for words. I’ve never felt like a distasteful experiment placed under the microscope—not even at MIT.
There, by the time I was a junior, people respected what I had to say.
Even professors would take time out of their lives for me.
Doctor Ilya Serov will give me no such privilege.
The way he looks at me is filled with vague disgust.
“I hired you because your thesis was interesting, the work you’ve done so far is impressive, and the system you’re building—should have already built—could potentially have positive impacts.
And because you promised me you’d be the first one in and last one out.
” He slowly, so slowly tilts his head to the side.
“Where were you during this week’s setup? ”
Seeing to a family emergency. I have a feeling if I say those words out loud, if I say anything right now, I’ll be fired before I can blink. So, I stand still in humiliating silence, wishing that the wall at my back would swallow me whole and save me from this disgrace.
“Nowhere to be seen,” Ilya answers for me.
“So, you promised me a program, and are yet to deliver. You promised me punctuality, and you fell short. If I’m not mistaken, you were the very last one in.
” He gives his head a subtle shake filled with disappointment.
“Have you at least started gathering data for your program?”
“I haven’t,” I whisper.
“Because you decided that being late for the first Grand Prix of the season was the best course of action.” Ilya nods, as if he understands perfectly.
The worst part is, I don’t think he’s going out of his way to humiliate me—and everything he’s said is right.
My first real day on the job is an immense fuckup.
I’ve already made an enemy of the driver I’m assigned to, nobody likes me, and I haven’t the faintest clue how I’ll actually go about finishing my program—not without support from the team.
Or, at the very least, people being willing to talk to me…
which I don’t think they will be after this spectacle.
“Now, it’s time for you to be the first one out,” Ilya says dismissively.
“Leave. Do what you were hired to do.” He chuckles mirthlessly.
“If you actually can. When you have your first report ready, we’ll talk.
For now, I think you should spend briefing times on your laptop or tablet. ” He waves a hand.
Asher doesn’t even try to hide his laugh of amusement. He really must despise me to be so happy at my slow, painful demise.
I swallow, feeling unbearably close to crying. But if I do that now, as the only woman in this room and one of the few women in F1, I’ll invite even more doubt and misogyny to my doorstep.
Ears burning, eyes stinging, I turn and quietly leave.