Full Throttle

Chapter 1 First Loser

First Loser

Of all the things Dominic regretted, the oysters were at the top of the list. Not because eating shellfish for lunch in a landlocked city was asking for problems, although it was, but because he was almost certainly about to die.

Oysters probably did rank on his list for a last meal, but only about eighth.

Somewhere between a steak and a cheeseburger with not enough pickles.

He gripped the steering wheel. Rain battered his visor in silver pellets, the sound echoing like gunshots. The crowd was a watercolor of smeared faces. Ahead, a yellow car skidded off the racetrack, and Dominic swerved to avoid clipping its tail. Sweat clung to the nape of his neck.

His radio crackled. “How’s the car?”

“Good,” Dominic said mildly. “She says hi.”

“Hastings.”

Jeremiah, his race engineer, sounded stressed. The older man was either massaging his temples, tapping his foot, or smoking a cigarette. Perhaps a combination. Jeremiah could do all three simultaneously, as Dom had observed. He was a man of many talents.

“A lot of oversteer,” Dominic relented. “I can’t see much.”

That was an understatement. He couldn’t see a bloody thing.

Las Vegas was a blur of red lights, trickling down his window, which was a shame.

Vegas was one of the few circuits that ran through the city, and he would have liked to see Caesar’s Palace.

But who’d expected a thunderstorm in December?

Especially during the last race of the season?

Nobody.

Half the drivers were out. All nine teams were scrambling.

“Take it easy on the corners,” Jeremiah advised. “Manage the tires.”

Dom gripped the wheel. The tires had quit two laps ago; he might as well be driving on floor polish.

Not for the first time, he wished that the final race was being held in Abu Dhabi like it usually was.

Because you know what Abu Dhabi didn’t have?

Rain. Alas, the city also didn’t have outrageous sums in sponsorship money and an American pop icon willing to come out of retirement to sing the national anthem, so here they were.

“Where are we sitting?” Dominic asked.

“P3,” Jeremiah said.

He slid into a turn. “Who’s ahead of me?”

“Capulet.”

He grimaced. Typical. His teammate was annoyingly laid-back, but Cap was fast at three things: driving, eating, and wrestling a shoe out of his dog’s mouth.

Still, Cap had been struggling with his tires that morning, so Dom had expected him to be slower.

Or Cap had claimed to be struggling, at any rate. You just never knew with him.

“And ahead of him?”

Jeremiah paused. “Sinclair.”

Dominic gritted his teeth. Anthony sodding Sinclair. He ought to have guessed. As much as it pained him to admit it, Sinclair was a decent driver. He was also an English lord who came from a wine empire and unironically used phrases like “jolly good,” but hey, there was no accounting for taste.

“How far behind am I?”

“About a one-second gap.” Another pause. Jeremiah was definitely smoking. “Cap is skidding a lot, though.”

Dominic sped through a turn, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Could he catch Cap in the next lap? Probably. Sinclair was a longer shot, but if he could do it, then he’d take the Drivers’ Championship. A fire blazed in his chest.

“I can catch them,” Dominic said.

Jeremiah’s voice was wary. “Just be careful. We can’t afford for Cap to crash out.” The speaker crackled. “Hang on. Your father wants a word.”

“Dominic?” a voice asked.

Dominic floored it down a straight. “Hi, Dad. Nice of you to drop in.”

Vance Hastings was always dropping in. His father had owned Duro Stallion for ten years, and Dom had raced for the team half as long.

Blatant nepotism, obviously, but on his better days he allowed himself to think he’d earned it.

Morning hill sprints. Weekends at the track.

A constant, grueling diet since he was six years old.

Some kids played with Silly Putty, Dominic had played with a cordless drill.

“You’re a lap away,” Vance said. “Just keep focused.”

Dominic took a hard turn. “Copy.”

“We’re going to win this thing.” It sounded like an order. “Just remember, if you’re not first—”

“You’re last,” Dominic finished. “Got it.”

He slammed his foot on the pedal. The car skidded and he swore. The FIA was fucking mad not to call off the race; the conditions were beyond dangerous. But it was the last race of the season, and everything came down to this.

Duro Stallion versus Hydra Auto.

Dominic Hastings versus Anthony Sinclair.

Nobody wanted to call it off. Not until the checkered flag waved.

Spray washed over his dashboard. He could just make out the red glare of Cap’s lights, although it could have also been a one-eyed kraken for all he knew. His car was basically underwater.

“Gap?” Dominic asked.

Jeremiah’s voice was terse. “Less than a second.”

“We could win this whole thing, Jer.”

Jeremiah sighed. “Just watch the road.”

“When I win,” Dominic said, “will you get my name tattooed on your arm?”

His race engineer sounded exasperated. “Hastings.”

“Will you?”

“If you win us a championship,” Jeremiah said tightly, “I’ll get a tattoo of your whole goddamn face. How’s that?”

Dominic grinned. “You’re going to regret that.”

He barreled into a corner, turning the wheel just a little; the rain magnified every movement tenfold. He zipped past Cap, who gave him either a wave or an affectionate middle finger. Impossible to tell in these conditions.

“P2,” Jeremiah said.

Dominic gripped the steering wheel. He’d lost feeling in his fingers several laps ago, and his breath grated his lungs.

Every jolt and bump rattled his teeth. One of his coaches had described driving in the rain like driving with a blindfold.

He’d been wrong, though; it was more like trying to coax a rocket ship through a cluster of comets.

Except that you were blind, and the rocket ship was also on fire.

Sinclair’s lights loomed ahead. They were twin pomegranates, tantalizingly close but just out of reach, like that tale his mother used to read: Le Supplice de Tantale. The Torment of Tantalus. A man forever grasping for a piece of fruit but never quite reaching it.

His frozen fingers tensed on the wheel.

“It’s not worth the risk,” Jeremiah said, anticipating his next thought. “Wait to overtake on the straight.”

A pulse pounded in Dominic’s throat. “Let me try.”

He wouldn’t have risked an overtake like that with Cap, but he’d risk it with Sinclair. Jeremiah exhaled.

“Hastings…”

He could hear the wariness in Jeremiah’s voice. Sinclair’s lights grew closer, flickering like fireflies in the darkness.

“Come on,” Dominic said. “One go.”

Jeremiah sighed. “It’s your goddamn funeral.”

A rush of triumph filled him. “Thank you.”

Dominic slammed down on the pedal. The car shot forward. White spray pelted him, and he took a deep breath, guiding the car into the turn. Inside or outside line? He calculated the angle, where Sinclair would go.

Then Dominic moved.

He shot past Sinclair, and the crowd roared. Some cheered. Some booed. Not that it mattered; adrenaline sang through his body. His radio crackled.

“That’s P1. Bloody well done, mate. Great driving.” Jeremiah tapped keys, presumably checking whether he was about to spin out and die. “Half a lap to go. And it’s all clear air from here, so try to create some distance.”

“Copy.”

Something hit the back of his car.

Dominic swore, fumbling blindly for the steering wheel.

Colors burst: red, green, blue…For a terrifying moment, he wondered if this was it—if he was about to decimate both his spine and career on national television—and then the car stopped moving.

He was still on the track, he realized; he’d just spun.

Sinclair sped past, and a rush of fury filled him as he kicked the car into gear.

Bloody typical of Sinclair. He was like a child in a sandbox; if he couldn’t make the biggest tower, then he’d smash yours to pieces.

“Did you see that?”

“I saw,” Jeremiah said.

The steering wheel dug into his fingers. “What the hell is he doing?”

“The race stewards are looking into it.”

Blood roared in his ears. “He needs to give back the position.”

“Just focus on the drive, Hastings.”

Dominic gritted his teeth. Oh, he would.

He pushed the car until it trembled. He’d lost seconds—precious seconds—but Sinclair’s taillights were back in sight. Good. He was going to make Anthony Sinclair regret ever taking up this sport.

Dominic moved closer. His radio crackled.

“Careful,” Jeremiah warned.

Dominic ignored him, pushing the car faster. Faster. He was drawing level with Sinclair now, close enough that his nose could have kissed the other car. They were hurtling down a straight. The checkered flag loomed in the distance, and the crowd roared as they gunned toward the finish line.

He moved left. Sinclair blocked him.

He swerved right.

Sinclair blocked him again.

White-hot fury filled him. For fuck’s sake. How was he meant to get past Sinclair if the bastard wouldn’t budge a goddamn inch? The finish line hurtled toward them. Fifty meters. Twenty. Dominic veered toward the wall. His heart pounded against his breastbone, so hard that it was painful.

Fine.

Sinclair wouldn’t give him any room?

He’d make room.

Dominic hurtled toward the wall. Jeremiah’s voice was a roar.

“Hastings.”

There was the sound of grinding metal. Dominic closed his eyes.

The car let out a high-pitched whine. Sparks flew from the right side, falling like exploding stars.

The metal frame of the car shuddered as he struck the wall, and then he was rotating, rotating, the world a children’s carousel of colors.

His jaw cracked together. He was going to die.

He was going to die, and all of it would be for nothing, and his last meal would be those bloody oysters, which had honestly been subpar at best—

His car shot forward.

The checkered flag waved.

The crowd let out an ear-splitting roar. Doughy faces melted together, half-obscured in rain. Standing. Cheering. Pain shot through his left wrist, but it was masked by the crushing, all-consuming joy.

“Did we win?” Dominic demanded.

Static filled his earpiece. His car hobbled toward the grandstands.

“Jeremiah?”

“You won,” Jeremiah said flatly.

Dominic closed his eyes. Something swelled in his chest, expanding into an aching balloon of happiness. “So we did it. We have the championship.”

A pause. “No.”

“What?”

“We don’t have it,” Jeremiah said.

Dominic’s mouth was dry. “But I thought…”

“The stewards,” Jeremiah said tonelessly, “are giving you a five-second time penalty. For unsafe driving.”

His chest tightened. “Where does that put us?”

A pause. “Fifth.”

It wasn’t hard to do the math. He’d been agonizing over them for days. Even if Cap placed second, that would mean…

“Sinclair took the championship,” Dominic said, and the words were bitter as coffee grounds.

Jeremiah didn’t respond.

He parked the car. A hubcap came loose, skittering across the track like a nervous animal. He felt light-headed from the force of the race.

They’d lost.

Hydra Auto had taken the Constructors’ Championship.

“Sinclair hit me,” Dominic said. “That’s why I retaliated. He hit me first.”

Sweat trickled down his jaw. There was a long pause.

“We’ll discuss it later,” Jeremiah said.

Dominic removed his helmet. Rain stung his hot cheeks.

His wrist throbbed from yanking on the wheel.

He’d lost the Drivers’ Championship, and he’d cost his team everything.

No trophies. No glory. He stared down at his broken mirror; it was lolling drunkenly to the side, like a flower wilting in the rain.

Anthony Sinclair sprang onto the hood of his car.

The crowd bellowed as he pumped his fist, his grin slicing through the rain.

Slowly, Dominic clambered out of the car, chancing a look toward his team garage.

His father was half-obscured by a large green umbrella, holding a glass of undrunk champagne. Their eyes met.

Vance held his gaze for one heartbeat.

Two.

Dominic looked away. His chest tightened.

No words were necessary. The disappointment was written all over his father’s face.