Chapter 47 Winning Is Easy
Winning Is Easy
Dominic slumped back, staring at the pile of cardboard boxes.
There were more than he’d anticipated. Boxes of old cameras and plastic medals, comic books and model cars…
He’d even taken several frying pans from the kitchen.
Nothing his father would miss, but things that reminded him of making Sunday morning omelets with his mother.
He wiped his hands on his trousers.
Strange, Dominic thought, that his childhood could be confined to seven cardboard boxes. Even weirder to think there was no trace of him in this house now. Vance had painted over the height marks on the walls, and his father preferred expensive oil paintings to family photographs.
As far as anyone was concerned, Dominic Hastings had never existed in this Parisian flat. He might as well be a ghost.
The front door opened.
Dominic stiffened. The cleaners weren’t scheduled for today. Which meant it could only be one person.
Vance Hastings paused in the doorway. His father wore smart trousers and a polo top, a bag of golf clubs slung over his shoulder. A stack of papers and a fizzy drink balanced precariously in the other arm.
Dominic straightened. “You’re home early.”
“We only played nine holes.” His father surveyed the boxes. “Is this all of it?”
“Yeah.” Dominic dug in his pocket. “Here. You can have this.”
Vance looked at the extended key. Something odd flickered across his father’s face. “Before you go…” He set down the clubs. “We’re dropping Sinclair from the team next year.”
Dominic paused. “Oh.”
“He’s caused too many incidents. The team feels it would be inappropriate to keep him at this stage.”
“I see,” Dominic said slowly, although he didn’t. Why was Vance telling him this? Did his father blame him for Anthony’s outbursts?
Vance shifted. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”
“Right.” Dominic rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. For once, any pithy remark escaped him, so he settled for changing the subject. “I meant to ask. Do you still have Mum’s old photographs? The ones you took down?”
Vance shook his head. “I gave them to a gallery. I’ve had a few places inquire over the years, but I never found a suitable home. Until now.”
“Oh.” Dominic paused. “I thought…”
Something flickered across Vance’s face. “You thought I shoved them in the loft.”
Actually, Dominic had assumed his father had tossed the photographs in the trash, although it didn’t seem kind to say so. “Something like that.”
Vance’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t blame you.
” His father pulled a cloth from his pocket, and surprise flickered through Dom.
Was Vance…nervous? “Look, I haven’t always been a good father.
I pushed you too hard as a child. And recently…
” He mopped at his forehead. “Do you know why I asked you to leave Duro Stallion?”
His racing statistics. The number of cars he’d crashed. Not that Dominic thought about it much. Just every goddamn day of his life. “You told me that Sinclair was the better racer.”
“I lied,” Vance said.
A beat passed. His father pocketed the cloth.
“Have you ever watched your crash in Vegas? When you collided with Sinclair?”
Dominic cleared his throat. “Once.” He’d watched it on YouTube last year, out of morbid curiosity, and immediately wished he hadn’t; his car rotated six times before crashing into the barriers. No wonder he’d smashed up his wrist.
Vance’s dark eyes were steady. “Then you’ll have seen how your car almost flips. But that wasn’t the most dangerous part. Your engine was under severe levels of stress; if you’d pushed it for another thirty seconds, it would have exploded. You could have been trapped in a burning car, upside down.”
Something messy knotted in his chest. “Our race suits are fireproof.”
“Not that fireproof.” Vance looked down at the golf clubs. “Do you know what I did after that race?”
“Dad—”
“I got down on my knees,” Vance said, “and prayed to Allah that you would survive without injury. And after you did, I called our shareholders and told them we were dropping you. With immediate effect.”
“Why?”
“I’d already lost your mother,” Vance said. “I couldn’t lose you too. I’m not proud of what I did, but it was to keep you safe.”
Dominic’s heart pounded. “Bullshit. You couldn’t give a toss the last time that I crashed.”
“Of course I cared.”
“You kept me waiting outside your office. Like a nuisance.”
“Because I needed to compose myself,” Vance said tightly, pressing three fingers to his forehead. “Because I was worried that I’d—”
“That you’d what?”
Vance looked away. “No man wants to cry in front of his son.”
The fizzy drink shifted. Vance moved instinctively to save it, his racer’s reflexes sharp as ever, but the papers scattered across the floor.
Dominic crouched, suddenly glad for the excuse to look elsewhere.
He scanned the pages absently. Checks, NDAs, and…
something called Project Arc? Could that be a French racing team, like the Arc de Triomphe?
“I’ve got it,” Vance said.
He snatched up the remaining papers, stuffing them hastily away in his bag, and Dominic felt something twinge in his chest. Definitely a new racing team. Even now, he couldn’t help but feel a stab of resentment that his father didn’t want him involved.
Dominic cleared his throat. “Look, you don’t have to explain—”
“I told you to quit,” Vance cut in, gripping his mobile. “After your crash with Sinclair last season, I called every team principal and begged them not to hire you. Whatever it took. Threats, bribery, favors…And all of them listened. Except one.”
“Ranya,” Dominic surmised.
Vance nodded. “I wasn’t so different from you, you know.
When I met Ranya, I was twenty-five and at the top of my game.
I thought I was invincible. And then a year later, she had that crash and it changed everything.
I couldn’t even get in a car for six months.
Just the smell of gasoline…” His throat worked.
“I retired that year. Started as an assistant manager instead.”
“You really liked her.”
“Something like that,” Vance said with a small smile, echoing his words.
“I thought you hated each other.” God only knew they acted like it.
Vance set down the phone. “It’s not…” He hesitated. “She blamed me for the article that destroyed her career. The photographer who took the picture…I had history with him. The week before the accident, I’d mouthed off at him in a pub. Told him to go fuck himself.”
“So he took that picture.”
Vance’s mouth tightened. “The bastard knew that the easiest way to get to me was to go after the woman that I—” He broke off. Loved, Dominic realized with a pang. That’s what his father had been about to say. “Anyway, I sued the idiot—sued the whole damn newspaper—but Ranya never forgave me.”
“She thought it was your fault.”
“Yes.” Vance paused. “Afterward, her team asked if I was interested in going on television to talk about the challenges that women face in the sport.”
“But you turned it down.”
Vance looked away. “You have to understand that these things weren’t done back then. Reputation is so—so fragile. It takes years to build it up, and only a second to destroy it. I’ve seen it happen. Trust me.”
Ah, Dominic thought. So maybe it was Vance’s fault, in a way.
Maybe his father was complicit in the same way as every person who stood by and said nothing as a woman was publicly shamed was complicit.
But Vance would have never admitted it. His pride wouldn’t allow it.
Dominic looked down at the sea of cardboard, and a terrible sadness filled him, but he’d be lying if he said that there wasn’t anger too.
“So that’s why you wanted me to break things off with Juliette?”
Vance picked a bit of lint off his sleeve.
“I thought it was a silly infatuation. A fling that would damage your career. And then later, when I realized what she meant to you…I was so worried that your feelings would jeopardize your safety on track.” Finally, his father met his gaze. “But I was wrong. Forgive me.”
Dominic’s chest tightened. “You took everything from me.”
“I know.”
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to make you proud. And you threw that back in my face.”
Vance’s eyes were fierce. “I am proud of you, waldi. So damn proud.”
“But I didn’t win.”
The words came out smaller than Dominic had intended. More tentative. Like a child tugging at their parent’s coat.
Vance’s smile was sad. “Oh, winning is easy. It’s losing that’s hard.”
Silence fell, broken only by the ticking of the clock. Half past five, Dominic noted; he needed to get a move on if he wanted to be at the party by seven. And he sure as hell wasn’t showing up late. Not when it would be the first time that he’d seen Juliette in weeks.
Dominic lifted a box. “I should go.”
Vance stepped forward. “Come for dinner next week. I’ll ask the housekeeper to make your mother’s favorite. Bouillabaisse with fresh bread.” He paused. “Perhaps with a guest.”
Dominic hesitated. “I don’t think…” He shifted the box. “I’m not there yet. But I want to be someday.”
He was surprised to find that it was true. Vance nodded, as if he’d anticipated this.
“Let me know when you are.”
Dominic was about to push out the front door when a thought occurred to him. A final mystery left unsolved. “Dad?” His gaze dropped to Vance’s left hand. “Why do you wear that wedding ring?”
His father blinked. “Why do you ask?”
“I wondered…”
If it was a PR stunt. If Duro Stallion wanted you to seem like a family man, especially now that I’m not on your team. Vance must have read the answer because hurt flickered across his face.
“I wear this ring,” Vance said softly, “because I loved your mother terribly. Colette was the love of my life. And when she died…” There was pain in the lines around his mouth. “It’s a funny thing, grief. You don’t realize how much someone has of you until they’re taken away.”
A lump rose in Dominic’s throat. “I miss her.”
“I know.” Vance paused. “Do you know what I loved best about your mother?”
Dominic shook his head. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
“She was a wonderful photographer,” Vance said. “Not because she had the ability to spot beauty, but because she could coax it out of anyone. Strangers, animals, the occasional grumpy old man…” His smile was wry. “Even me.”
Dominic’s eyes burned, and he had the sudden horrifying realization that if he stayed much longer, he was going to cry. And he wasn’t ready to do that in front of Vance.
“I really should go,” Dominic said gruffly. “I’ll be late.”
“You’re going to the New Year’s Eve party?”
“I am.”
“With a friend?”
Dominic shrugged. “Something like that.”
They shook hands. His father clapped him awkwardly on the back, and something like sadness curled in Dominic’s chest. He had a sudden vision of himself at eight years old, sprinting across the foyer to get to Vance, who was wearing rumpled business clothes and carrying a suitcase.
Baba, Baba, do you want to see my racing tapes?
He turned for the door.
“Dominic?” Vance called.
He paused.
His father was hunched over the golf bag.
The winter sun had bleached Vance’s hair bone white, and his dark skin was wrinkling.
He looked older than Dominic remembered, and something in him softened.
He often forgot that before Vance Hastings became The Spider, he’d just been his father. Baba. Papa. Dad.
A sudden memory rose.
Dominic was sitting on his father’s shoulders, bundled against the February chill.
The air smelled heavily of roasted peanuts.
His father sprinted along the Seine, dodging art vendors and crepe stands, making Dominic laugh until he thought his ribs would split.
His mother trailed them at a leisurely pace, picking apart an almond croissant, her voice high and teasing.
My two troublemakers. What am I going to do with you?
“I just wanted to say…” Vance cleared his throat. “We’d love to have you back at Duro Stallion next year. Just say the word.”
Dominic stilled. All year, he’d been waiting to hear those words. At times, he thought he might kill for them.
But now…
He offered his father a smile.
“Thank you,” Dominic said. “And please tell the team that I’m flattered by the offer, but I’m afraid I’ll have to turn it down.” He shifted the box, turning for the door. “I’m going to try something new.”