Chapter Twenty Seven – Evening Post Qualifying
Aleksandr Volkov – Seoul Hotel
I knocked on the door, phone in hand open at our chat. My last three messages unread. Worry gnawed at my insides.
I leaned close to the door and caught muffled movement on the other side. A moment later, the door opened a crack. Elena peeked out at me and relief rushed over her face. She opened the door wider and ushered me inside without a word.
“What’s happening?” I asked. “Where have you been all day?”
“Working.” She closed the door and led me past the tiny bathroom and into the main room. The bed was strewn with papers, her laptop sat open in the middle of the chaos.
“Well, there goes my plan to throw you onto the bed and have my way with you. What is all this?”
“The proof.” She looked up at me, eyes wide and glistening. Was that excitement? Or fear? Maybe both. A lump formed in my throat.
“What proof?”
“Of the cheating. It’s all here. The download logs, the FIA complicity. All of it.”
“What?” Disbelief roared through my veins and I looked around at all of the documents as if trying to confirm it myself. But the lines of numbers meant nothing to me.
“Aleks,” she approached me and grabbed hold of my shoulders.
“This is what I’ve been searching for, for weeks.
I have everything now. I’ve been going over and over it all day and trying to write my article around it.
It’s overwhelming though. And I’m terrified that any moment the FIA are going to knock on my door and take it all away. ”
“What are you talking about?” I felt as though I’d missed a step somewhere.
“They know everything. Or some people do. There’s an FIA scrutineer who is helping Obsidian to get away with it. Have you heard of Klaus Hartmann?”
“Of course I have, he’s often in our garage.” I was still trying to catch up with her but her expression was full of ‘gotcha’ as if this was all the proof required. “Elena… this doesn’t mean anything. It’s a small world.”
“Not that small. The FIA employs hundreds of people.” She stalked around the bed and started scooping up papers. “Haven’t you ever wondered why it’s nearly always Hartmann signing off your car?”
“No. I just assumed he was assigned to our team.”
She shook her head. “Every other team gets a rotation of scrutineers. Even Drake’s car is signed off by a dozen different people in any given season. It’s just your car.”
“Where did you get all this?” I gestured at the mess.
“A source.”
“Really? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
“Yes.” She stopped and looked at me. “I have to protect my sources, Aleks.”
I nodded, my lips pressed tight. Panic rose in my chest. More than that. Fear. My pulse raced and my palms grew clammy.
“Don’t write this story, Elena.”
“What?” She blinked at me, stunned.
“Please. Do you have any idea how many people will be affected? My whole team, the FIA. This kind of corruption is unthinkable. It would bring the entire sport into disrepute. Please don’t do this.”
“Aleks—I have to. It’s news. It’s important.”
“I understand, but this is about more than your career.”
Her mouth popped open. She glared at me for a few seconds and I met her with defiance. “What?” Her voice cracked like a whip.
“It’s a lot of careers on the line, that’s all I meant.”
“How dare you think that I’m doing this just to get ahead. This is something I care about. You know what happened with my Dad. Exposing corruption matters for all of us. It sounds like you’re worried about your own fucking trophies.”
I blanched, taking half a step back from words that struck as hard as a slap.
“That’s not—I wasn’t—I don’t—” I couldn’t form a coherent sentence. I couldn’t admit it, but she wasn’t entirely wrong. “I thought you understood me better than that.”
Her expression softened a fraction and she moved towards me.
“Look, I know you don’t have anything to do with this,” she said, waving a hand over the documents.
“But don’t you want to know that you’re the best driver out there?
Don’t you want to remove any doubt about that and know that you earned every title without your team breaking the rules? Fair and square?”
“Of course I do,” I snapped. I took a step back and ran my hands through my hair.
“Then what is it? What are you really objecting to?”
I huffed, spun away and began pacing the room. It was too small, the furniture too close. It was getting hard to breathe.
I couldn’t say it out loud, I couldn’t admit the fear that was threatening to overwhelm me. That tiny voice growing louder inside: you didn’t earn this. You aren’t good enough.
“Go on the record. Let me interview you. Get ahead of this, rather than be a casualty of it.” Her voice was earnest, full of concern.
But I couldn’t feel it. All I could feel was panic at the prospect of having my team connected to a scandal this big.
“You’re not the one with your name on every podium. You’re not the one who’ll be remembered as a fraud if this story goes public!”
“Aleks—”
“No,” I cut her off. “I’m done. You want to publish? Go ahead. But don’t expect me to sit here and help you destroy everything I’ve built.”
I turned, grabbed the door, and slammed it behind me.
Elena Archer – Seoul Hotel Room
The door slammed behind him like a gunshot, and the silence that followed stretched like a crater across the middle of the room.
I stood there for a long moment, heart thudding like I’d just survived a crash. My breath came shallow and sharp, hands clenched into fists at my sides. I stared at the empty space where he’d been, half expecting him to come back, to apologise, to say he didn’t mean it.
But of course he didn’t come back.
Because he did mean it. Every word. Every accusation.
My throat burned.
I crossed to the window and pressed my palms against it, needing something to cool the fury and humiliation storming through me. He thought I was doing this for a headline? That I didn’t care about the fallout? That I was willing to burn it all down for a fucking byline?
“Arsehole,” I whispered. “Self-absorbed, entitled, arrogant arsehole.”
But the insult didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t make me any less gutted.
Because I had feelings for him. Stupid, reckless, deep-down feelings. And he’d looked at me like I was a threat.
I let my forehead rest against the cool glass, the city a blur of movement and colour below. Seoul was still humming, still alive. While I stood here bleeding from a wound no one could see.
But slowly, breath by breath, the pain sharpened into something else.
Resolve.
I turned back to the mess on the bed. Pages of data, signatures, logs—proof. Not theory. Not conjecture. Proof. I had it. And I wasn’t going to bury it because a man I’d been sleeping with couldn’t stomach the truth.
I wasn’t doing this for a headline. I was doing it because no one else would. Because fans deserved better. Because drivers like Sofia Vega deserved a level playing field. Because the truth mattered—even when it hurt.
Especially then.
I sat on the edge of the bed, pulled my laptop onto my knees, and opened a fresh document. Fingers poised over the keys, I stared at the blinking cursor.
Then I started to type the first line of the article that would change everything:
‘A house of cards never falls quietly.’