Chapter Twenty Nine – Seoul to London
Elena Archer
“We’re all set,” he said, giving me a reassuring nod.
I’d also sent all of my evidence to Graham’s contact higher up the FIA chain, someone he swore we could trust, to initiate a complaint for misconduct against Klaus Hartmann and the Obsidian team.
This was it. The ball was rolling.
The knot that twisted in my stomach was normal with such a big story. Everything was on the line. But knowing that the nerves were an inevitable part of this didn’t help to settle them.
Graham shut his laptop with a click that echoed across the spacious lobby.
It was early, and only a few stragglers milled around.
Most of the F1 personnel and media had flown out the day before to make the most of the two-week break before Bahrain.
But we’d taken what flights we could get at short notice—which meant an early start and a layover in Munich.
We checked out, hailed a cab, and headed for the airport.
We were somewhere over Kazakhstan when my article went live. I pulled out my phone and watched the view count start to crawl up, slowly at first but half an hour later it was racing up. 1500, 3000, 15,000… I squirmed in my seat and Graham placed a steadying hand on my knee.
The comments were alive and I couldn’t stop myself from reading them.
Shock.
Disbelief.
Refutation.
People really didn’t want it to be true. Aleks’s fans were rallying behind him, denying his involvement.
I’d steered clear of attributing any direct blame to anyone at Obsidian besides Norton Ross.
I was sure he knew every detail, but I had no proof.
The best accusation I could level at him, and I certainly did, was that as Team Principal, he was responsible for the actions that broke the rules.
Whether he ordered it, oversaw it himself, or knew nothing, he was responsible for the climate at the team that resulted in this happening.
He should have known and he should have stopped it.
The FIA on the other hand, they bore the brunt of my criticism.
Seeing those comments on my article, and compulsively checking social media too, I knew that my reputation at the FIA would be in tatters. I could kiss goodbye to exclusives, favours, even basic access.
The fans were seething. And were not shy about showing it.
By the time we landed in Munich the view count had hit fifty thousand. The share count was over ten thousand. It was official. I’d gone viral. I had thousands of new followers on X. People were calling me brave. But some were less complimentary.
We had a three hour layover in Munich and were eating at an airport restaurant when Graham snatched my phone from my hand and put it in his jacket pocket.
“That’s enough,” he said, not unkindly.
I stared at him, blinking, too tired and numb to react.
“You’ll make yourself crazy.”
“Apparently I already am. Have you seen what they’re saying?”
“No and I won’t be looking. Elena, come on, you know better than to look at the comments section.”
I let out a petulant huff and leaned back in my seat.
The last leg of the journey was mercifully short, just a two hour flight to Heathrow. Without my phone to obsess over, I dozed a bit. I awoke with a start as we began the descent and hit a pocket of turbulence.
“You all right?” Graham asked.
I nodded and fastened my seatbelt. I wasn’t normally a nervous flyer. But I was exhausted and had plenty to be nervous about besides the flight. We landed safely and eventually made our way through customs and luggage reclaim.
“Look,” Graham said at the taxi rank. “Take the week off. You’ve earned it.”
“What about follow up? Fallout? I should be around to deal with it.”
“No, there’s plenty of people who can do additional work on this.
You’ve been travelling for over a month without a break.
You’re a nervous wreck. Take the time and come back fresh next week.
Then I want you in Bahrain next Thursday.
” There was a wicked glint in his eye. “Whatever the consequences are, I want you at the next race to cover that. Deal?”
I managed a weak smile. “Fine.”
Graham handed me my phone. The battery had died. I rolled my eyes and tucked it into my bag. I leaned in and gave my editor a quick, one-armed hug. He patted my back in a fatherly way and we went our separate ways.
It was nearly 10pm when I finally got to my building in Islington. I’d been travelling for nearly twenty hours and was so done. I stepped out of the lift onto my floor, dragging my small suitcase behind me on its battered wheels. I turned the corner and came to a halt.
Sitting on the floor in front of my flat door, forearms resting on his knees, sunglasses over his eyes, was Aleks.
He looked up and took off the glasses. His eyes were red, his jaw locked, his hair unkempt.
I heaved a sigh and dropped my head, shaking it slightly. I walked slowly towards him and stopped in front of him before either of us said a word.
It was him to break the tension, with that oh so simple greeting: “Hi.”
Aleksandr Volkov – Monday, Seoul to London
The flight home should have felt like a victory lap.
It didn’t.
I sat by the window, eyes fixed on the clouds drifting past like ghosts, my noise-cancelling headphones doing nothing to quiet the chaos in my head. The cabin around me buzzed with quiet satisfaction—soft laughter, the clink of glasses, the afterglow of a job well done.
I’d won. I was back on top of the championship. I’d put Rivers behind me, buried Moretti down in fourth in the championship, and reasserted my dominance in a car the world had started to question. The stats were clean. The headlines, glowing.
But all I could think about was Elena.
Her voice still echoed in my skull.
“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?”
And then mine. Louder. Crueller.
“This is about more than your career.”
I scrubbed a hand across my jaw and exhaled, long and slow.
The seat next to me was empty—Callum had taken a spot further back with the engineers, happily chatting with two of the junior mechanics.
Across the aisle, Mac was asleep with his cap pulled low.
I should have slept too. I was exhausted.
Physically wiped. But the adrenaline from the race hadn’t settled.
Not really. Not when the win had felt so… hollow.
Not performance-wise. No. That had been one of the cleanest, fiercest drives of my life. The car had obeyed every command. Every apex was mine. Every sector green.
But when the helmet came off, when the roar of the crowd died down…
She wasn’t there.
She hadn’t come to the press conference. I’d scanned the media centre like an idiot, even behind the gantry. Nothing.
She was gone. And I was alone with my doubts.
The win hadn’t erased them. It had only sharpened the question:
Did I earn it? Or did they hand it to me?
Hartmann. Ross. The whole bloody system. If it was rigged—if even a whisper of it was true—then what the hell did that make me?
I’d spent six years in F1 building a legacy.
Had I just watched it burn?
The captain’s voice came through the intercom, announcing we’d be landing at Heathrow in just under an hour. I barely heard him. I checked my phone again—no messages. No notifications. Just the same unopened texts sitting there like bruises.
I’d said awful things to her. Things I didn’t mean. But worse than that, I’d walked away and boarded a plane like a coward.
Mac stirred across the aisle and caught my eye.
“Don’t look so damn miserable,” he muttered, voice gravelly with sleep. “You won.”
I gave a weak nod, eyes drifting back to the window.
I’d won.
But I still felt as though I’d lost something.
Aleksandr Volkov – Obsidian Performance HQ, Oxfordshire, Tuesday
The car was already up on the rig when I arrived.
Post-race teardown. Performance analysis. Upgrades planned for Bahrain. No rest for the dominant. The Seoul trophies weren’t even unboxed yet—still wrapped in transit foam in reception—but the team moved like the next race was tomorrow.
I should have found comfort in it. Familiarity. Order.
Instead, it felt like a noose tightening.
The factory smelled like engine grease and carbon fibre.
Someone was grinding a component down in the machine shop and the high-pitched whine set my teeth on edge.
I made my way to the simulation bay without speaking to anyone, only nodding when the occasional engineer looked up and offered a congratulations.
“Volkov.”
“Great drive Sunday.”
“Cleanest pole lap I’ve seen in years.”
All the right words. But they skimmed off my skin like rain on wax.
I didn’t want their praise.
I wanted certainty. Proof that it had been me behind the wheel in Seoul—not some hidden code, not a favour from the stewards, not a rigged system.
Inside the sim room, the lights were low. I slipped on the headset and dropped into the virtual Bahrain setup. Twenty laps of brutal precision. It was a track I liked—technical but fast. No excuses. Just pure skill.
I was mid-lap nineteen when Mac’s voice broke through the intercom.
“You might want to get out of there.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Now.”
He didn’t sound angry. He sounded… wary. And Mac didn’t do wary.
I pulled the rig to a halt, yanked off the headset, and stepped out into the hallway. He was waiting with his phone in hand, screen facing me and a bold headline taking up every square inch.
‘Gridlocked: Inside the Culture of Cheating at the Heart of Formula One – Elena Archer.’
My stomach dropped.
There was a photo of me climbing out of the car. Seoul sunlight catching the chrome edge of the Obsidian chassis. I looked triumphant. Unbothered.
Like a god heading for the podium.
The headline made it look like a crime scene.
I snatched the phone and started scrolling. The article was long. Detailed. Surgical.