3. Dominic
Chapter three
Dominic
If one more idiot told me the suspension issue was "probably just temperature variance," I was going to put someone through a wall.
"It’s pulling left in high-G corners," I snapped, pacing a tight, predatory line in front of the matte-black beast. "Not drifting, not sliding. Pulling. That’s not a temperature problem."
Marco, my head mechanic and part-time pain in my ass, didn’t even look up from his tablet.
"Maybe if the driver didn’t treat every turn like a personal dare to physics, the toe settings would still be aligned," he said, his thumb scrolling through data with irritating nonchalance.
"It was aligned," I shot back.
Marco finally lifted his gaze, eyes flat and unimpressed. "Before you decided braking was optional."
I glared. He arched a brow.
Point made.
I’d spent the morning shredding the track, trying to force the problem to show itself.
It only betrayed me once, right at the apex.
A half-second jolt—a shudder that vibrated through my teeth and up my spine.
The kind of infinitesimal slip the cameras would slow down and analysts would dissect like vultures over roadkill.
My grip had slipped. My control.
And the team had seen it.
Nothing rots confidence faster than doubt spreading through the garage, and I could smell the stench of it on the air. Besides, chasing imaginary problems in the steering rack felt infinitely preferable to whatever was waiting for me inside.
Marco swiped through the telemetry again, his mouth thinning. "Sponsors are already sniffing around the issue."
The word sponsors tasted like rust. Sponsors meant headlines, and headlines were the first step toward an autopsy.
They didn't just want to see me win; they wanted to see if the gold was plating or solid through to the core. If they started looking too closely, they’d find the tremor.
They’d find the reason the car had pulled—not because of "temperature variance," but because for one sickening heartbeat, the steering wheel had felt disconnected in my palms.
I glanced down at my right hand, my thumb surreptitiously rubbing the side of my index finger. A faint, distant buzzing lived there now, a hum beneath the skin that felt like the fading vibration of an engine.
If the press caught wind that a Valerio was anything less than a perfect machine, they wouldn’t just write stories. They’d dismantle me.
Marco clicked his tongue, oblivious to the way I was digging my nails into my thigh to ground the creeping pins-and-needles in my skin.
"Press, too. They’re already spinning stories. Something about you losing focus." He paused just long enough to be dramatic. "And the fact that your social calendar is less pit strategy and more… bedroom scheduling."
I shot him a look that could’ve melted titanium.
"Then get someone hired on this team to kill the story," I snapped, the tingling in my calf stubbornly refusing to fade. "I don’t pay you to read tabloids. I pay you to make sure the car is as flawless as the man driving it. If a single word about ‘focus' hits the wires tomorrow, it's your neck."
Better they think I was a hedonist with an ego problem than a piece of hardware burning out from the inside.
He only shrugged, entirely unfazed by the threat of my temper, tightening a bolt with slow precision like my outburst didn’t even make the list. "Don’t glare at me. I’m not the one photographed leaving a club at three a.m. with two models and a bottle of bad decisions."
He tilted the tablet my way. A grainy photo of me, looking bored and beautiful, framed by a headline designed to draw blood: Valerio too busy chasing tail to chase trophies?
I exhaled sharply through my nose. "Idiots."
"Well, yeah," Marco agreed, "but idiots with a readership."
Before I could fire back, a rattle echoed from the driveway outside. Not the throaty, refined purr of one of mine. Something humbler. Cheaper. The kind of car that looked out of place on Valerio concrete, like a stray dog at an award show.
"What now," I muttered.
The passenger door opened and my brother hopped out, those curls bouncing like he lived in a shampoo commercial.
"Do we have an fuel-pressure regulator for a four-cylinder import?" Luka asked Marco, leaning into the garage like he owned the place.
Luka snagged the part, nodding a thanks, and that’s when I cut in, looming over him.
"And why exactly do you need that?" I folded my arms, the sheer presence of my frame enough to make the garage feel smaller.
"My car stuttered when I hit an incline—total loss of power,” he said. "Carter drove me over so I could grab the part and fix it."
"Carter," I repeated flatly. "As in Hayes."
"Yes," he sighed, the way one speaks to a particularly slow child. "She heard the engine hesitation and told me exactly what was failing before I even popped the hood."
I scoffed, the sound sharp and dismissive. "You could’ve called. I would’ve sent someone."
"You’re always busy," he said lightly. "She offered. And she actually knows what she’s doing."
I turned toward the open garage door.
Her.
She was sitting behind the wheel of that pathetic sedan, elbow resting out the window, tapping her fingers on the door frame in a slow, steady beat.
Sunglasses on. Bored. She sat there, perfectly unconcerned with the fact that she was parked on Valerio ground—a place people spent lifetimes trying to reach—and acted as if she’d rather be at the dentist.
Our eyes met through the distance, the glare of the sun hitting her lenses.
Then, she lifted her hand.
She flipped me off.
No hesitation. No quiver. Just a slow, deliberate middle finger directed right at my chest.
A slow pull twisted in my gut. Irritation. Surprise. Something primal that didn’t like being challenged, let alone by a person in a rattling four-cylinder. I made sure my expression didn’t move. I didn’t give her the flicker of a reaction.
Marco coughed into his fist, hiding a smirk. Luka didn't just smile; he let out a short, surprised bark of a laugh, looking between me and the sedan like he’d just seen a rabbit bite a wolf.
"I’ll see you in a bit," Luka said, already backing toward the exit with a newfound spring in his step. He paused at the threshold, tossing a casual grenade over his shoulder. "Oh, and Sienna says hi.”
I bit down hard enough to feel the ache spread upward.
Marco snorted. "Which one is Sienna again? The one who cried when you didn’t text her back or the one who tried to steal a tire as a souvenir?"
"The lipstick-on-the-helmet one," I muttered.
Marco winced. "That one. Got it."
"Don’t worry," Luka added, leaning back in just enough to catch my eye with a knowing, annoying glint. "She’ll be replaced soon. But currently, she’s very invested in the audition process."
Aren’t they all.
I didn’t dignify that with a reply. I watched Luka jog back to the car. Carter leaned toward the window as he approached, saying something that made Luka laugh out loud before he climbed in.
I watched them pull away, that cheap engine rattling against the clean, expensive hum of the estate.
Marco wiped his hands on a rag, eyes still on the dust cloud where the sedan had disappeared. He’d been here longer than anyone—long enough that nothing about me surprised him anymore. "Seems like your new coach isn’t the only one in the family who knows their way around a car," he said.
That hit exactly where he meant it to. I didn't give him the satisfaction of a flinch. I didn’t even blink. If I gave him a single twitch of a muscle, he’d know he was winning.
Instead, I stared at the empty space where the car had been.
Carter Hayes.
Even with those ridiculous sunglasses, she was a violent disruption to my landscape.
Blonde hair pulled back in a messy knot that looked like it was losing a fight, and green eyes that didn't just look at me—they challenged me to exist. Most people looked at a Valerio like we were the sun.
She looked at me like I was an oil leak she had to clean up.
A sudden, sharp tug pulled in the center of my chest.
I stiffened, my hand dropping to my side, fingers curling into a tight, hidden fist. Not now. I waited for the familiar, hollowness to spread down my arm, for the residual tremor to take over my grip.
“Get back to work,” I told him, my voice flat and lethal. "The suspension," I added, my tone now coming out like crushed glass. "Fix it. I don’t care if you have to rebuild the entire front end."
Marco just grinned like he’d won a prize.
I turned on my heel, walking toward the main house before Marco could see the way I was surreptitiously shaking out my right hand.
The girl thought she was clever. She’d seen me at my most unfiltered—literally—and instead of being intimidated or charmed, she was flipping me off from the window of a car that sounded like a lawnmower.
She was a contaminant. A blonde, foul-mouthed error in a system I had spent my entire life perfecting.
She wanted to play the unimpressed card? Fine.
I’d show her what it actually looked like to be in my world. I didn’t need another reminder of failure haunting me, and I certainly didn't need a distraction with a sharp tongue and eyes that made my skin feel two sizes too small.
I headed for my father’s office, the tingling in my fingertips finally beginning to recede. She thought she could just drift through my estate and treat me like an inconvenience.
She was about to find out that when I stopped being a distraction, I became a problem. One she wasn't prepared to solve.
I walked into the office without knocking, the heavy oak door thudding against the stopper. Voices threaded out from the center of the room, warm and familiar in a way that made my skin itch.
"—happy to be here," Landon Hayes was saying. "Dominic has immense talent. I just want to help refine—"
"Only an hour late," Father intercepted, his eyes flicking to the clock on the wall, then to me. "It might be a record."
I didn't apologize. I hadn't planned on showing up at all.