Dominic
Chapter sixteen
The cockpit is the only place where the world makes sense, but today, the sense is leaking out of it.
The machine beneath me is tight lines and controlled aggression, and usually, it answers exactly how I ask. But as I sit on the grid, the sun baking the asphalt of the circuit, the car feels... restless. Or maybe it’s just the airport tarmac still pressing in on me.
I’d watched them from the window of the terminal lounge days ago.
I saw her board the team charter with her father and Marco, Carter’s shoulders squared, looking like she belonged in that sea of team gear even if she didn’t believe it herself.
I’d told myself I needed the private flight for "focus"—to avoid the chatter and the cramped energy of a handful of engineers in one cabin. I’d even reached for my phone to tell Marco to hold the boarding, to say I was coming early with them.
Then I’d remembered who I was. I’d let the jet take off without me, choosing the silence of my own cabin instead. Now, sitting here with the engine vibrating through my spine, that silence feels less like a luxury and more like a wall I built too high.
I adjust my gloves, the fire-retardant fabric pulling tight over my knuckles.
I don’t look toward the pit wall. I know exactly where she is.
I’d taken the extra step, ensuring someone on the team had Carter’s credentials filed under Junior Systems Technician—a redundant role that kept her exactly where I could see her, safely away from the heavy lifting but close enough to hover the periphery of my vision.
It cost me three heated arguments with the credentialing office for the short notice, along with a hundred-thousand-dollar carnival just to get her here; and yet, I’m the one vibrating with irritation.
The grid marshals clear the track. The tire blankets come off. The world starts to narrow.
The lights overhead begin their sequence. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Focus.
I don’t think about the airport. I don’t think about the way she looked at me in the glow of campus. I think about the bite point of the clutch and the hundreds of meters of tarmac between me and the first corner.
The lights go out.
The launch is clean—aggressive, bordering on reckless. The G-force slams me back into the molded seat, a familiar, crushing weight that usually settles my mind. I wedge the nose into the first high-speed bend, forcing the red car on my left to lift off the throttle or risk a collision.
For the first several laps, I drive like someone trying to outrun his own shadow.
I’m hitting every apex with a violence that usually wins races, but the feedback through the steering wheel is getting sharper, uglier.
The tires are screaming. I can feel the rubber graining through the very soles of my boots, the car starting to slide where it should grip.
I’m winning the battle, but I’m losing the car.
“We’re seeing a spike in surface temps on the rear left,” Landon’s voice crackles in my ear. It’s calm. Too calm. “You’re over-driving the entry. Bring it back half a step. Let the car rotate on its own.”
Usually, this is where I tell him to mind the telemetry and let me mind the road.
My thumb hovers over the radio toggle, the plastic edge biting into my glove.
I want to tell him that if the car won’t turn, it’s because the setup is stiff, not because my right foot is heavy.
I want to cut him off before he can find a rhythm, just to prove I’m the one in control of the air I’m breathing.
For you to start listening to my father. Or at the very least, stop dismissing him before he even finishes a sentence.
Carter’s words suddenly hit me with more force than the G-pull in the hairpins. It wasn't a request; it was the price of her presence.
I look at the steering wheel—the complex array of buttons and dials that represent my entire life. She’s here. She lost the wager, she hated the event, she could have walked away—but she’s wearing the team uniform.
More than that, she’s wearing my name. Every time she turns her back to the track, the word Valerio is stretched across her shoulder blades in bold, white letters. It’s a claim I didn't know I wanted to make until I saw it there, branding her to the paddock, branding her to me.
She kept her end.
I don’t toggle the mic. Instead, I do something I haven't done in years.
I exhale. I lift my foot a fraction of a second earlier into the next complex. I don’t wrestle the wheel; I let it slip through my fingers, allowing the car’s natural weight to carry the turn.
The change is immediate. The vibration in my teeth smooths out. The car stops fighting me and starts... gliding.
“That’s it,” Landon says, and I can hear the suppressed surprise in his tone. “Gap to P1 is closing. Three-tenths a lap. Stay there. Be the hunter, not the hammer.”
I stay there. For multiple laps, I am lost in the blur.
I’m not forcing the win; I’m letting the win come to me.
It feels foreign. It feels smart. It feels like something a champion would do, rather than a survivor.
For a moment, the friction between me and the guy on the other end of the radio disappears, replaced by a terrifyingly efficient synchronicity.
Then, on the main straight, I look.
The pit wall is a blur of sponsors and monitors, but I find her. It’s like a reflex now, one I don’t remember developing. She’s standing near the edge, her eyes fixed on the track. Carter looks... proud. For a heartbeat, I think it’s for me.
But then the camera on the big screen shifts as I roar past. Luka is there, leaning over her shoulder.
He’s laughing—that easy, effortless Valerio laugh that I never inherited.
He says something in her ear, and her mouth curves.
Not the sharp, defensive line she gives me, but something soft.
Genuine. She bumps his arm with her shoulder, a casual intimacy that feels like a physical blow to my chest.
The "gliding" stops.
The calm fractures into a thousand uneven pieces. Why does he get the laugh? Why does he get the ease while I’m out here bleeding seconds for someone who doesn't even want to be in the same room as me?
“Stay on the line,” Landon warns. “The blue car behind is closing. Don’t defend yet, just focus on the exit. We have the pace.”
“I’ve got it,” I snap.
I don’t have it. I don’t want the hunter’s patience anymore. I want the hammer. I want to remind everyone—her, Luka, the cameras—why I’m the one in the suit and he’s the one in the button-down. I want to be so fast they can't see me, so fast her eyes can't wander to my brother.
The car behind ducks inside. It’s a move he’s entitled to, a standard challenge, but in my head, it’s an insult.
“Let him have the line,” Landon’s voice is urgent now. “Back off, we’ll get him on the straight. Don’t kill the tires.”
Don't kill the tires. It’s sound advice.
It’s the right advice. But all I hear is another man telling me to yield.
All I see is the blur of Luka’s smile in my peripheral vision.
If I hadn't "glided," if I hadn't listened to Landon’s "half a step" earlier, I would have had enough of a gap that this wouldn't even be a fight.
“Dominic, he’s coming across—yield!”
I don't yield. I bury my foot.
The rear end kicks out as I bury the throttle, the tires spinning uselessly against the hot asphalt.
I’m demanding grip that the rubber simply no longer has to give.
I fight the snap of the wheel, every twitch of the chassis feeling like a personal betrayal by the person in my ear.
If he hadn't forced me to compromise, I wouldn't be down here in the dirt, wrestling for scraps.
The mistake doesn't happen all at once. It’s a fraction too much throttle on the exit of the fastest turn. The car bobs, the traction breaks, and I have to catch a slide that feels like a mountain falling over. The steering wheel snaps back, bruising my thumbs.
The car behind moves past. Then the next one.
“You lost the exit. I told you the temps were too high,” Landon’s voice is a dead weight in my ear—monotone, rhythmic, like he’s reading a grocery list instead of a post-mortem. He doesn't even pause for a reaction. “Focus on bringing it home.”
“Because you had me sitting like a damn duck!” I yell into the radio, my voice cracking with the strain. “Your ‘patience’ cost me the gap!”
I can feel the lie curdling in my throat even before the radio cuts out, but I lean into it anyway. I wrap the blame around me like a shroud, familiar and controlled, shielding me from the sight of my own hands shaking on the wheel. It’s a smoother ride being the monster than the failure.
By the time the checkered flag flashes overhead, P2 is a memory.
I’m P4. A podium sacrificed to a girl’s laugh and a joke I wasn't part of.
I stare at the back of the car ahead, my pulse thudding against the silence of the cockpit, already reaching for the match to burn down the only connection I had left.
The engine cuts, and the silence that follows is airless.
I don't wait for the car to stop properly before I’m unbuckling.
I climb out, and the cameras are already there, long lenses poking through the gaps like hungry insects.
I see Landon standing by the screens. Usually, he’s the picture of professional compliance—someone who keeps his head down and his voice low to keep the peace.
He’s spent months absorbing my hits, trying to rebuild a life, and I’m the one pressing the wound.
But today, he doesn't look like he’s bracing for a hit. He looks like he’s waiting to deliver one.
“We need to look at the data for that final stint,” Landon says. His voice isn't just level; it’s hard.