Carter #2
Unable to answer, I scramble for the only ground I can still hold, desperate to shift the spotlight back onto him before I give too much away.
"You never answered me before," I say softly, my voice sounding small even to my own ears. "Does my dad know?"
Dominic lets out a disappointed, dismissive huh, looking sideways at the wall.
"I’m sure my father gave him an extensive breakdown of my history before he ever signed the contract.
He had to cover his 'asset'. He probably made your old man sign an NDA that would forfeit his life if a whisper of this hit the press. "
"The press?" I ask, the reality of it hitting me. "The general public... they have no idea?"
The second the question leaves my mouth, the answer hits me.
Of course they don't. I’ve spent my entire life around this sport and I hadn't heard a single ripple of this. If I hadn’t been forced into his car, into his house, and into his personal space, I’d still think he was nothing more than speed, money, and arrogance wrapped in designer branding.
I look at the way he’s standing—shoulders squared, brows pinched tight—and the realization is a physical weight. The world sees a dynasty. They see the Valerio crown. They don't see the timer.
"They don't know," I say, answering myself. "They’d tear you apart."
Dominic doesn't blink. He just watches me, his eyes turning into that flat, impenetrable flint. So cold. Clinical. Detached.
I look at him—at the raw, fractured silence between us—and the question I’ve been trying to outrun all day finally catches up. My voice is barely a breath, but in the quiet of the garage, it sounds like a gunshot.
"Are you going to end up like her?"
He stills. For a heartbeat, he doesn't even seem to breathe. Then, a slow, ugly smile curls his mouth—one that doesn't reach his eyes.
"Finally," he says, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm vibration that makes my skin crawl. "The real question. The one you didn't have the balls to ask until now."
He steps closer, his presence a thick, suffocating feeling that traps me in place. He leans in, his face back inches from mine, but there’s no heat in it this time. Only ice.
"You're already doing the math, aren't you?" he sneers, the words cutting like glass. "You’re wondering if I’m going to be the reason your father fails again. You want to know if his big shot at redemption is going to go up in smoke the second my hands decide to stop working. That’s what this is, right? You’re just protecting his legacy. "
"I don't give a damn about a stupid legacy!" I shout, the frustration finally snapping. I don't back away. I shove at his chest, my palms hitting the rigid muscle of his shoulders, needing him to feel the force of how wrong he is. "I’m wondering if you're okay, you asshole! I’m wondering if you’re scared! I’m wondering how you can get in that car and push it to two hundred miles per hour, knowing there’s a clock ticking that you can’t see. "
My voice cracks, my hands lingering on his chest as if I can physically hold him steady, hold him in the present.
"I'm not looking at the math, Dominic. I'm looking at you. I'm looking at someone who has to carry this entire weight behind a smile for the cameras while his own nerves are betraying him. I’m asking because I can’t stand the thought of you being alone in that cockpit, waiting for the lights to go out while the rest of us just cheer you on. I care because it's you."
The impact of my words seems to do what the silence couldn't. The armor doesn't just slip—it shatters.
He doesn't look at me. He raises his right hand between us, staring at it with an eerie, detached fascination, as if it’s a foreign object he’s trying to identify. He spreads his fingers wide, the light of the workbench catching the faint, rhythmic tremor.
"I don't know," he says, his voice empty, stripped of every emotion until it’s just a flat, dead sound. "The doctors... they don't have a timeline. It’s a genetic lottery. My brother won. My mother lost. Me?"
He lets out a short, dry breath that isn't a laugh.
"I could have forty years of being 'fine.
' Or I could wake up tomorrow and realize my body doesn't want to follow instructions anymore. They say staying active helps. Keeping the neural pathways fired up. Which is just a fancy, medical way of telling me to drive until my body tells me I’m done. "
He looks at me then, his eyes searching mine for the exact moment the pity turns into a "goodbye." He’s waiting for the flicker of hesitation that tells him I’m already halfway out the door.
When I don't move—when I just stand there holding his gaze with that raw, aching weight in my chest—it seems to agitate him more than if I had screamed.
He doesn't want my silence. He wants me to confirm what he already believes: that he's a broken investment.
He falls quiet, drifting into a strange, vacant sort of haze.
He looks at me, but it feels like he’s looking through me, processing my words—that I care because it’s him.
His head tilts slightly, his expression almost childlike in its confusion, like I’ve just spoken a language he’s never heard.
He wants to believe it, I can see the flicker of it in the way his breathing hitches, but then the skepticism curdles.
The idea that someone could stay and not care about the driver’s status is a luxury he can't wrap his mind around.