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“Yeah.” Charles gazed dreamily at some obscure spot suspended over Nico’s shoulder.

“Too coarse. Not polished. All jagged and unkempt. Always looking like he just tumbled out of bed, even when it’s a professional photo and he’s in a tux.

How do you suppose he’s always got that shadow on his cheeks and his jaw?

I mean, he must shave, right? Otherwise, he’d have a beard.

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of him where he looks clean-shaven.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of him where he looks clean.

He always looks dirty … and in the best way possible. ”

Nico shook her head, making another attempt to get past Charles, but he placed his hands on her shoulders. “I get it, Nico. Under the circumstances, given some of the things he’s posted on social media, you might even have been justified.”

“Might?” Nico angrily pushed Charles so that his arms fell to his sides.

He grinned. “Just tell me one thing. Is that eye-candy as scorching in person as he is in photos?”

Nico shoved her way past Charles and headed to the bathroom.

She placed her fingers on her lower lip.

She could still taste the blood—his blood.

But it might just as well have been her own.

Damn him for leaving yet another mark. She was supposed to have done that.

And she’d probably failed. Even if there was a sizeable sum in that wad, it wouldn’t make a dent in his bank account.

He could afford to lose that and more. And as for his overblown ego, she might have bruised it, but only temporarily.

It had probably healed by the time his head hit the pillow.

Who was she kidding? It had probably healed the minute she’d left him standing outside that bar .

She sighed. No, it was probably worse than that.

He hadn’t had to heal at all.

That ego was so massive, it was on par with a John Mayer–sized ego receiving a Dear John letter in a song written by Taylor Swift heard around the world by millions, and his only response, a Miss Piggy routine: Who, moi?

How could she ever put a dent in that?

She entered the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Without all that heavy makeup and in the harsh truth of daylight, the face staring back at her looked nothing like the femme fatale who had swindled him. Not to mention she’d lost nearly three inches given those boots she’d worn.

Thank goodness she’d had the impulse to wear that wig and do her makeup as dramatically as she had before she and Charles had gone out for the evening.

But where had that impulse come from? She never did herself up like that anymore.

Maybe it did have something to do with that letter. She wished she had it in her to toss it in the trash or, better yet, burn it without reading it.

She sighed, tilting her head as she had at Drink and Dive. Even a small movement like that changed the way she looked. That woman knew how to entice a man. She knew how to walk, how to sliver her eyes, how to purr, how to kiss.

Why couldn’t she do that for real? Kiss—the way normal people did.

She gathered up her hair, but as she did, her finger grazed that horizontal scar that ran along the back of her head.

It had healed some time ago, and her hair had grown back so that it was completely covered.

No one could see it. But now having touched it, she felt unsteady as though she might faint.

She dropped her hair and gripped the counter, clenching her arms and making her body rigid as she drew a few deep breaths.

Rocco Vittori can’t be there. He just. Can’t.

She was about to become the only woman driver on the Formula 1 grid. She could count the number of Formula 1 women drivers who’d come before her on one hand—there’d been five of them.

She had to race. She didn’t just want to. She had to.

How could she explain it to anyone who hadn’t grown up as she had?

She. Had. To. Race.

She wasn’t fit for anything else. She certainly wasn’t prepared for anything else. She hadn’t even finished high school, and she’d never had a real job.

If she couldn’t race Formula 1, what then? Make money hustling at pool and poker?

She had to prove she was better than that. She had to show that all that work her grandfather had put into her starting at the age of eight when she’d raced her first kart had not been wasted.

It had to count for something. It just had to.

She had to prove that it wasn’t just a drawing of her grandfather that she carried with her.

She was his granddaughter. She carried him with her because he was in her .

And that meant everything he’d taught her was in her too—his grit, determination, and integrity.

She had to prove that everything that had happened after he was gone didn’t change that.

She drew one last cleansing breath and then turned on the water, waiting until it was the right temperature. When it was, she stepped in and held her head under the steaming hot water.

Racing Formula 1 was like her blood, her bone. If they were gone, so was she—not just a persona like that femme fatale at Drink and Dive—but her , the real her .