Page 1 of Faster

Chapter One

Cece turned the key over in the door about six times—hoping that he hadn’t changed the locks—before big, strong hands took it from her and fitted it into the keyhole.

She stepped back and looked at the owner of the apartment.

Every time she saw him in person, she was surprised at how handsome he was.

The pictures taken in the paddock never did him justice.

His strong features just translated better in person.

It didn’t stop millions of girls from around the world from being in love with him just based on the pictures, though.

Maybe if he didn’t turn the other way when he spotted her at races, it wouldn’t be a shock to her system to be sharing space with him.

She never saw him around, even though they lived only a few meters apart in the Fontvieille, a Monaco neighborhood that was remarkably Soviet-looking for a principality based on unfettered capitalism.

The entire country was like a small liberal arts college campus for billionaires and tax evaders—all of them packed almost vertically in an area a tenth of the size of Harvard.

It should have been hard to avoid him, but he’d slipped away all the same.

“How long have you been standing there, watching me?” She wasn’t really drunk, but she swayed on her feet from too much champagne and not enough food. The title of her memoir—it was going to be a sad one.

Luca narrowed his gaze at her. “What did he do this time?”

She opened her mouth, and a little belch came out.

So embarrassing. Not just the belch but showing up here.

But Luca was the only person in the world who would ever understand how callous Ethan could be.

“They were in my bed.” When that statement echoed through the hallway, she whispered, “On my side of the bed.”

She didn’t know why that detail of her husband’s infidelity bothered her so much. She would have been enraged had she found Ethan cheating on her in the kitchen or a hotel somewhere on the road, but her bed—their bed—stung so much more.

Luca’s head fell back, and he sighed. Even that small sound echoed in the hall outside his penthouse condo, along with the drops of rainwater falling from her New Year’s Eve dress.

“We were having a party.” She’d been making sure that no one left cocaine too low to the ground, where one of the little dogs that one of Ethan’s friends from home had brought could get to it.

She’d always hated the short coffee table, and that was just another reason.

“He got high for the first time in ages, and I guess he lost his mind.”

Luca crossed his arms over his chest. She hadn’t expected him to be home.

He didn’t have a seat on the grid for next year, so she expected him to be in Rio or London to ring in the New Year.

She’d come here to be alone, because her husband would be able to find her in a hotel when he sobered up.

This was the one place he would never think to look. Not anymore.

Standing in front of this man, she realized she’d made a miscalculation.

He knew everything about Ethan—things that Ethan didn’t even know about Ethan.

And he knew almost everything about her.

The only fact he didn’t know about her was that she’d been a little bit in love with him for a very long time.

But she hadn’t come here with the intention of seeing Luca. She just wanted to be comforted by the fact that he’d been where she was, and he still cared about her.

Luca had promised that he’d always care for her. That he’d always be there if she needed him. But she didn’t need him right now. He couldn’t fix her broken marriage or pull her husband’s dick out of the bikini model she’d found bouncing on top of him in her bed. On her side of the bed.

“I didn’t think you’d be here.” God, that sounded ridiculous. This was his condo. And he probably didn’t feel like partying after being fired. That would have been an Ethan move. Not Luca. Of course he’d be here.

He turned the key in the lock and opened the door, motioning for her to go in first. “Come in. You haven’t eaten.”

“I ordered really good food for the party.” No one had touched it.

All the drivers were really concerned about gaining too much weight over the holidays.

Maybe they’d indulged at Christmas, but training started tomorrow.

And all of the girlfriends, wives, and “models” were on a strict Ozempic-and-blow diet plan.

Cece didn’t like coke. It made her heart race and made her anxiety worse than it was on an everyday basis. Before meeting Ethan, marrying Ethan, and moving from Miami to Monaco, she’d liked weed gummies and skinny margaritas.

No one knew how to make a decent margarita in Monte Carlo.

Luca looked down at her feet. “I’m going to get you some dry clothes. I’m also going to bring you socks. You will put them on.”

She didn’t normally like to be told what to do, but his bossiness didn’t bother her—Luca was just like this. He said something would happen and he simply made it so. It must be so frustrating for him to have his career end on something other than his own terms.

As he walked into the hallway, she felt a pang of guilt over how she was burdening him with her problems—problems he’d probably thought he’d left behind when his friendship with Ethan ended.

At the time, she hadn’t understood the falling-out, and Ethan hadn’t told her anything other than, “He was being a dick, and I cut him loose.”

Ethan was the first man who’d ever pursued her seriously.

The night they’d met he’d told her that he was going to marry her.

She’d been in her early twenties, and men just didn’t say that kind of thing unless they meant it.

And he’d been relentless in courting her—a total gentleman. That made her laugh now.

Luca walked back just in time to hear it.

“If something is funny, you’ll have to share it with the class, Ms. Ramos.

” He sounded like a stern headmaster with his British accent, and it sent a thread of heat through her veins that she dared not acknowledge.

“There hasn’t been much to joke about of late around here.

” He pushed a pile of clothes into her hands.

“I was laughing at how ironic all of this is. He tried so hard to get me—” She didn’t want or need to finish that statement. Luca knew. He’d been there.

He grimaced. “Go change.”

Cece looked around the penthouse as she walked to the bathroom.

Everything was the same as it had been years before.

Except that it was quiet and empty. Luca still had the same couch where he and Ethan had played video games until all hours, even though he’d updated his game console, and the TV was bigger.

She’d expected him to give her clothes that some girl had left in the hopes that he would call her to return them.

Instead, she was cozy in his oversize sweatshirt and basketball shorts that went down past her knees. Luca was tall for a racing driver, so they were almost pants.

“I always forget how small you are until I see you.”

“I’m not that small.” She’d been tall enough to model occasionally when she’d run into Luca and Ethan at a Miami nightclub. It seemed like a century ago now. She couldn’t be that much older in less than half a decade, could she? She felt like she’d lived five lifetimes since then.

“I feel so much older than I did when I met the two of you.” It probably wasn’t wise to say something like that out loud. It could open doors that would be much better off closed. But it hadn’t been a good idea to come here at all.

Luca ran his hand through his hair. Since she was already doing dumb things, she allowed herself to luxuriate in the way his triceps flexed when he lifted his arm.

She let herself really look at him for the first time in years.

She could admit it now—that she’d tried her best to avert her eyes on the rare occasions she couldn’t avoid him, because loving Ethan instead of him was a mistake.

She’d been thinking with her head, not her heart.

There had always been too much passion in her feelings for Luca.

And maybe not enough in her feelings for Ethan.

“I don’t like to look that far back.” He laughed, and his mouth went crooked in this boyish way that made her want to give him anything he wanted. She definitely shouldn’t be here. “I’ve made too many mistakes since then to be able to sleep at night.”

“You don’t sleep at night?” She knew that because they were alike in that way. Neither of them was born into the world they now inhabited. That feeling that they’d snuck in the back door made them both restless.

“It’s a good thing for you, tonight, that I don’t.” He rounded the counter and held out a cup of tea.

He’d made her tea. Like a friend or a parent would. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me. Not right now—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I told you that I’d always be here for you.”

But those words had been said out of pain—he’d been rejected by his best friend—and she’d been so sure that she’d been making the prudent choice when he’d said them. “I never thought he’d do this to me.”

“No one ever thinks a leopard is going to eat their face.” He motioned for her to sit at the stool next to the island. “Did you sign a prenup?”

“Yeah.” She’d been thinking about that when she’d quietly shut her bedroom door and walked out of the condo instead of confronting Ethan right that moment.

She wouldn’t get any money if she killed him.

At the time, she’d laughed at that clause in the prenup.

It had probably come up in the hundreds of years that Ethan’s family had been rich, but she never thought it was a hypothetical that might apply to her own murderous rage.

“If you divorce him now, what do you get?” Luca didn’t mince words, and Cece appreciated that about him. Still, she winced at his question. “That bad, huh?”