Page 15

CHAPTER EIGHT

Reece's hamstrings and glutes scream as he completes his final set of lunges, sweat dripping onto the rubber floor of the circuit's fitness center. Physically he’s locked in, but mentally he’s back in a Vegas hotel room, watching Maiken storm out, pain and betrayal in her blue eyes.

"Focus." Ona’s voice is filled with impatience. "Your heart rate is too elevated for this exercise." She taps her tablet, where his biometrics display in real-time from the sensors in his fitness tracker. "Are you sleeping properly?"

"Yeah." The lie comes automatically, a habit after a lifetime of hiding the truth from Graham.

Ona's dark eyes narrow. "Bullshit."

"What do you want me to say?" He straightens, snatching his towel from a nearby bench.

"That I got married after knowing someone for one night, and my father called her a whore within five minutes of meeting her?

Fine. I tossed and turned all fucking night because…

Look, I'm the piece of shit who's screwing up her life here.

No question about it." He wipes his face, each movement sharp.

Ona doesn't flinch at his outburst. "That's better. Honesty indicates awareness." She’s worked with him as his performance coach since he was twenty-two. She’s heard far worse from Reece. "Now, let's finish with core work." She hands him his water bottle. “You haven’t ruined her life. Yet.”

He sighs and moves to the mat. One of the reasons he appreciates Ona is her steadiness.

He can count on one hand the number of times she’s lost her cool, which is saying something because she’s seen, heard, and received some pretty nasty crap.

Hiring her as his physio was his first rebellion against Graham, a decision he made without his father’s input or approval because he was well and truly sick of Graham’s shit and desperate for even the tiniest goddamn bit of self-determination.

Onalerona Kenyatta is one of the pillars of Reece Pritchard’s success.

As he settles into his first plank, the fitness center door opens, and Wyn walks in with his physio, Haran Tilke.

The brothers' eyes meet in the mirror. It’s a long, assessing look.

Wyn drops his blue and gold WolfBett Racing duffel on the floor. "Thought you'd still be on your honeymoon."

Reece holds the plank, counting silently. "Shouldn’t you be strategizing how not to shunt it again in Q2?" His little brother has a problem with crashing in the second qualifying round. It’s happened three times this year.

Wyn snorts, but there's an edge to it as he begins stretching under Haran's watchful eye. The jab hit too close to home, and as much as Reece knows Wyn thinks he can hide his frustration, there’ no keeping that from a brother who’s raced beside him for nineteen years and seen him almost every day for over twenty-four.

Reece knows his baby brother way too well, which is also how he knew exactly which button to punch.

The two physiotherapists exchange professional nods.

Wyn stretches his shoulders. "So you married that girl from Vegas."

"Yep."

"After one night."

"Uh-huh."

"In a drive-thru chapel."

"With Elvis." Reece transitions into side planks at Ona’s direction.

Wyn shakes his head slowly, the ghost of a grin tugging at his mouth. "Fucking hell, Reece. Gotta say, I didn't think you had it in you."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"You know what I mean. You're always so..." Wyn gestures vaguely. "Calculated. Everything by the book. I'm the impulsive jackoff, remember? You're the golden boy who never puts a foot wrong." He glances at Ona. "Well, almost never, right, O?"

They all know he’s referring to how Reece hiring her was the first blow to Graham’s control.

She regards him with cool calm. "Fuck you, Wyn."

Haran chuckles under his breath.

"Maybe I got tired of that rep." Reece rolls onto his back.

Wyn takes the resistance band Haran offers. "Yeah, well, if it was about pissing off Dad, mission accomplished."

It wasn’t about that asshole at all. Reece wipes his face with a towel. "When isn't he fuming?"

Wyn lowers his voice. "No, mate. I mean it. He's extra this week. Got Junior hanging around the paddock, 'collecting content' for Paddock Access ."

That’s the name of Graham’s hit behind-the-scenes F1 TV show. It comes with cameras crawling up all the drivers’ arses, especially Reece’s and Wyn’s.

Reece freezes. "DBJ has entrance to the paddock? You’re joking.”

Wyn shakes his head, watching his elder brother. He knows Reece can’t stand Junior. "Graham told Damien Senior he'd keep him on a leash.” He rolls his eyes. “Good luck with that."

Reece pushes up to sit on the mat. "How’s Nico handling it?"

He means Nico Belmonte, the other driver for WolfBett Racing. Nico’s the reigning Drivers’ Champion, and he has serious beef with Junior.

Wyn blows out a breath, stretching his hamstrings. "Not well. Threw his helmet across the garage yesterday when he found out. Honestly, I thought he was going to walk."

"Christ," Reece mutters.

Junior’s a predatory problem and a half, and everyone in F1 knows it. He can’t believe the FIA lifted their ban on the guy. Reece scrubs a hand over his face, anger simmering about this new development. He doesn’t want DBJ anywhere near Mai, or any other woman for that matter.

He hesitates, then starts another side plank. "Look, about Maiken?—"

"That the Oyster bird’s real name?"

Reece glares at his brother. "Don’t call her that." Fuck, that disrespect pisses him off.

Wyn raises both hands in surrender. "Sorry. Didn't mean it like that. It's just..." He trails off, frowning. "Graham’s nicknames are catchy, right? Even when you hate them." He should know; their father’s been calling him Whine for years.

"She’s bloody talented."

"Hey, no judgment from me. I saw the same show you did." Wyn keeps stretching. "If you’re happy, I'm happy. Just... Christ, Reece. Did you think this through at all?"

Reece meets his brother’s eyes across the mat. "Not even a little bit."

Wyn huffs a low laugh, but Reece knows he’s trying to come off as casual.

"Guess I can see why Dad’s worried." Wyn straightens and pulls a towel from his bag. "He thinks she’s just, you know, looking for a quick fuck and a quicker buck."

Reece goes still. Cold. Sharp.

Wyn keeps talking, pretending to be oblivious. "He figures you’ll wake up one morning with a ring missing and a bank account lighter. But if you don’t, well...” Wyn shrugs. “He says she’s an ideal marketing tool while she lasts. Exotic and disposable."

Reece knows exactly what his brother's doing. Mind games, same as always. And bloody hell, he's taking the bait anyway.

He stands slowly, every muscle tight as he holds Wyn’s gaze for one long, simmering second.

"I don’t want to hear Graham’s bullshit, Wyn.

Not now, not ever.” He steps closer to his brother.

“If you don't have an original fucking thought in your head, maybe ask yourself why.

Because right now? You're just his mouthpiece. "

Before Wyn can answer, Ona steps between them, her voice crisp. "Shower, Reece. Now."

He snatches up his towel and stalks toward the locker room. As he passes through the doorway, he glances over his shoulder.

Wyn keeps stretching and pretending. Ona and Haran stand off to the side, heads bowed in quiet, intense conversation and eyes cutting toward him like they know exactly what kind of damage he’s helping to cause.

The shower does little to wash away Reece’s frustration, but having a routine grounds him.

Fresh PNW Nitro polo and trackies. Hat with sponsor logos perfectly positioned.

By the time he strides through the paddock toward the team's hospitality unit, he's locked his personal life behind the professional mask he's perfected over years in the spotlight.

Next up is a strategy meeting and he needs his head in the game for that. He can’t let Wyn throw him off. That’s how his brother gets on the podium; he starts competing before they’ve even gotten into their cockpits.

The Nitro briefing room is a shrine to data. A mass of monitors displaying telemetry, circuit maps, and weather patterns dominates the space. Scribbled calculations and track sector times fill an enormous whiteboard on one wall. It smells of coffee, dry-erase markers, and sweat.

Reece enters with Ona still shadowing him. She takes her usual position in the corner, tablet ready to note any concerns that might affect his driving.

Coy doesn't look up from his laptop. "You're late."

"Sorry. The media's here early and being bloody persistent." Reece drops into a chair at the central table. He was waylaid three times by reporters between the fitness center and this office.

Coy raises his eyes, expression neutral. "Are you not entertained?"

"Thrilled."

Misho Leroy, Reece's race engineer, spins in his chair to face them. His French-Moroccan accent is thick, even after fifteen years in the sport. "We have bigger problems than reporters."

Asuka Shimamura, Nitro's chief engineer, doesn't bother with pleasantries.

The Japanese woman's posture is ramrod straight, her expression unreadable as she brings up a complex series of graphs on the main screen.

"The sim data from the factory indicates significant understeer in sectors 1 and 3. We need to address it before FP1."

Her matter-of-fact tone makes it clear she couldn't care less about Reece's personal drama. The car’s performance is her only concern. Nitro's test driver is back at their British factory headquarters running setups in the Driver-in-the-Loop simulator and working with their engineering team.

"I felt it in the little sim coming out of turn 4," Reece says. "Really unsettled in every run." He and Petra have a small portable setup for running simulations while they're at the circuits. It helps them home in on the data the factory team gathers from the six-million-dollar DIL.

Misho nods. "Your telemetry confirms it."