Page 75 of Knot So Fast (Speedverse #1)
"Fuck," I mutter, standing on the brakes and feeling almost nothing. The wall approaches at terrifying speed, and I have to use every trick I know—downshifting aggressively to use engine braking, trail braking with what little pressure I have, even brushing the grass to scrub speed.
I make it through, but barely. When I glance in my mirrors, Dimitri is having the same problem—his car washing wide, almost collecting the barrier on exit.
We make eye contact for a split second as we accelerate down the back straight, and I can see the panic in his eyes that probably mirrors my own. We're both driving compromised cars at speeds that could kill us, and there's nothing we can do about it except try to survive.
"Harrison, brakes are jammed," I finally admit, the words coming out steady despite the terror crawling up my spine. "Almost no pressure. I'm driving on engine braking and prayer."
The response is immediate chaos in my ears—Harrison swearing, Terek demanding information, engineers scrambling to understand how this could have happened. But I tune it all out because the chicane is coming up—the one that feeds onto the main straight.
I'm going too fast. Way too fast. The brake pedal goes to the floor with zero response this time, and I know with crystalline clarity that I'm not going to make the corner. Physics doesn't care about skill or bravery—without brakes, at this speed, the car is going to go straight on.
The barrier rushes toward me, and I'm already bracing for impact, trying to position my body to absorb the hit, when Dimitri's car slides into mine.
The contact is deliberate—I can tell from the angle, the precision of it. He's not trying to pass or push me out of the way. He's using his car to redirect mine, sacrificing his own race to change my trajectory from a head-on impact with the barrier to something more survivable.
We go off together, our cars locked in a violent ballet as we leave the track. The gravel trap does nothing to slow us—we skip across it like stones on water. Then we hit the grass and everything goes wrong.
My car catches something—a drain cover, a bump, who knows—and suddenly I'm airborne. The world goes upside down, right side up, upside down again. Each impact is like being hit by a heavyweight boxer, my body slamming against the harness with enough force to drive the air from my lungs.
When the world finally stops spinning, I'm hanging upside down, held in place by my harness. The smell hits immediately—gasoline, hot metal, and something burning. Blood is dripping from my nose, running up my forehead in the inverted position.
I try to focus, to process what just happened, but my vision grays out and suddenly?—
I'm in Lucius's penthouse, standing in his living room with fury coursing through my veins like molten metal.
"The pack doesn't give a shit about you, Lucius!" I'm screaming, my voice raw with emotion. "It's so fucking obvious and you're acting like some blind fool begging for attention!"
He's standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook Monaco, his posture defensive, arms crossed. "I don't need their attention," he argues, but even in the memory—because this has to be a memory—I can hear the lie in it.
"Then why are you doing what they're telling you?!" I demand, gesturing wildly at something I can't quite see in the peripheral of the memory. "You're risking losing your brother, your friends, ME!"
"This is work," he says, jaw clenched. "It's different."
"OUR work!" The words tear from my throat. "We're all in this ride together and you're acting like some lone ranger that has to carry the burden! You don't have to prove anything to them!"
"I'm sticking with it," he says, turning away from me, and the gesture is so final it feels like a door slamming.
"Fine!" I hear myself say, and the pain in my voice makes my chest ache even in the present. "Stick with them and watch you lose everything you love, including me!"
I'm jolted back to the present by Lachlan's voice screaming through the radio.
"AUREN! AUREN, ANSWER ME!"
There's cursing from multiple voices, panic and professionalism warring in the chaos of communication. But I can smell gasoline stronger now, and smoke is starting to fill the cockpit. My nose is definitely broken—blood flowing freely, making it hard to breathe.
I try to reach for the harness release but my hands won't cooperate. The impact has left me dizzy, disoriented, and I can barely keep my eyes open. Through the cracked visor of my helmet, I can see flames starting to lick at the rear of the car.
The déjà vu is overwhelming. Fire and race cars, the combination that nearly killed me before. But unlike last time, I don't have the energy to panic. There's an odd calm that comes with accepting that if no one gets me out of here soon, I'm done.
My mind drifts to the argument with Lucius—when was that? What was he involved in that had me so upset? The memory feels important but slippery, like trying to hold water in cupped hands.
Movement outside catches my attention. Dimitri is struggling to walk, his left leg clearly injured from his own impact, but he's limping toward my car with determination.
When he reaches me, he doesn't hesitate—dropping to his knees despite what must be agony and starting to kick at the already cracked glass.
"Blyad!" he curses in Russian, then switches to English. "You better fucking be alive, Vale. I'm not losing my leg because of your dead weight."
I try to laugh but it comes out as more of a wheeze. "Funny, but I still hate your guts."
"Likewise," he grunts, finally breaking through enough glass to reach inside. His hands are steady despite everything as he finds the harness release, and I hear the blessed click of freedom. "You gotta help me out here, Vale. I'm on my last legs. Literally."
"I'll try to crawl," I manage, though my body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.
Together, we struggle to extract me from the inverted cockpit. Every movement is agony, my ribs screaming in protest, my head spinning from being upside down and the impact. Dimitri pulls while I push, inch by painful inch, until finally I'm free.
"Move, move, move!" he gasps, and we crawl across the grass like wounded animals, him dragging his ruined leg, me fighting to stay conscious.
The smoke is getting thicker, blacker, and I can hear the fire spreading. People are running toward us—marshals, medics, someone screaming into a radio—but they seem impossibly far away.
We make it maybe twenty meters before we both collapse, completely spent. I'm on my back, staring at the perfect blue Canadian sky, when the explosion happens.
The sound is enormous—a crushing wave of pressure and heat that makes us both flinch even at this distance. What's left of my car is now a funeral pyre, burning with the kind of intensity that would have left nothing of me to bury.
"My brakes," I whisper, because it seems important to say it out loud. "They wouldn't work."
Dimitri turns his head to look at me, his face pale under the dirt and blood. "Mine jammed too."
The implication sits between us like a physical thing. Both our cars, both our brakes, at the same time. This wasn't mechanical failure or bad luck. We were sabotaged.
"You crashed into me on purpose," I whisper, the realization hitting through the fog of shock and pain.
He says nothing for a long moment, then mutters, "You got balls for an Omega, Vale. You don't deserve to die."
It's the last thing I hear before the darkness claims me, pulling me under into blessed unconsciousness where there's no fire, no pain, no questions about who wanted us dead and why.
Just silence.
And then nothing.
I pass out.