Page 18 of Shadowed Sins: Nitro

He leads me to a murdered-out Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series, the kind of machine that looks like it escaped from hell's motor pool. Matte black paint that seems to absorb light, a rear wing that could double as a dining table, and enough horsepower to break the sound barrier.

"She's got 720 horses under the hood," Gideon says, running his hand along the carbon fiber splitter. "Launch control, drift mode, and a top speed that'll make you see God."

I slide into the driver's seat, and the racing harness hugs me like an old lover. The steering wheel feels perfect in my hands. Alcantara grip worn just right, paddle shifters positioned exactly where my fingers fall naturally.

This is better. Four wheels. Stable. Safe. Relatively.

"Qualifying runs start in two minutes!" The announcement echoes across the yard. "Drivers, final prep!"

I put on the helmet and fire up the Mercedes. The engine doesn't scream—it growls, low and menacing, like a predator warning others away from its kill. The whole chassis vibrates with barely contained violence, 720 horses chomping at the bit.

My hands are steady on the wheel, but my mind is chaos.

Is she watching? She said she'd watch from the spectator area. But that's not her style. She's somewhere else. Somewhere she shouldn't be.

"Nitro, you're up first," Gideon calls out. "Show them how it's done."

I roll to the starting line, the Mercedes prowling forward on massive Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s that grip the asphalt like they're fused to it. The course stretches ahead—a nightmare of tight corners, elevation changes, and walls of steel that don't forgive mistakes.

Sixty seconds to prove I'm still worth something. Sixty seconds to make her notice.

Concentrate on the race. Not on her. The race.

But I can still feel the ghost of her thumb brushing my knuckles. Still smell her perfume. Still see the way she walked away in that dress, every step calculated to destroy me.

"Ready?" The starter holds up the flag.

I nod, revving the engine. The tachometer swings toward redline, and the whole car shudders with anticipation. My foot hovers over the launch control button. One press and this thing will catapult me forward like a missile.

The flag drops.

I nail the launch control. The Mercedes explodes forward with violence that slams me back into the seat. Zero to sixty in 2.9 seconds, the acceleration crushing my chest, making it hard to breathe. The first corner rushes up—a sharp right-hander that wants to send me straight into a container wall.

Don't lift. Never lift.

I throw the car sideways without touching the brakes, using momentum and controlled chaos to drift through the turn. The rear tires break loose, screaming their protest as they paint black lines across wet asphalt. The wall flashes by inches from my mirror, close enough that I could reach out and touch rusted metal.

The course opens onto a short straight flanked by container canyons. I bury the throttle, shifting up through the gears with violent precision. Third. Fourth. Fifth. The speedometer climbs past numbers that have no business existing in a space this tight—80, 90, 100 mph between the walls of steel.

This is insane. This is perfect. This is what I needed.

The chicane comes up like a snake strike—three rapid direction changes designed to break rhythm and bones. I attack it with calculated aggression, the Mercedes dancing on the edge of physics. Left, right, left, the car rotating around its axis while somehow maintaining forward momentum.

Each transition threatens to send me spinning, but I hold it together through pure stubbornness and muscle memory. The steering wheel fights me, power steering struggling to keep up with inputs that shouldn't be possible. My forearms burn from the effort, but I don't care.

She's watching. Has to be watching.

An elevation change launches me slightly airborne. For a heartbeat, I'm weightless, floating, the engine note changing as the wheels lose contact with Earth. Then gravity slams me back down, suspension bottoming out with a crack that rattles my teeth.

The split-second landing costs me momentum. I compensate by taking the next corner even more aggressively, drifting so close to the container that paint transfers to metal with a shriek that sounds expensive.

Gideon's gonna be pissed about the paint. Worth it.

The course narrows, containers creating a tunnel barely wide enough for the Mercedes. No margin for error here. One twitch of the wheel and I'm eating steel at triple-digit speeds. The smart move is to play it safe.

Fuck safe.

I keep the throttle pinned, threading the needle at speeds that blur the container walls into abstract patterns. The Mercedes fills the entire width of the passage, mirrors folding back from proximity. The engine note echoes off metal walls, creating a symphony of mechanical violence that drowns out rational thought.