Chapter 3 Puzzle

MAYA POV

Telemetry does not lie. A driver can fool the media, their engineer, and themselves—but the data records every flinch.

There is no sound worse than silence at a hundred and seventy miles an hour.

When a race car aquaplanes, the roar of the tires disappears, replaced by a sickening, floating hush as four patches of rubber lose contact with the earth.

The painted concrete wall of Turn Seven rushes straight toward my visor.

For a split second, I’m not in New York anymore. I’m twenty-two years old again, trapped upside down in twisted carbon fiber, tasting blood and waiting for the fire to start. Panic claws at my throat, threatening to lock my elbows.

"Stop fighting the column, Maya!" Nico’s voice lashes through my headset like a whip, cutting straight through the flashback. "Open your hands! Let the front tires find the dry line and catch it on the throttle!"

His voice is so furious, so commanding, that my body reacts before my terrified brain can argue.

Instead of wrenching the wheel left and flipping the car into the gravel trap, I loosen my death grip on the suede rim by an inch, letting the front wheels slide across the puddle until the rubber bites into the abrasive tarmac on the outer edge of the track.

The steering wheel snaps violently in my hands, jarring my bad shoulder with a white-hot flash of pain. I grit my teeth, plant my right foot on the throttle to pin the rear diffuser down, and drag the screaming car out of the slide with sheer stubbornness, missing the steel barrier by less than three inches.

"Holy shit, Maya!" Evelyn gasps in my ear as my car blasts out of the corner exit in a cloud of spray. "Are you okay? Do we box?"

"No!" My chest heaves inside the tight harness, my heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my teeth. "Keep me out! I’m finishing the lap!"

Ahead of me, Nico hasn't slowed down. If anything, he pushes harder through the final sector, daring me to stay with him.

Adrenaline floods my veins, burning away the terror until only a razor-sharp focus remains. I hit every single apex through the final three corners, shifting down and rocketing onto the main straightaway before crossing the finish line right behind Nico’s rear wing.

"Box, box, box," the team principal’s voice comes over the main channel as we roll down the speed-limited pit lane. "Bring both cars in."

I pull into Bay One, kill the ignition, and sit frozen for three heartbeats as the mechanics swarm the car.

Nobody is speaking.

Slowly, I unclip my harness, disconnect my radio lead, and haul myself up out of the cockpit, careful to step down onto my left leg first so nobody sees my right knee buckle under my suit. I pull off my helmet and shake out my damp hair, bracing myself for the team principal to tell me to pack my bags.

Instead, Evelyn runs up to the barrier, staring down at her tablet with wide, shining eyes.

"One minute, twenty-eight point four," Evelyn whispers, a stunned grin breaking across her face. "Maya, you didn't just beat the board’s rookie target time—you were within two-tenths of Nico’s sector three in the pouring rain!"

Around the garage, two of the mechanics actually exchange an impressed nod. Glance up at the VIP glass, and the suits on the board aren't smiling—they’re huddled together in heated conversation, their easy excuse to fire me blown to pieces on the timing screens.

"Told you I was fine, Ev," I say, forcing a cocky grin onto my face even as a cold sweat breaks out down my spine and nausea churns in my stomach. "Go upload the data. I’m going to grab dry gloves from the back locker."

"I'll meet you in debrief in ten!" Evelyn beams, turning back to her console.

I don't let my smile drop until I push through the heavy door at the back of the garage, stepping into the dim, windowless storage corridor behind the tire bay.

The door clicks shut, sealing out the noise of the garage.

I take one step. Then two.

And my body completely betrays me.

The adrenaline drains out of my veins all at once, leaving a violent earthquake in my muscles. My right hand shakes so badly I drop my helmet onto the rubber mat, and on my third step, my right knee gives out completely.

I hit the cold concrete floor hard, my back slamming against the stacked tire racks as I drag my knees to my chest and shove my head down between them, gasping for air.

Damn it. Damn it, Maya, get up.

I press my trembling palms against my eyes, willing my lungs to stop hyperventilating and my legs to work. Everyone out there thinks I just conquered Turn Seven without blinking, and here I am, folded in half on the floor in the dark because my nervous system still belongs to a crash from two years ago.

The heavy steel door at the end of the corridor swings open.

I freeze, biting back a gasp as heavy, measured footsteps crunch across the concrete toward me. If a reporter or a board member sees me like this, I’m finished.

A tall shadow rounds the stack of Pirelli tires and stops dead.

It’s Nico.

He’s still in his damp racing suit, the top half peeled down and tied around his waist over a tight black compression shirt that clings to every corded muscle of his chest and shoulders.

My stomach plummets in pure mortification. Of all the people on earth to catch me broken on the floor, it has to be him.

"Get lost, Nico," I choke out, trying to shove myself up against the rack, only for my shaking legs to slide right back out from under me. "Go tell the board I can't even stand up after five laps. Isn't that what you want?"

Nico doesn't say a word. He glances back toward the door, reaches out, and flips the heavy deadbolt shut so nobody from the garage can walk in.

Then he walks over to me.

There’s no mockery in his storm-gray eyes. No pity, either—which I think would have killed me on the spot.

Instead, he drops down next to me, leaning his broad shoulders back against the tire rack a foot from mine, stretching his long legs out across the concrete like sitting on a dirty storage floor is how he spends every Tuesday.

"Put your head back between your knees," Nico says quietly. "Your blood pressure dropped when the adrenaline cleared. Fight it and you’ll pass out."

"I don't need your medical advice," I whisper fiercely, though I press my forehead to my knees anyway as another wave of dizziness rolls over me.

"I know," he replies evenly. "You're far too stubborn to need anything from anyone."

Silence stretches between us in the dim corridor, broken only by the hum of the ventilation fans and my ragged breathing. Minute by minute, the solid, unmoving heat of him sitting beside me acts like a strange anchor. He doesn't touch me. He doesn't try to haul me up or treat me like a porcelain doll. He just stays there, guarding the corridor in silence until the violent trembling in my thighs finally subsides.

Slowly, I lift my head and wipe the cold sweat from my chin with the back of my sleeve. "Why are you still sitting here? You hate me."

Nico turns his head to look at me. Up this close in the shadows, the harsh angles of his face look almost exhausted. "I don't hate you, Maya. I just think you’re going to kill yourself trying to prove you don't feel fear."

"I only have fear to feel because of you!" My voice cracks with two years of pent-up agony. "You drove me into the wall at Turn Seven two years ago! You nearly ended my life, and you never even apologized!"

Nico’s jaw clenches so hard a muscle jumps beneath his scar. Slowly, he reaches into the zippered pocket of his racing suit, pulls out a folded, faded printout of old telemetry graphs, and drops it into my lap.

"I didn't apologize because the crash wasn't what you think it was," Nico says, his voice dropping to a rough, dangerous murmur. "Look at the pit-to-car data packet timestamped eleven seconds before we collided."

My heart stops as I stare down at the red abnormality spike on the faded paper. "What is this?"

"Before you tried to overtake me that day, I received an official engineering override telling me your soft tires had delaminated and you were backing out of the corner," Nico says, his dark eyes locking onto mine as he stands and towers over me. "I defended the inside line because I was told you weren't there. That data was falsified before it ever reached my dash."

The room spins around me. "You're lying. Who the hell would falsify my tire data on your team's server?"

Nico looks down at me, his expression cold and unreadable.

"Don't take my word for it," he says softly. "Ask Evelyn.”