LOGIN~Katia~The elevator doors had barely slid open before I was pacing the hardwood of my penthouse living room.I hadn’t changed out of my racing gear. The custom, sleek one-piece black leather racing jumpsuit was still hugged tight to my body like a second skin, carrying the faint, metallic scent of the track and my own sharp sweat. The adrenaline from the Grand Prix was still vibrating violently in my veins, but it had turned sour, curdling into a dark, restless anxiety that made my chest feel like it was trapped under a lead weight.I walked straight to the bar. My hands were still trembling as I grabbed the heavy crystal decanter, pouring a double shot of neat scotch into a glass.I drank it in one go.The alcohol hit the back of my throat like liquid fire, burning its way down to my stomach, but it did nothing to quiet the rushing static in my head. I checked the time on my phone.Where the hell was he?He had told me he slept where I slept. He had claimed my space, my bed, and my
~Katia~"Fuck!"I screamed the word, the raw, vibrating fury tearing from my throat as I threw my blacked-out helmet visor against the concrete wall of my Brooklyn penthouse garage. The heavy, shatterproof plastic hit the brick with a sharp, echoing crack, bouncing wildly across the polished floor before finally coming to a rest near a stack of spare Pirelli slick tires.Sam jumped nearly a foot into the air, her stylus slipping from her fingers and clattering against the screen of her iPad. She quickly recovered, pressing a hand to her chest as she exhaled a long, shaky breath. "Jesus, Katia! My heart can't take this. You won the race. You literally just embarrassed the entire Sterling Motorsports legacy on national television. Why are you so mad?"She walked over, her heels clicking softly against the concrete as she bent down to pick up the scratched black visor. She swiped her thumb across a new scuff mark on the plastic, tapping her stylus against the iPad screen with her other h
~Julian~I found my spot in the WEG hospitality suite before the grid opened.Floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the entire circuit. Coffee I was not drinking. A press credential that gave me access to every level of the event and which I had used to position myself exactly where I needed to be—high enough to see everything and close enough to move fast if I needed to.The Brooklyn Grand Prix exhibition had drawn forty thousand people to the waterfront.The grid was legitimate—professional GT machinery, exhibition drivers, and the kind of event that existed at the intersection of motorsport and spectacle. IG Technologies logos on every barrier, every screen, every piece of branded architecture along the circuit. Katia's company was everywhere you looked.Katia was not on the official grid.She was not supposed to be here as a driver.I had seen the Valkyrie arrive at the service entrance at six forty-five AM, three hours before the gates opened, brought in under a logistics van cover
~Julian~The elevator ride to the penthouse was the longest ninety seconds of my life.My chest was tight, my breathing short and jagged, the raw copper taste of blood still lingering in my throat. My hand was a mess. The blood from the shattered crystal glass had dried in dark, sticky streaks across my palm and fingers, but the fresh cuts were still leaking, staining the leather of my steering wheel on the drive over. I hadn't stopped to clean it. I hadn't stopped to wrap it. The only thing that existed in my mind was the image of Jude Wolfe’s face on that broadcast and the sound of his low, British voice claiming my wife.He had said the words. He had said them to the entire world.I let myself into her penthouse with my key. I didn't make a sound. I didn't need to.Katia was standing at the floor-to-ceiling glass window of her living room, her silhouette dark against the massive, glittering wall of the Manhattan skyline across the river. She was still in the black dress from earli
~Julian~My glass did not survive the broadcast.I was sitting in my biometric-locked study at the Windsor estate, a heavy crystal tumbler of neat, single-malt scotch in my hand, when the screen flickered. I wasn't alone. Zane was leaning against the mahogany bookcase near the window, a folder of the Grand Prix logistics in his hands, his face tight with the same silent, simmering frustration that had been keeping both of us awake for forty-eight hours.We had been reviewing the server access logs that Marcus had compiled, tracing the secure WEG node that had leaked the booking number. We were systematically hunting the leak. We were looking for the digital throat to cut.Then, the high-definition monitor on the wall went black for a fraction of a second.A red bulletin bar slashed across the bottom. A live feed from London."Julian," Zane said, his voice dropping to a low, warning register as he tapped the folder against his thigh. "Look at the screen."I didn't need him to tell me.
~Katia~I had watched it four times.The broadcast had cut into regular programming at nine seventeen PM. Sam had been standing at my desk when it happened, both of us mid-sentence about the Grand Prix security protocols, and then her phone had buzzed and she had looked at the screen and said Katia in a voice that made me stop talking immediately.We had watched it on the office television.A man at a podium. Dark suit. British accent, low and unhurried, the kind of voice that did not need volume because it had weight. He had looked directly at the cameras with the calm, total certainty of someone who had decided something and was not interested in discussing it.My name is Jude Wolfe.Katia Kensington is my wife.I had stood in front of the television at nine twenty-three PM and felt the floor tilt slightly under my feet.Not because of the footage. The footage was extraordinary—the original, unedited forty-seven seconds of what had actually happened on that rooftop—and it was going







