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Marianna POV

"Yes."

The silence follows.

"What did she say?" he asks finally.

I tell him. All of it, the same way I told Jill, except this time I'm aware of each word landing somewhere. The distraction. The available. The just a rest stop. She knew about Montreal. She said every woman he's ever and left it suspended in the air like smoke.

He doesn't make sounds to indicate he's listening.

When I finish, he's quiet for so long that I check my screen to confirm the call is still connected.

"She got your number," he says.

"Yes."

"From someone on the team. I'll find out who."

"That's not—" I stop. "That's not really the point, Duane."

"What is the point?"

Here it is. The real question that I've been circling for four days while Alina's voice played on a loop in my head.

"She said I'm a distraction," I say.

"She's trying to remove you from my life," Duane says. Flat. Precise. "Because you being in it is inconvenient for her."

He stops. Takes a breath that I can hear. "Alina and I have been finished for eight months."

"Okay."

"Alina's going to contact you again," he says. "Or find other ways to—I don't know what she'll do. But she's resourceful."

"I figured."

"Don't respond. If she calls."

"Right," I agree.

I look at the two paper airplanes on the windowsill. The Montreal one and the terrible asymmetric one. Side by side.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay," he says.

"Tell me something," I say.

And the night settles back into what it's been—the ten PM calls, the specific grammar of him that I've spent a month learning like a language.

He tells me about Silverstone. The circuit, the surface, the particular way the British weather performs on race week—grey and then briefly, gloriously sunny and then grey again.

"Go to sleep, Marianna."

"I'm sleeping."

"You're not."

"I'm approaching sleep. Asymptotically."

The almost-laugh. Exhaled warm through the phone.

"Goodnight," he says.

"Goodnight," I say.

The splinter is still there, technically. Something that was inserted doesn't just dissolve because you acknowledge it. But Jill was right about one thing: knowing is better.

What I know is that Alina Lindqvist is a very good architect of doubt.

I fall asleep to the sound of Wynwood doing its nighttime thing, and for the first time in four days, my brain doesn't run the loop.

Duane flies to London on a Thursday.

I know this because he texts me from the gate—not a long text, just: Boarding. Call tonight.—and then three hours later from Heathrow: Landed. Hotel is grey.

Of course it's grey, I text back.

Everything here is grey, he confirms.

You'll feel right at home, I say.

The almost-laugh arrives as a single ha.

This is what the next two weeks look like from my end: work, Oliver's sessions, Luca's sessions, calls at ten or ten-thirty, texts that are brief and practical and occasionally not practical at all—like the photo he sends at seven AM London time of the circuit view from his hotel window, grey and wet, with no caption, just the image. Like I'm supposed to know why he sent it.

I save it.

Marco catches me saving it.

"Work thing?" he asks, with the specific innocence of someone who has been paying attention for a while.

"Track conditions," I say. "Relevant for—injury patterns. Weather affects—"

"You saved a photo of rain."

"It's atmospheric. For context."

Marco looks at me. Looks at the photo on my phone.

Marco nods.

"Good," he says. Grabs his keys. "I'm getting Pollo Tropical. You want the TropiChop?"

"White rice. Extra beans."

"Obviously."

He leaves.

I look at the rain photo.

Save it a second time, for good measure.

The British Grand Prix practice session happens on a Friday, and I watch the timing screens in the Kinetic break room with the focused calm of someone who has accepted that this is her life now. Watching cars go around circuits. Learning the difference between a fast lap and a representative lap. Understanding that P1 in FP1 means almost nothing and P6 in FP2 might mean everything depending on tire compound and fuel load.

I've absorbed a lot.

Oliver is in P8 in FP2 with what his engineer apparently calls a "promising underlying pace," which I learn from his text: P8 but promising underlying pace!! Do you know what that means? I've been asking Patrick for twenty minutes and he keeps saying 'context-dependent' which is not an answer.

It means, I text back, that the fast lap doesn't tell the whole story. Like if your patient's ROM looks limited but their compensatory patterns are actually optimal—you have to look at the system, not just the number.

A pause.

Oliver: That's actually a really good explanation

Oliver: I'm sending this to Patrick

Oliver: He said 'she's not wrong' which from Patrick is basically a standing ovation

Duane is P3 in FP2, which apparently everyone in the paddock is treating as suspicious. One of the Kinetic staff who follows F1 closely explains that Duane often sandbags practice—runs conservative setups, hides pace, doesn't show his hand until it matters. P3 might mean he's already found the setup and is sitting on it.

"Like playing cards," Derek says.

"Like playing cards," I confirm, with the confidence of someone who figured this out two weeks ago and has been pretending to know it all along.

At 7:43 PM Miami time—which is 12:43 AM Silverstone time—I'm in Marco's apartment watching a replay of FP2 when the call comes.

Not from Duane.

From Kinetic's emergency line.

Dr. Lindholm's voice when I answer is the voice she uses when something has happened and she needs to communicate it cleanly. The voice that has no wasted syllables.

"Ms. Reyes. There's been an incident at Silverstone. FP3, this morning. Contact with the barriers in Turn 3. Duane Richter—" A pause. Brief. "—is at the medical center. Ambulatory. Conscious. Left shoulder re-involvement, possible whiplash component. His team has requested Kinetic deploy support. Given your existing relationship with his treatment protocol—"

I'm already standing up.