79

Marianna POV

I sit at my desk with my phone in my hands, reading those messages, and feel something about the distance between the man who told me I wasn't his type in his home gym and the man who just said you're right over text from a paddock in Zandvoort without making me argue for it.

Something that has no clinical name but is doing very specific things to my cardiovascular system.

Me: I'll talk to her tomorrow.

Duane: Tell me how it goes.

Me: Will do.

Me: Also—seventy-three percent. I was very happy about that this morning.

Me: Professionally speaking.

A pause. The almost-laugh arrives as two letters: hm.

Which I have learned, in the grammar of him, means something between I know and so was I.

I talk to Dr. Lindholm on Thursday morning.

She listens with her reading glasses off, which I've learned means she's fully present rather than partially processing. I lay out what I have—the pattern of questions, the specific terminology Luca has used, the treatment information he's demonstrated access to. I don't editorialize. I don't tell her what I think it means. I present the data and let her run the assessment.

She's quiet for a moment afterward.

"You documented this," she says.

"Session notes from every appointment. I flagged the relevant exchanges at the time." I put the printed notes on her desk. "I wasn't sure what I was seeing initially. The pattern became clearer over several weeks."

She looks at the notes. Turns two pages. Looks up.

"This is well-documented," she says.

"I thought it might need to be."

Something in her expression shifts—a small thing, a fraction of professional approval that I have learned to recognize and still find disproportionately validating.

"Leave this with me," she says. "I'll speak with the Veloce team management directly. This won't come back to you as the originating source."

"I appreciate that."

She nods. Picks up her glasses. The meeting is over.

I'm at the door when she says: "Ms. Reyes."

"Yes."

"You're handling the complexity of this work environment with significant maturity." She says it the way she says most things—evenly, without performance. "I want you to know I've noticed."

I stand in the doorway for a moment, feeling approximately twelve years old in the best possible way.

"Thank you," I say.

She waves me out with her glasses. I go.

The call that night comes at ten fifteen. From Zandvoort, where it's the middle of the night and Duane should be sleeping before qualifying tomorrow but demonstrably isn't.

"How did it go," he says.

"Well. She'll handle it on the team management side. It won't come back to me."

"Good."

"How did your team principal conversation go."

A pause. "Fine."

"Meaning."

"Meaning the leak has been addressed and the person responsible is no longer in a position to share information with reserve drivers."

"That sounds somewhat ominous."

"It's Formula 1. Everything is somewhat ominous."

I'm on the roof of Marco's building, which I've discovered is accessible if you prop the stairwell door with a magazine, and which offers a view of Wynwood at night that justifies the crime of technically trespassing on a shared space. The city spreads out below in its usual Miami way—warm, lit, always moving, always making noise, alive in the specific way of places that don't fully sleep.

"Tell me something," I say.

"I qualified P2 today," he says.

"I know. I watched the session."

"It's the shoulder that went P2, technically. I just steered."

I smile at the Wynwood night. "That's extremely not how any of that works."

"The seventy-three percent is doing a lot of heavy lifting."

"The seventy-three percent and whoever taped you before every session this week."

"The team physio."

"I sent him the protocol."

"He said it was unusually specific."

"The AC support strip—"

"He called it 'architecturally ambitious.'"

I laugh. Actually laugh, surprised by it, the sound going out into the Wynwood night and dissolving into the ambient noise of a city that doesn't care about it but makes a good backdrop regardless.

"I miss you," I say, before I decide to.

He's quiet for a moment.

"Nine days," he says. "Singapore's a different story but there are two weekends after Zandvoort before the season goes international again."

"Two weekends in Miami."

"Yes."

"You'll be here."

"Yes."

"At your apartment."

"Yes."

I look out over the city. The warm lights. The distant sound of whatever the bar two blocks east is doing tonight.

"Okay," I say.

"Nine days," he says again.

"Nine days," I confirm.