Chapter 46

[ 1,016 words ]

Julian’s POV

“I’m done for the night,” I said, because if I started listing everything I was done with, I’d be on that call until sunrise.

Zane exhaled like he was leaning back somewhere expensive. “So what’s the actual reason you’re calling me, and don’t insult me by pretending it’s to talk about your feelings p>

I looked out at the dark garden beyond the windows, the lanterns still glowing among trimmed hedges, and I realized the moment had arrived, the moment my body always reaches when it’s been forced into too many suits and too many rooms and too many conversations that don’t mean anything.

“I want to go racing,” I said, and even as the words left my mouth, I felt my shoulders loosen by a fraction, because there are very few things in this world that make sense without people complicating them, and speed is one of them.

Zane laughed, the sound bright and mocking. “Vegas p>

“There’s another race,” I said, and I didn’t have to explain how I knew because he knew how I knew, because the underground circuit doesn’t run on flyers and advertisements; it runs on whispered dates and private channels and money that moves like water.

His amusement deepened. “Well,” he said, “just don’t get married again p>

That pulled an actual laugh from me, short and sharp, the kind that tastes like relief. “It would be a pity to get married for the third time,” I answered, and the joke landed between us with a weight neither of us acknowledged, because even jokes have shadows when they come too close to the truth.

“I’m coming,” Zane said, and his tone shifted into the version of him that becomes all business when he needs to, the version that knows how to disappear into logistics and make things happen quickly without leaving a trail.

I ended the call and moved through my home like I wasn’t walking through a mansion but through a corridor of decisions already made, because I didn’t need to pack much, and I didn’t need to explain myself to anyone, not to Delia, not to my grandmother, not to the staff who would notice my absence and file it away quietly the way they file away everything in a family like mine.

The chopper was ready within the hour, blades carving the night air into something loud and alive, and when I stepped onto the helipad, I felt my blood wake up, because helicopters do something to a man’s sense of gravity; they remind you that the ground is optional if you have enough money and enough nerve, and I watched the city shrink beneath us as we lifted away, Manhattan falling back into its glittering grid like a board game that someone else could play for once.

Zane joined me mid-flight, sliding into the seat opposite mine with the kind of casual confidence only a man who has followed you into too many messes can wear without shame, and he didn’t ask me why I needed this, because he didn’t have to, because he’s seen my patterns and he knows that I don’t chase leisure, I chase control, and sometimes the only way to feel in control again is to put yourself somewhere that demands your full attention.

We landed in Vegas the way we always did, without ceremony and without delay, stepping out into heat and neon and that particular kind of artificial luxury that tries too hard, because Vegas is a city built on the belief that spectacle can replace substance, and it almost works if you don’t look too closely.

The race location was already waiting, buried beyond the tourist brightness, hidden behind security checkpoints and unmarked roads, and when we arrived the airfield was lit like a private kingdom, the kind of place where money isn’t spent, it’s displayed, where engines are louder than voices and people move like predators around the fences, and I felt the familiar shift settle into my chest, the one that happens when a man steps into a space where rules are different, where no one asks you for your last name, and where anonymity is the only currency that matters.

My car was waiting exactly where it should be, a machine so expensive and so carefully tuned that calling it a car felt like calling a blade a piece of metal, because it wasn’t built for comfort or show; it was built for dominance, a sleek, angry thing with an engine that sounded like a promise you can’t take back once you make it.

I pulled on my suit and helmet without speaking, because the more you speak before a race, the more you waste, and when I stepped onto the tarmac, I could feel eyes shift toward me even through the helmet, because even anonymous, presence is presence, and people on that circuit recognize it like animals recognize a new threat.

The lineup was thick with expensive machines and expensive egos, and the crowd around the barricades moved like a living thing, phones raised, voices roaring, and bets changing hands quickly in the shadows, but I wasn’t there for the crowd or their noise; I was there because something in my bones demanded speed and because there was a name that still sat in the back of my mind like an itch.

Six years ago, my undefeated record broke in this city.

Six years ago, someone I never saw, someone no one saw, someone behind a blacked-out visor, outran me and left me standing in the only place I hate standing, which is second.

And then, as if the universe had decided to entertain itself at my expense, I saw her.

Not her face, not her eyes, not even her mouth, but her silhouette, her posture, the way she moved toward her car as though the world had already made room for her and she simply expected it to continue, and I knew immediately, with the same certainty you know an old scar when you brush a finger across it, that this was the same racer.

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