CHAPTER 3

Marco

"Run it again."

My voice cuts through the hushed tension of the team trailer like a whipcrack. Ignoring the furtive glances between my engineers, I lean in close to the telemetry display, brow furrowed in scrutiny.

The holovid reboots, and there it is once more - that damnable final lap rendering all my efforts into second-best futility yet again. I watch, jaw clenched, as the sleek lines of my ruby red machine knife through the corners in a flawless high-speed ballet. Every apex carved with pure indelible precision. Every turn-in point a masterclass of technical perfection.

Yet no matter how flawless the choreography, Dupont's midnight blue missile filled my mirrors with each passing kilometer. Until at last, my harrying tormentor was but a fluorescent blur in the rictus, growing ever larger with every blink. Like the hounds of Hades were suddenly snapping, ravenous, at my heels.

In the final mad dash to the finish line, she had closed inexorably. So near, I could have sworn I felt the heat of her exhaust scarfing the rear diffuser. Could reach out and graze the lethal edges of those scything front wings...

Which is exactly when I would have shaken the distracting reverie and simply put the hammer down, you understand. Leaving this upstart pretender to eat my turbulence and dreams of glory in a vapor trail of impotent frustration.

Except we both know that never happened. The truth was, I'd left the barest margin for error. And like the purest of artists automatically do when inspiration strikes, Alexandra Dupont had slipped right through the crack with another of her inimitable masterstrokes.

I snarl and kill the holovid playback with a violent stab, spinning away before the sight of her exultant features filling my windscreen can burn into my retinas yet again. Before the phantom wafts of her sweat-soaked leathers and race exhaust inundate my senses in ways that still leave me...discomfited.

"Luca," I bark over my shoulder, "Status update on the simulations." My oldest friend and head engineer straightens in his seat, shooting me an inscrutable look.

"We're re-running the chassis data from Valencia through every possible scenario for Marrakech in two weeks. So far, the new suspension calibrations look promising for managing that heat cycle over a full day's running."

Good, good. The more performance advantages we can stack against my "teammate", the sooner I can wipe that impetuous little grin off her---

The thought slides away as a familiar hazy recollection surfaces, unbidden. Of tussled auburn curls shimmering under the Mallorcan sun's spangled tracks. Of twinkling green eyes narrowing with mirthful glee whenever she let that distractingly feral grin slip, just for a beat.

Luca's voice cuts through the unwanted nostalgia. "But I must ask, Marco...this new training regimen you've assigned? These, shall we say...supplemental enrichments?" He throws a significant look at the whiteboard covered with calculations, gear ratios, and a small forest's worth of performance notation.

"Is it strictly in pursuit of taming that infernal desert circuit? Or is it...something more?"

I turn from the pitting bay windows, aiming my most withering glare across the length of the trailer to shut down this line of inquiry. But Luca's knowing grin merely deepens, the bastard. He's been one step ahead of me nearly as long as I can remember.

So have it your way, vecchio. Let's make a game of it.

Prowling in a slow circle, I drink in every detail of my oldest friend's body language. The subtlest flicks of microexpression and tic for any cues to his angle this particular breach. When I judge the moment is perfectly ripe, I strike without warning.

"You know me altogether too well, Luca. This escalating preoccupation has indeed become...rather more than merely peripheral lately."

He bobs his graying head, features arranging ever so faintly into the mask of a man preparing himself for another round of ego's folly revealed.

Except this time, I have no interest in begging indulgence. Not about this. Instead, I press in close, nostrils flaring as months of coiled frustration finally boils over.

"You want to psychoanalyze me, good sir? Pry into what's twisting my subconscious into knots these endless nights as I choke down defeat after bitter defeat? Very well, let's examine just what plague that capricious, smarming, viperous truculent viper of a woman has summoned forth upon me..."

The words pour from me at a steadily increasing cadence, harsh Romanic syllables filling the trailer until I can scarcely tell where rational diction gives way to feral, unguarded lather.

I snarl and seethe at how her very existence has shaken my being to its foundations these last seasons. How the burning injustice of her effortless uprising from humble pauper's origins has so destabilized and consumed my every idle moment. The utter indignity that someone so clearly underborn could not only keep apace with my greatness, but cast its aura into perpetual shadow at every turn.

My team can only watch in wary silence as I ramp into full rhetorical fervor. Luca's face is a masterwork of impenetrability through it all, damn his soul. As if he'd already discerned the true shape of this madness long before I gave voice to it myself.

Finally, I wind down, chest heaving. Pouring the venom out has not dulled its vicious sting one whit. If anything, the words have only stoked the flames into a deeper brand of treacherous intrigue.

One I must needs confront directly, before whatever dark sorcery's at work here burns me anew.

"So there it is, my friend," I murmur, still struggling to rein in the maelstrom. "My obsession laid bare for your scrutinizing amusement. Now, will you finally unbunburdenurself and tell me how I scourge this virulent Alexandra Dupont from fouling my soul forevermore?"

Luca considers in silence for several long breaths. When at last he speaks, his voice is low, grating.

"You want my remedy for your malady, Marco? Very well...I prescribe you go forth and exorcise these demons directly. Bury whatever this is between you and the Dupont woman once and for all."

Despite myself, I lean in unconsciously, finally sensing the path to absolution from this downward spiral. "Yes, yes do go on... What fire must I light to chase her from my thoughts? What salted soil must her viper's nest be planted upon to---"

"Bed her."

The words hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest, stealing my very breath. I goggle at Luca, honestly unsure I've heard him correctly despite the devilish glint now burning in his sockets.

"Wh...what did you just say?"

"You heard me plain, Marco. If this pathological fixation is to be broken - if any hope remains of restoring your superiority and freeing your spirit from her relentless torment - you'll need to embrace your obsession with the Dupont woman. Court her, consume her...or be forever consumed in turn by this madness you've brought upon yourself."

For once, I am utterly without words. My lips work up and down like a gasping fish as I struggle to process his profane prescription. This is...this is insanity. LunThe lunacy is the most debased, heretical variety!

Yet even as I scramble for every fiber of indignant rejection, a small terrified voice calls out from the most shadowed recesses of my psyche. A part of me that has been starving for oxygen ever since that impudent woman first invaded my sanctum and overturned reality's fundamental constants.

It whispers that perhaps there is a selfish, idolatrous wisdom to my friend's sacrilege. That the only way to exorcise this madness is indeed to delve into its most abyssal, deviant depths...and confront the source of my infection head on.