Page 3 of Red Flagged
Callum’s hand brushed mine, his pinky looping gently around mine. His voice was quiet but firm. “Then we burythem.”
Alain exhaled. “You’d make a terrifying legal duo.”
I smiled faintly and looked at Callum, who just sipped his tea with the calm of a man already committed to arson.
“Let me make some calls,” Alain continued. “Stay quiet for now. No more veiled threats on social media. No interviews.”
“No promises,” I muttered.
“Aurélie.”
“Fine.”
When the call ended, I dropped my phone on the coffee table, snagged a pistachio croissant, and turned fully toward Callum. The pastry flaked between my fingers, light and sweet, a stark contrast from the bitterness in my chest. It felt wrong to taste something so delicate when the storm outside promised to wreak havoc.
The rain hadn’t let up.If anything, it had only gotten worse.
Silverstone was drowning. Rain beat down on the asphalt under our shoes, thunder cracked above us, and lightning flashed against the dark grey clouds overhead.
And yet, none of it compared to the fucking maelstrom brewing inside me, because still, all I could think about was Morel’s hands on Aurélie.
I thought of the security footage Ivy was able to obtain, where Morel had shoved Aurélie against a wall and touched her like he had any fucking right—violating her. Even without audio, I saw the exact moment he admitted to tampering with her car. Her body had locked up, horror flooding her features. He should’ve been penalized on the spot. Suspended. Fuckingbannedfrom the sport. Instead, he got to walk away yesterday with a bloody nose and not one single reprimand.
Meanwhile, Auri and I had been instructed to leave the goddamn paddock. As ifwewere the problem, rather than the ones fightingagainstthe problem.
The people who governed this sport were a bunch of bloody fucking twits.
Qualifying had been a shit show. Aurélie scraped into P10 thanks to the crash, her car barely pieced back together today, according to Kimi. Thank God for him being able to acquire intel from the team when they all seemed to alienate Auri.
I’d ended up P9 after abandoning mine in the pit lane when the red flags waved and I thought—fuck, I thought she was dead. The panic of not knowing if she was moving or breathing. The relief when I saw her climb out. The horror that none of it mattered to the FIA. Or to Luminis, who buried their heads in the sand. Or even to Orion, Morel’s team, who hadn’t said a single fucking word. They were probably waiting for their new owners to polish the mess and snuff the PR nightmare before it became too public.
It was all poison. And it was spreading.
The rain pelted the umbrella I held over us, a steady thrumming as Aurélie and I crossed the lot together. For once in the public eye, we weren’t pretending, we weren’t hiding. Her hand was in mine, and it hit me… this was our first time in the paddock like this. Two weeks since we’d made things official on that live interview, and it had taken everything in me not to touch her too much in public yet.. But now the whole world could see.
Currently shielded under a flimsy umbrella, untouched by the rain that battered the ground around us. We looked formidable.
Maybe we were.
We were a dream team together, but to them, we were their worst fuckingnightmares.
Reporters swarmed the doors, cameras strobing and voices cutting through the rain.
“Fraser, why did you threaten Adrian Morel after the crash?”
“Aurélie, are you standing by your sabotage claims?”
“Do you regret making your relationship public?”
Aurélie squeezed my hand and shifted closer to me, almost subconsciously.
“No comment,” I called out to them over the rain. I sounded even, controlled, but I felt far from.
The cameras kept clicking, the echoes chasing us as we pushed into the FIA headquarters building attached to the paddock—sterile white walls, glass doors, and polished floors meant to scream authority. The thunder dimmed to a dull hum outside, but the pressure inside was heavier. Dooming, if you will.
I pulled the umbrella closed, water dripping onto the tiles as we cut down the corridor.
“Think they’re going to delay the race?” Aurélie wondered, the lilt to her voice giving away her nerves. Glancing at her, you’d have no idea that she was battling nerves at all. She was an expert at controlling her composure.
