Page 98 of Red Flagged
I loved racing. I still did. The rush of lights-out, the scream of the engine, the way the world narrowed to milliseconds and muscle memory. I loved the grid and the ruthless competition and the roar of the crowd. The split-second decisions that made you a god or a ghost.
I wasn’t ready to let that go. But then I thought of her.Aurélie. I thought of how her voice went soft when she whispered my name. How her eyes darkened when she was tired or teasing or holding herself together by a thread. How her hand had trembled when she walked out that hotel suite door, and how I’d let her go anyway.
I thought of the way she made me feel, how hard I’d fallen in love with her, and how this sport needed to be as safe for her as ithad been for me. She deserved that, and she deserved a fair shot at her own title.
My heart squeezed. I hadn’t heard from her since yesterday, when she got to her new house. But nothing beyond that. I’d expected a text. A call. Something. Anything, especially after she’d called while she was driving, saying she needed to talk to me about something. But my phone had been silent all day.
Maybe she was just tired and busy. Maybe she was catching up with her siblings.
Still, my hand itched to pick up my phone and call her myself. I didn’t. Instead, I turned back to the men across from me. Two billionaires. One legacy. A choice.
“You want control,” Beckett said.
“I want to build something that outlasts me,” I said quietly.
“That’s what this is,” Maverick replied. “We’re not here to play it safe. We’re here to flip the system.”
“And what about Morel?”
Beckett shrugged. “We’ve already gutted his influence. Sophie’s got Interpol pressure on the back end. If you’re in, the dominoes fall faster. People still trust you. They want to believe in someone who gives a damn.”
“And you think that’s me?”
“I think you care more than you let on,” Maverick said. “And people follow men like that.”
I drained the rest of the scotch. They were right. I wasn’t just doing this for me. I was doing this for the future I wanted. For the people I cared about. For the woman who’d wormed her way into my heart and filled a void I didn’t know I had, then demanded I learn how to live without armor.
The silence in my pocket burned.
“Send the contracts,” I said. “I’ll have my legal team review them. And, of course, Aurélie, if you don’t mind.”
Beckett and Maverick stared at me for a beat. Then Beckett gave a low chuckle, lifted his glass, and said, “She really does have you by the balls, doesn’t she?”
Maverick barked out a laugh, deep and unbothered. “Same, brother. And yet, you’d burn the world for her, wouldn’t you?”
I didn’t deny it. Just met their stares and deadpanned, “Glad someone finally noticed.”
He hummed. “I spent most of my life refusing to be owned by anything. Turns out, I didn’t mind if it was Sophie.”
Chuckling, I responded with, “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“Enough with this lovefest.” Beckett stood to refill his glass. “We’ll need a decision soon, Fraser. The rebrand clock’s ticking.”
“You’ll have one,” I promised.
They shifted back into business talk. Timelines, launch campaigns, potential dates for unveiling the new name. I nodded when I needed to, asked the right questions, took a second scotch when it was offered.
But my head wasn’t fully in it anymore. It was on a certain woman in the French countryside not too far from me, trying to turn a house into a home.
As the meeting stretched on, I felt that subtle tug again in my gut. The one that always meant something was wrong. I ignored it, even though my instincts were screaming at me to pay attention to her absence.
Because shealwaysanswered. Until now.
The driveback into Monte Carlo was a blur of taillights and tunnel echoes. I’d left the meeting in a rush, my mind unraveling faster with every turn. The glittering coastline was back in view, headlights weaving through the streets like veins.
I should’ve been thinking about Beckett. About the contracts I’d just agreed to review and what my future looked like if I said yes to the rebrand. If I retired at the end of this season.
But all I could think about was Aurélie.
