Page 5 of Red Flagged
Everything in me tightened. I could hear my pulse in my ears as if the blood itself was a drumbeat. “I left the car because I thought she was—” I couldn’t finish that sentence because the memory hit me like a physical blow. I’d seen her in that cockpit, fingers slack, and something animalistic inside me had ripped free. For the first time in my career, I felt the pressure of a meeting. The room tilted as the edge of panic pressed under my ribs. I gripped Aurélie’s thigh under the table and squeezed. She turned her head to look at me with concern, and after a moment, she slid her hand over mine, fingers entwining. I counted each place my skin touched hers. Anchor-points. Breath in four, out six.
Don’t break here. Don’t feed them the story they want.
“I thought she was dead,” I managed around the lump in my throat that burned as I spoke. “And I needed to know. I got a second chance at life, having just gone through an extreme accident myself. I won’t apologize for prioritizing someone I love. The last thing I was concerned about was my session.”
Fuck.I probably shouldn’t have gone that far with my explanation, but I couldn’t stop it. It felt like word vomit, spewing from me while my insides twisted. Aurélie squeezed my hand, silently offering me reassurance.
Henric interjected, smooth. “Mr. Fraser, we appreciate your concern for our driver, but rules exist for safety. You compromised your duty?—”
“You’re right. The rulesdoexist for safety. Which proves how negligent you are as a team principal because you put her in that car,” I spat back, not able to keep the edge from my voice at the whole network of complacency. “You let the setup go unchecked. You ignored her concerns. You let someone on your team be influenced enough to sabotage her.”
Henric’s face went white for a moment, then he composed himself. “We performed due diligence?—”
“No,” I growled. “You performed whatever was easy.”
Reinhardt lifted a hand, shutting the growing argument down with a single economical gesture. “Mr. Fraser, you will let the questioning proceed.”
Aurélie’s fingers brushed my sleeve under the table, a soft warning. “Ça va, mon amour,” she murmured as she leaned toward me, eyes meeting mine. I read the message in her warm hazel eyes as they glittered adoringly at me. God, she couldn’t fucking look at me like that in public. Not when I wanted to escape back to our room together. “Let them hang themselves with their own process,” she added, barely audible.
I exhaled through my nose and leaned back in my chair, trying to appear nonchalant. I needed to trust her here, just as she was doing with me.
Reinhardt resumed, clinical as ever. “Mademoiselle Dubois, your objective today, beyond the specific allegations, what outcome do you seek? Reparations? Penalties?”
Her chin rose a fraction. “Change,” she said simply. “Do you have any idea what a compromised setup is like on a driver’s body? Each bump feels harsh through every joint in your body. You feel it in your spine, your wrists, your shoulders until you’re holding on by painkillers and adrenaline. It’s not just my safety at stake. When the car bottoms out, when the suspension is sabotaged, it endangers every driver on the track. That’s how pileups start. That’s how people die. Look at yesterday, whereI strapped into a sabotaged car and could no longer physically hold on. We were lucky it wasn’t worse.”
I listened to her explain all of this in that perfect French accent, captivated. She was mesmerizing with how eloquently she spoke, how her free hand motioned when emphasizing certain points, and how professional and poised she was.
And suddenly I was struck, at the worst fucking time, with the thought that she could sit here, all polished restraint, when I knew what she looked like stripped of it. I’d had her handcuffed, begging, quivering under my touch; I’d had her soft and pliant, whispering my name like a prayer. Dominance and devotion—two sides of the same coin, both mine.
The memory hit like a punch. And then—another flash—her curling against me slow and tender, tears on her cheeks as I kissed every inch of her, reminding her she wasn’t broken. Christ. Both versions of her lived in me, battling for space, threatening to derail my composure.
Jesus Christ.
It was probably offensive, having these obscene thoughts at the most inopportune times, because I didn’t love her just for her body. She just…goddamn, she just did things to me that I couldn’t stop. There was no escape from her, from these reactions.
I loved her all the more for it, but hated that I couldn’t control myself.
“I want there to be a tamper-proof procedure. A sealed chain-of-custody on setup submissions. Dual-authorized changes on ride height, packers, dampers. Maybe two signatories minimum, filed directly with the stewards. Independent screening and background checks for garage personnel with third-party oversight. And there should be a medical and safety advocate appointed by the GPDA, and gender representation on panels.Transparent logs without an arduous process for staff to request.”
Reinhardt’s brow furrowed, the faintest crease betraying the neutral mask he liked to wear. “Mademoiselle Dubois, this is… an ambitious ask. What you’re describing would require rewriting procedure, budgeting for oversight, changing governance structures. Not something achieved overnight.”
Aurélie didn’t so much as blink. “I’m aware. But we have to start somewhere. If the FIA’s answer to sabotage and assault is ‘these things take time,’ then you’re part of the problem.”
Reinhardt’s lips tightened, but before he could respond, Dom leaned forward. “Dubois is right. Half of those proposals are already modeled in the GPDA’s private recommendations. Having her at the table would strengthen them.”
Aurélie inclined her head. “Which is why I’ll be attending the GPDA dinner tomorrow night.”
One of the stewards blinked. “You were… invited?”
“She was,” I cut in, my voice even but firm. “She’s advocating for change and for driver safety. That’s the very backbone of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association. She belongs there, and it’s time the rest of you caught up.”
The silence was heavy, uncomfortable, and revealing. For a beat, I thought Reinhardt might push back, but he only made a note. It looked like he’d steer us back into safe administrative waters, but my girl was never one to let the difficult topics go.
Aurélie slid a folder across the table with clean tabs and color-coded charts—something I’d watched her assemble that morning. “These are telemetry overlays from FP3 to Q1,” she said, tapping the graph. “Note the migration curve variance. The packers are loaded incorrectly. Brake bias is shifted forward by 1.8% from my signed setup, versus what was submitted. Dampers increased—see rebound here—exacerbating theporpoising. These are not driver errors or driver preferences. They are fingerprints to sabotage.”
Henric swallowed, looking like he wanted to sink into the floor. It was small, but I saw it. Everyone did. Reinhardt leaned in despite himself. “Your hash mismatch—this suggests the file submitted to scrutineering differed from the run file.”
“Yes,” she said, steady. “Which is either incompetence or collusion. You choose.”
