“He’s the best of them.”
The recording ended, and the room fell silent.
Leonidas stared at the frozen image of his wife’s face, her words echoing in the space where his certainty used to be.
She believed in him.
Had always believed in him.
So why—
“Leon.” Aivan’s voice cut through his thoughts. “There’s something I don’t understand.”
Leonidas turned.
“If she believes in you this much—enough to design an entire system around your abilities, enough to keep working even after asking for a divorce—then why does she want to leave?”
It was the same question Leonidas had been asking himself since Manhattan. Since the penthouse. Since she’d stood in his kitchen with flour on her cheek and told him his eye was twitching.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“And last night.” Aivan’s expression was carefully neutral. “You flew here together. You arrived together. She was asleep in your arms. That doesn’t look like two people headed for divorce court.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Clearly.” Aivan paused. “Does it have something to do with your former...arrangement?”
The word hung in the air between them.
Leonidas thought of Lydia. Of six years in Milan. Of an apartment he’d paid for and a woman he’d visited and a life he’d kept carefully separate from his marriage because that was what the agreement allowed.
“Possibly,” he said finally.
“Then fix it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It never is.” Aivan’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at the screen. “That’s Sienah. Dinner’s ready — she’s been feeding the overnight crew, and apparently we’re expected to join them whether we like it or not.”
They walked back through the facility in silence, past the servers and the engineers and the evidence of his wife’s work scattered everywhere like fingerprints. And as they walked, Leonidas found his thoughts drifting to the conversation he’d overheard Aivan having earlier with one of the senior engineers.
Something about a new driver. A rising star.
“This prototype testing,” Leonidas said as they neared the main building. “You mentioned other candidates.”
“Backup options. In case you declined.”
“Who?”
Aivan glanced at him. “Does it matter?”
“Humor me.”
“Arisu Matsumoto.” The name rolled off Aivan’s tongue with the ease of someone who’d said it many times. “Japanese-French. Twenty-four years old. Three championship wins in Formula 2, expected to make the jump to F1 next season. The press is calling him the future of the sport.”
Twenty-four.
Leonidas remembered twenty-four. Remembered the hunger, the certainty, the bone-deep conviction that the world was his for the taking.
