But I couldn’t shake the fishing note behind that personal question. Nico’s voice echoed inside my mind on repeat: you have to own the narrative before they take it from you.
Another harmless question about track evolution. I delivered the same recycled PR speech I’d fed them a hundred times before.
They wouldn’t stop digging. Not until they could slap a headline across the front page and call it an exclusive.
I could keep playing this game. Could keep pretending they weren’t closing in.
Or I could hand them something. Let them think they’d caught me slipping.
The longer I let them chase, the worse it would be when they finally caught up. That’s what Nico had learned the hard way.
Then a reporter from one of the bigger motorsport sites asked, “Long season, long nights. Is the lack of sleep catching up to you?”
I sucked in a steadying breath. Now or never.
“A newborn doesn’t exactly help,” I muttered, keeping my voice low. “But Singapore’s a notoriously tough track.”
Silence.
They stared at me, utter shock slacking their jaws. Like the exact second before a crash, when everything slows and you know impact is coming but can’t do a damn thing to stop it.
Pens hovered over notepads. Mouths hung open. I made sure my own did too.
I blinked at the flashing cameras, channeling my best impression of someone taken by surprise.
For a heartbeat, I almost regretted it. Almost.
“Did you just say newborn?”
Cameras clicked faster. Microphones edged closer. Voices tripped over each other, urgency replacing hesitation.
A second ago, they’d been half-asleep.
I dragged a hand over my mouth like I was debating how much damage I’d done. Let my shoulders drop, slow andreluctant, as if I’d realized too late I couldn’t claw the words back.
Just enough to let them think I’d fucked up.
Sell it.
I gave them a flicker of hesitation, let the pause stretch, then sighed like a man who knew the next few minutes were about to be a nightmare.
Which, in perfect honesty, they were.
Selene stood behind the press pack, arms crossed, her expression a mask of tightly controlled fury that screamed you absolute fucking idiot.
If I had a wife, if I had a long-term girlfriend, this would be normal. These things happened all the time. Drivers had kids, families, normal lives outside the garage. If I treated it like a scandal, it would become one.
Maybe if I’d realized that five weeks ago, we could have handled things differently and I’d have been able to enjoy my time with Hazel more.
I shrugged. “Yeah, newborn. Not exactly sleeping through the night, as you can imagine.”
Cameras flashed, microphones shoved closer. A ripple of pure electricity passed through the room, the scent of a fresh, unbelievable headline turning every journalist in a five-meter radius into a starving predator.
“When was the baby born?”
“Can you confirm how old they are?”
“Who’s the mother?”
