Telling Mason and Sandra now would turn it into gossip before it had the chance to become policy. And Michael hadn’t been talking about confession for its own sake. He’d been talking about structure. About protecting the work.
I let the moment pass.
The airport signs began to appear, blue and inevitable. Mason flicked on the indicator and followed the curve toward the rental return.
“Back to reality,” he said lightly.
I looked out at the spreading terminals and felt the weight of what waited on the other side of the flight.
“Yeah,” I said. “Back to reality.”
I took the Tube into London, watching the city slide past in flashes of brick and graffiti while I tried to prepare for whatever conversation with Thea awaited me.
Apex’s headquarters occupied three floors of a converted warehouse in Shoreditch, polished concrete, exposed brick, glass walls that suggested transparency while offering none. It felt less like a newsroom and more like a command center.
Thea’s office sat at the far end of the floor, glass-walled and immaculate. When I stepped inside, she stood to greet me, tall, composed, assessing in a way that made you feel immediately measured.
“Sit,” she said, gesturing to the chair opposite her desk. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
She prepared it herself, efficiently, while I took in the room. Racing memorabilia lined the walls, but not in a fan-girl way.Real artifacts. A carbon-fiber front wing endplate. A faded Monaco credential from the nineties. Framed investigative clippings rather than glossy covers.
This was what success looked like here.
“Your Silverstone coverage was exceptional,” she said, handing me the mug. “Both pieces. The race report and the historical context. You managed to balance technical clarity with emotional restraint. That’s not easy.”
“Silverstone demands it,” I said.
“So does this job.” She sat, folding her hands. “Which brings us to why you’re here.”
She slid a folder across the desk.
“Your assignments for the week,” she said. “Three pieces, four if I can get the interview I want for you.”
I opened it.
“First: Silverstone’s environmental footprint,” she continued. “Noise mitigation, sustainability initiatives, community pressure. Technical, but grounded. Eight hundred words.”
I nodded.
“Second: a profile on Lando Norris. Thirty minutes. His people are cooperative. I want something that goes beyond lap times.”
“Understood.”
“And third,” she said, watching me closely now, “a comparative analysis. Formula 1 versus American motorsports, fan culture, accessibility, economics. You’ve covered both. Use that.”
I closed the folder slowly. “These are… manageable.”
“They’re meant to be,” she said. “I’m not testing whether you can perform miracles. I’m testing whether you can maintain quality under sustained pressure.”
I looked up. “And if I do?”
Thea didn’t answer immediately. She leaned back in her chair, studying me with the same stillness I’d seen on drivers waiting for the lights.
“If you deliver clean copy, on deadline, at publication standard,” she said, “then we talk about your future here.”
She opened another folder.
