Except, of course, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
He said he didn’t know. And I believed him.
But belief wasn’t evidence. And this story demanded proof.
I dragged the USB stick from my bag and stared at it. The mapping file. Fuel anomalies. All of it handed to me by a source who’d refused to give their name, slipping the stick into my hand after a brief, whispered conversation in Melbourne. It was solid. It was real.
But it wasn’t enough to pin on anyone. Not yet.
I drew in a sharp breath and began typing.
What if the world’s most dominant F1 team isn’t playing fair?
What if the perfect machines, the perfect drivers, the perfect races—weren’t?
It wasn’t an accusation. Not quite.
But it was close enough.
I walked the line carefully, naming no names, but laying out the inconsistencies, the data, the implications. I noted Obsidian’s refusal to comment, the FIA’s silence, the whispers among insiders who wouldn’t speak on the record.
I didn’t name Volkov.
I wanted to. I wanted to call him out. Or clear him. Or… something. But instead, I left him as he was: the centre of the storm. The eye. Silent. Untouchable.
And maybe—just maybe—blameless.
The article clocked in at 1,486 words. I reread it twice. Trimmed a paragraph. Reworded a line that sounded too muchlike a grudge. Then I attached the USB file to a separate email with a short note:
For context. Not publication. Yet.
Then I hit send.
17:59 local time. One minute to deadline.
I slumped back on the bed, letting out a long, shaky breath. It was done. It was out of my hands. I might be flying home tomorrow, tail between my legs. Or I might have just cracked something massive.
Either way, it was too late now.
I reached for the remote and flicked the TV on, tuning into the international broadcast just in time to catch the podium ceremony. I sat up straighter when I realised who wasn’t on it.
Moretti. Rivers. Kane.
No Obsidian.
My heart sank.
The feed switched to race highlights. There was Volkov, diving down the inside of Kane on lap one—too aggressive. Then footage of his early pit stop, the commentators puzzled. A clip of him locking up into Turn Eleven and bumping Kane’s car. He looked… out of control.
Not the machine I’d seen in Melbourne. Not the ice man from Singapore.
The camera caught him climbing out of the car post-race, face blank, jaw tight. He looked straight through the cameras. Straight through everyone.
Something had broken.
I pressed the remote slowly and turned the TV off. The silence roared.
Had I done that? Had I made him doubt himself?
