“What?” She blinked at me, stunned.
“Please. Do you have any idea how many people will be affected? My whole team, the FIA. This kind of corruption is unthinkable. It would bring the entire sport into disrepute. Please don’t do this.”
“Aleks—I have to. It’s news. It’s important.”
“I understand, but this is about more than your career.”
Her mouth popped open. She glared at me for a few seconds and I met her with defiance. “What?” Her voice cracked like a whip.
“It’s a lot of careers on the line, that’s all I meant.”
“How dare you think that I’m doing this just to get ahead. This is something I care about. You know what happened with my Dad. Exposing corruption matters for all of us. It sounds like you’re worried about your own fucking trophies.”
I blanched, taking half a step back from words that struck as hard as a slap.
“That’s not—I wasn’t—I don’t—” I couldn’t form a coherent sentence. I couldn’t admit it, but she wasn’t entirely wrong. “I thought you understood me better than that.”
Her expression softened a fraction and she moved towards me.
“Look, I know you don’t have anything to do with this,” she said, waving a hand over the documents. “But don’t you want to know that you’re the best driver out there? Don’t you want toremove any doubt about that and know that you earned every title without your team breaking the rules? Fair and square?”
“Of course I do,” I snapped. I took a step back and ran my hands through my hair.
“Then what is it? What are you really objecting to?”
I huffed, spun away and began pacing the room. It was too small, the furniture too close. It was getting hard to breathe.
I couldn’t say it out loud, I couldn’t admit the fear that was threatening to overwhelm me. That tiny voice growing louder inside:you didn’t earn this. You aren’t good enough.
“Go on the record. Let me interview you. Get ahead of this, rather than be a casualty of it.” Her voice was earnest, full of concern.
But I couldn’t feel it. All I could feel was panic at the prospect of having my team connected to a scandal this big.
“You’re not the one with your name on every podium. You’re not the one who’ll be remembered as a fraud if this story goes public!”
“Aleks—”
“No,” I cut her off. “I’m done. You want to publish? Go ahead. But don’t expect me to sit here and help you destroy everything I’ve built.”
I turned, grabbed the door, and slammed it behind me.
Elena Archer – Seoul Hotel Room
The door slammed behind him like a gunshot, and the silence that followed stretched like a crater across the middle of the room.
I stood there for a long moment, heart thudding like I’d just survived a crash. My breath came shallow and sharp, handsclenched into fists at my sides. I stared at the empty space where he’d been, half expecting him to come back, to apologise, to say he didn’t mean it.
But of course he didn’t come back.
Because he did mean it. Every word. Every accusation.
My throat burned.
I crossed to the window and pressed my palms against it, needing something to cool the fury and humiliation storming through me. He thought I was doing this for a headline? That I didn’t care about the fallout? That I was willing to burn it all down for a fucking byline?
“Arsehole,” I whispered. “Self-absorbed, entitled, arrogant arsehole.”
But the insult didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t make me any less gutted.
