“Not family. Post the picture. Have fun with it, Nora. Because it will just make you look like a pathetic, jealousbitch.”
Her mouth parted, brows furrowed, and she went to speak, but Fia’s pizza was now in the bag. And I was gone.
Fia had reacted so badly to just a picture of my arm around her.
This would catapult her out of my trailer into a spiral of worry that would do nothing but harm. And Nora was just a nuisance. She wanted attention, and I was no longer willing to give her any.
That photo could’ve been me sorting the cloth and Fia sneezing, for crying out loud. It was meaningless.
It just fucked me off that she thought she had some entitlement to my feelings. She didn’t.Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
Ever again.
There had to be some motive. All I saw was her constant need to be in control.
But what tightened my fist around the bag of food wasn’t Nora.
It was who had sent her the footage.
My fucking brother.
25
Chapter 25
Fia
Every step I took, the prickle on the back of my neck heightened. Whether I was at the track, the PR tent, the hotel canteen… I felt the weight of eyes on my every movement. It had been like that for a month.
I started applying deodorant twice each morning because I was sweating so much.
I’d flown separately to Hungary because my anxiety had my mind spiralling. Zolt waited at the airport in his car for three hours so we could drive to his place together.
There was no denying that my nerves were stupid. The entire world knew we were related through our families. I was his translator. No one would assume we were spending all of our time together for anything other than family or our professional relationship.
The second we landed in France for the race, my happiness disappeared because that feeling crept back in.
No one was really watching me, so I had to argue withmyself.Who would watch me?
Nora seemed to have taken Everly’s threat and ignored me. She didn’t come up to Nadia at all. Nadia didn’t mention her or Zolt to me again, but when she caught me talking about him, she smiled softly.
An encouraging, but not a prying, smile.
I tried to avoid all topics that could come back to him.
Except everything came back to him.
When I translated our director’s words for him in the pit box, a camera flashed, and it threw me off because all I could think was, “What will they caption this photo? ‘Step-Sibling Incest?’ ‘Fast, Furious and… Step-Related?’ ‘Step-Siblings with Benefits?’”
Zoltán watched me with worried eyes, but when he went to talk to me, he was called to qualify. There was a new drive in him this week — an eagerness to make everyone eat his dust.
The second he left, that uneasy tingle along my arms returned.
The only saving grace was that, because we were back at the French track, my dad was there, and we could visit Nana.
Proudly, I wore my Veltar fleece to see him in the Ciclati pit box. Boos roared the second I stepped inside.
My eyes rolled. I knew every person who worked for Ciclati. Most, I’d grown up with. Dad may have retired five years ago, but it was very much still his box. His friends. His life.
