FIA: If the door’s unlocked, game on.
ZOLTÁN: What’s changed? Why a new game?
FIA: I’m counting my Hungary trip as a holiday. You just so happen to be my very temporary holiday romance.
Temporary?Laughable. I was going to etch myself into the woman’s soul.
FIA: And I think I’ll need the distraction of your abs if we’re going to be staying at Imre’s house.
I should tell her. Not because it was actually my house, but because it wasn’t fair to her. For all my as-subtle-in-English-as-I-could-manage conversations, no one else across the whole of StormSprint knew who her real dad was. To everyone else, the Bacques were legendary across the track. Cris Bacque, the man Fia called Dad, was the director of Ciclati for twenty years. Fia’s sister, Everly, was now in charge of the grid girls and romantically involved with one of the Ciclati racers, Luca Mendes. Who I avoided asking any questions because that would immediately go back to Fia.
But at the same time… she had agreed to come. Imre was so excited for her to arrive; there had been a youthful smile on his face over the last week. He had startedhumming.
ZOLTÁN: At your service.
She was falling for me.
And I was letting her.
While knowing I’d be her stepbrother by the end of the week.
7
Chapter 7
Fia
If anyone asked, Luca had persuaded us to come. Through the Hungarian airport, in the taxi, all he did was ramble on about how excited he was to be on‘enemy soil’and to see what a‘Veltar’party would be like.
To show his Ciclati loyalty, he wore emerald trousers and the shirt he’d worn to Nix and Livie’s wedding.
Everly had gone for the green dress.
The one I wore… and had been fucked in by one of the other guests.
Not that she needed to know that.
In the taxi, Luca was talking about the‘Bond villain lair’before he stopped himself and turned to Everly and me in the back. “Sorry,” he winced. “Bad joke. I forget he’s your dad—”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “You do not need to apologise. He’s little more than the villain in my story.”
But my fingers fidgeted with the hem of my silk dress.
“And you’re the Bond girl to Zoltán’s Bond?” he asked, a shit eating grin on his face.
Everly snorted, her attention on her phone.
“Whose side are you going to take when it becomes an all-out war? Ciclati or Veltar?”
“There’s only one clear choice,” Everly said, eyes on me.
I looked out the window, pausing deliberately to wind them up.
“Just think about your sister armed with cocktail sticks. Easy choice.”
“Not picking sides,” I told him. “And there will be noall-out war. You can make your subtle quips, but no liquid, food, or cocktail sticks go anywhere. My dress is too pretty for any mishaps.”
And my nagyi would be there.
