He didn’t ask. Didn’t know how without sounding like he cared too much. He told himself he didn’t. It was just habit now—she’d been in his orbit for months. Of course, he noticed when she looked off. Nothing more.
He didn’t ask. Not then.
Spa was wet and brutal. He finished P7—his best result of the season. Points again. The garage cheered like they’d wonthe championship. In the media pen afterward, he gave credit where it was due: “The strategy call was spot-on, but honestly, it’s the unsung heroes in Comms who get me to the grid ready to fight. The prep sessions, the quiet words before lights out, the way they keep the noise out so I can focus—they don’t get enough credit. Those guys are the difference between binning it and bringing it home.”
The clip circulated fast. Fans ate it up—loved the nod to the “behind-the-scenes crew.” Sponsors loved the humility angle even more.
But the next week, before they headed to Monza, the rumour hit the team WhatsApp like a grenade: management was reviewing PR and Media staff contracts. Cost cutting. “Streamlining operations.” The department was being restructured—Claire would now handle media duties for both drivers to consolidate resources, while the remaining Media team absorbed all social-media responsibilities. Mia, as the most recent full-time hire in the driver-support stream, was first on the redundancy list. Last in, first out.
Lucas found her in the office, staring at her laptop like it had personally offended her. She looked up when he entered, face carefully blank.
“They’re making you redundant?” he asked, door clicking shut behind him.
She exhaled. “Considering it. Pure numbers. Claire’s taking both drivers now, and the socials crew can cover the rest. I was the last hire brought on specifically for driver media support. Budget doesn’t stretch anymore.”
He felt heat climb his neck. “Because you’ve been doing your job too well?”
“Because I cost more than the consolidated model. Optics on the balance sheet, Lucas. Always the balance sheet.”
“Bullshit.” He stepped closer. “I’ll talk to Marcus.”
“Don’t. Makes it worse.”
“I’m doing it anyway.” He held her gaze. “You fought for me. I’m fighting for you now.”
* * *
Mia
The moment Lucas said it—I’m fighting for you now—and walked out, the room felt too still. Mia stared at the closed door, fingers numb on the edge of her laptop. Not just gratitude. Something sharper. The way he’d looked at her—like losing her would cost him something real—stirred the same confusion she’d been trying to bury since Miami. She told herself it was loyalty. Professional respect. Nothing more.
She’d fought so hard this past year. Lucas had been a wall at first—cold answers, clipped dismissals, every press conference a minefield. She’d stayed late rewriting talking points, coached him through mock interviews, gently pushed him say more, to crack a dry joke instead of shutting down. And slowly, painfully, it had started to work. He was opening up, becoming more comfortable in his own skin. The P7 in Spa wasn’t just points; it was proof that the version of him she’d helped coax out was real. She couldn’t help feeling partly responsible for that shift, proud in a quiet way she hadn’t expected.
She wanted more time. More chances to help him build on it. More races where she could watch him grow, more moments where their eyes met across the garage and something unspoken passed between them.
And it wasn’t just him.
She loved the team—the chaotic energy, the late-night debriefs that ended in laughter, the way people looked out for each other even when they were exhausted. After years of isolation in Oxford—head down in books, the world narrowed to lectures and libraries—this job had finally given her a place. Real friends. Dana’s steady support, the easy banter in the media room, the sense that she belonged somewhere loud and alive.
Now it was slipping away before it had even rooted. Thethought made her throat close. She forced herself to breathe, to stay professional—head down, keep working, pretend the email wasn’t there. But inside, the disappointment ached: she’d found something she loved, something that felt like home, and it was ending too soon.
* * *
Lucas
Marcus Lang’s office was at the end of the admin corridor—sparse, functional, walls lined with framed photos of podiums from three different decades. The Team Principal was in his mid-fifties, silver at the temples, sleeves rolled to the elbows, the kind of man who’d started as a mechanic in the early 90s and clawed his way up through sheer stubborn competence. Everyone knew the stories: he’d once pulled an all-nighter rebuilding a gearbox himself during a wet Imola weekend in ’98; he’d fought to keep a young reserve driver in the seat when sponsors wanted glamour instead; he’d also unceremoniously shown the door to two high-profile engineers whose egos had started costing results. No nonsense. Looked after his people—until the numbers or the performance said otherwise.
Lucas didn’t sit. He stood, arms folded, voice low but unyielding.
“You cut Mia, you lose the only person who’s kept me from being a PR disaster since Melbourne. Every point I’ve scored this year, every press conference that didn’t end in a one-word answer, every sponsor call that actually went somewhere—she engineered that. Claire’s good, but she’s stretched across two drivers now. Mia’s the reason my off-track performance matches the on-track one. If you want me to keep delivering both, you keep her. End of discussion.”
Marcus leaned back in his chair, studying Lucas with the same measured gaze he used on telemetry traces. He didn’t interrupt. When Lucas finished, the older man tapped a pen once against the desk.
“You’re willing to stake your seat on a Communications Assistant?”
“I’m staking it on the fact that I’m finally not the problem child in headlines. That’s worth more than one redundancy saving.”
A long silence. Marcus exhaled through his nose.
