Chapter Text
The laundromat is wedged between a truck stop diner and a convenience store that sells everything from phone chargers to hunting knives. Half the machines are broken. The overhead lights buzz like determined bees.
Sonny sits at a scarred plastic table with a US road map spread out across it, tracing a line south with a pen. There’s a print-out of a Baja 1000 entry sheet clipped to the edge, coffee ring right through the logo. He’s circling towns with cheap motels and circling them again.
“Excuse me, can I borrow your phone?”
The voice comes in a rolling Spanish drawl. Sonny doesn’t look up right away. When he does, it’s at the chest of a man in an expensive suit that doesn’t quite match the surroundings. Then up again, to the familiar bear of a face.
He squints. “No,” he says. “But you look like somebody who owes me money.”
The man huffs. “I owe you nothing.”
Sonny leans back in his chair, taking him in. Same thick eyebrows. More gray in the beard. Same eyes.
“Ruben?” he says. “Thought you dressed better.”
Ruben tugs his lapels. “This is better. This is Gucci.”
Sonny tugs the faded T-shirt he’s wearing. “So’s this.”
For a second, neither of them moves. Then Ruben’s face breaks into a grin, and he hauls Sonny up into a bear hug that smells like jet fuel and aftershave.
“Hermano,” Ruben says into his shoulder. “You look terrible.”
“You tracked me down to insult my lifestyle?” Sonny pulls back. “Could’ve just sent a postcard.”
“I asked where to find you,” Ruben says, nodding toward the parking lot. “They told me to look for the shittiest van no one would steal.”
“Sounds like me.”
They end up at the pinball machine in the corner while the washers thump and churn. The Daytona credentials feel a lifetime away already. Sonny watches the ball ricochet, one hand on the flipper, the other resting on the plunger like he’s feeling the table’s heartbeat.
“What are you doing over here?” he asks without looking up.
“Scouting talent,” Ruben says.
“Bullshit.”
“I’m here for you.”
“Worse answer,” Sonny mutters.
Ruben leans on the side of the machine, ignoring the suspicious looks from the woman folding towels behind them.
“I bought a team,” he says. “APXGP. Formula One. Big shiny toy.”
“Yeah? How’s that working out for you?”
“Like taking all my money, stacking it in a pile, and lighting it,” Ruben says cheerfully. “Muy divertido.”
“How deep?”
Ruben names a number that makes the pinball score look modest.
Sonny whistles low. “Been fun?”
Ruben’s smile quirks. “You know me.”
“So what’s wrong?”
“Two and a half seasons,” Ruben says, sobering. “Zero points. Best driver left. Rookie’s fast but wild. Nine races left this year. If we don’t win at least one, the board can force a sale. I lose the team.”
Sonny finally looks away from the pinball machine. “Thought you owned it.”
“I own part. They own the rest. No wins in three years, they say I’m done.”
“Sounds like you need a new board,” Sonny says. “Or a therapist.”
“I need a driver.” Ruben’s eyes stay on him. “One who can make a bad car better. One who’s done this before.”
Sonny barks out a laugh. “Absolutely not.”
The negotiation continues through a shower that costs four quarters and doesn’t quite get all the soap out of his hair.
“Fifty-seven,” Ruben calls through the thin plastic curtain. “Guy won Monaco at fifty-seven.”
“Never heard of him,” Sonny shouts back over the water.
Ruben keeps going. “Some people see you, they see the van. The bets. The divorces. The crash reels on YouTube. They say ‘the greatest that never was.’”
“Is this the pitch? Because it needs work.”
“I see a guy who makes teams better,” Ruben persists. “I see somebody who’s run every kind of car there is and still shows up at three in the morning ready to fight. You plus my rookie? That’s a team.”
They move to the diner when the laundry’s in the dryers; truckers and families occupy the other booths. Neon buzzes in the window. The pie is suspiciously shiny.
“So if I was this hypothetical old man you’re looking for,” Sonny says, digging into his food, “why now? Why not five years ago?”
“I didn’t own a team five years ago.”
“You shouldn’t own one now.”
“Probably.” Ruben takes a sip of coffee that’s been sitting. “But I do. And we have an upgrade package coming this weekend. Six months of work. New floor, new wings. It could change everything.”
“Could,” Sonny repeats. “Or it could be a shiny new way to lose.”
Ruben digs into his bag and slides two things across the table.
One is a first-class ticket to London.
The other is an old magazine with a young Sonny on the cover, hair longer, eyes cocky, team logo bright across his chest. Next to him, in the same yellow uniform, is Ruben, squinting into the sun like he already smells trouble. The headline calls them rising stars.
For a second, Sonny is very still.
“Remember him?” Ruben asks quietly.
“I remember the hair,” Sonny says. “Strong choices all around.”
“What would he want you to do?”
Sonny doesn’t answer right away. His thumb slides along the crease in the magazine, catching on another face in the background of the old photo—a younger woman half-turned away, hair pulled back under a cap, focus bent on a notebook balanced on a pit wall.
He remembers her too. Sharp questions. Sharper mind. The way she’d marched into his garage, trying to explain oversteer in corners in a car that was trying to kill him.
Kate McKenna, junior aero engineer.
His stomach gives a small, traitorous twist.
“You still got people from back then?” he asks, voice careful. “On this team of yours?”
Ruben’s eyes flick to the magazine, then up again, a little too innocent. “I might,” he says. “Good ones. The kind who left when you did. The kind who came back.”
“Mm.” Sonny sets the magazine down, face-down on the table. “You didn’t answer my question earlier.”
“Which one?”
“How bad is the car?”
Ruben smiles without any humor at all. “Our last number one called it a ‘shit box.’ On live TV.”
“Charming.”
“I told him he lacked imagination.”
“Do you think you can win with it?” Sonny asks.
“I think,” Ruben says slowly, “that with the right driver and the right mind in charge of the car, we can scare the hell out of people. And maybe, just maybe, steal something.”
“The right mind?” Sonny raises a brow.
“Technical Director,” Ruben says. “Kate McKenna. You remember her?”
The name lands harder than it should. Sonny keeps his face neutral, fork hovering halfway to his mouth.
“Yeah,” he says. “I remember Kate.”
“This is the first car she’s had where she doesn’t have to answer to some old bastard who doesn’t trust her numbers.”
The fork makes it the rest of the way. Sonny chews, slowly.
“You set this up,” he says.
“I hire the best,” Ruben says gently. “And sometimes the best happen to have a little unfinished business.”
Sonny leans back in the booth, letting the idea sit there between them like another plate.
“You’re asking a lot,” he says at last. “You’re asking me to get into a rocket ship after thirty years and pretend like I’m not hearing the commentators screaming about my last day in one. You’re asking me to stand in a garage with Kate McKenna and act like we didn’t both see my car split in half on a live feed. Act like I didn’t…”
Sonny glances sideways, pushing down creeping guilt. Ruben pretends not to notice.
“I’m asking you,” Ruben says, “to walk into a place where, for a couple of hours, if everything goes right, you can say you are the best in the world at what you do.”
Sonny looks down at the ticket. “Tomorrow?”
“I know you,” Ruben said. “If I give you a week, you’ll talk yourself out of it and go race lawnmowers in Kansas.”
“Georgia,” Sonny corrected.
“Silverstone test first,” Ruben says. “Then the back half of the season. Nine races. One miracle.”
“Ever seen one?” Sonny asks.
Ruben’s grin comes back, tired and hopeful. “Not yet.”
“Me either.”
Ruben taps the ticket once. “I have to get back. The board would like to mount my head on a wall.”
He stands, drops some cash on the table—for the pie, for the coffee, for the chance. Then he’s gone, swallowed by the wash of diesel fumes and neon outside.
The waitress brings the pie a few minutes later. Cherry, bright enough to be illegal.
“Let me ask you something,” he says when she comes back with the check. “Say an old friend shows up. Offers you something that sounds too good to be true. Way too good. No strings you can see, but you know they’re there anyway. What do you do?”
“How much are we talking?” she asks, leaning on the back of the booth.
“Not money,” he says. “Something bigger.”
She eyes the ticket, the magazine, the map, the tired lines at the corners of his eyes.
“Then it’s about a someone,” she says, “and whether you can live with not finding out.”
She walks away. The pie is half gone. The map is still spread out, the line to Mexico traced all the way down.
Sonny stares at the route a moment longer, then folds the map up along that line, creasing Baja out of existence.
He flips the magazine over again, lays the ticket across the smiling face of his twenty-something self. His chest tightens. His back aches. His hands itch for a wheel.
“Idiot,” he tells himself softly.
Then he tucks the ticket into his wallet, leaves cash under the sugar dispenser, and walks out into the hot morning with Daytona still buzzing behind him and London in his pocket.
Kate McKenna did not have time for this.
It was eight forty-five in the evening and she was still at her desk at APXGP HQ, a mug of cold tea by her elbow, four different plots open on her screen. Aero maps, tire wear projections, throttle traces. Somewhere in the building a vacuum cleaner whined as the night cleaning crew worked their way down the corridor.
Her phone buzzed near the keyboard. A WhatsApp from Ruben.
In my office, when you get a minute.
She considered ignoring it. Then she saw the timestamp: two minutes ago. He was still here.
She sighed, saved her work, and pushed her chair back, stretching her neck until it popped.
The factory at night always felt different – quieter, softer somehow. The big open bays were dark except for a few security lights, the cars on stands like sleeping animals. She passed the simulator room, lights off, door propped open; the faint smell of electronics and sweat clung to the air.
In the glass corridor overlooking the build shop, she paused to look down.
Chassis #3 was stripped, floor off, bits of front suspension laid out in precise rows.
She’d chosen this. Chosen not to stay in aerospace where the pay was better and the hours normal. Chosen this half-built, half-broke, ridiculously ambitious outfit in the middle of nowhere because Ruben had said, “We can make something from scratch. You won’t just be tweaking someone else’s masterpiece; you’ll be writing your own.”
It might still kill her, she thought. But at least she’d die of something she loved.
Ruben’s office door was ajar. She knocked once on the frame and stepped in.
He was at the small table by the window, jacket off, tie loosened, two glasses and a bottle of something amber between them. Irish, she hoped, not that sugary Spanish stuff he sometimes inflicted on her.
“You texted,” she said, leaning against the door.
“I did,” he said, gesturing to the chair opposite. “Sit.”
“I’ve got about fifteen emails to send before I can pretend to sleep,” she replied.
“Send them tomorrow. Sit.”
She eyed him. He only used that tone when something had gone very right, or something had gone very wrong.
She sat.
He poured. She took the glass, sniffed. Irish. Good start.
“We’re going to make a mistake,” he said.
“Brilliant,” she said dryly. “I love that you called me down here to tell me that.”
“A calculated mistake,” he amended. “Maybe not a mistake. A gamble.”
“We’re already takin’ a gamble every time we leave the garage,” she said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
He smiled, but his eyes were serious.
“I called Sonny,” he said.
The name hit her like a wheel gun to the chest.
Her brain did a quick, stupid loop: too many Sonnys, can’t be, if it’s him I’m going to murder you, all in the space of half a second.
“Sonny who?” she asked, even though she knew. Her fingers tightened around the glass.
“Hayes,” Ruben said. “He’s on his way.”
Her first coherent thought was, Of course he is. Her second was… nothing, just white noise and the smell of cheap instant coffee in a bland hotel, a long time ago.
Ruben kept talking.
“We need experience,” he said. “We need a name. We need someone who’s not afraid to tell Joshua he’s being an idiot. Sonny ticked all the boxes.”
“I’m sure he did,” she said, voice flatter than she intended.
She had not thought about Sonny in… that was a lie. She’d thought about him more times than she’d admit. Usually late, usually when she was exhausted, usually when something about a car or a driver or a circuit jolted a memory loose.
He’d been infuriating. Brilliant. Reckless. Raw. Kind.
Then Spain happened. The crash.
He’d disappeared into rehab and rallying and rumours. She’d gone into aerospace for a while because she couldn’t stand the sound of F1 engines anymore. Eventually she’d come back. He hadn’t, not to F1 anyway.
Until now.
“Is this a PR stunt?” she asked Ruben, keeping her tone even. “Because if it is, you can tell Lisbeth she’s not draggin’ me into a Netflix special.”
“It’s not a stunt,” Ruben said. “We’ve looked at the data. He’s still fast. Not prime fast, but fast. And more importantly, he knows how to develop a car. He’s driven everything. He can help you.”
“I don’t need help,” she said reflexively.
He gave her a look. “Everyone needs help. Even you.”
She took a sip of whiskey, letting the burn give her something else to focus on.
“What about Joshua?” she asked. “He’s barely settled as it is. You drop Sonny in beside him, he’s either gonna sulk, or crash tryin’ to prove himself, or both.”
“That’s option A,” Ruben said. “Option B: he learns. He grows up. He stops drivin’ like every lap is a TikTok clip. I’m not makin’ this decision alone,” he said. “You’re Technical Director. If you tell me it’s a disaster waiting to happen, I’ll listen.”
She looked at him. The thing about Ruben was that under the charm, he meant it when he said that. He’d given her real authority here, not window dressing.
She also knew they were on a knife edge with the budget, that sponsors wanted something exciting, that the board would smile more readily at a name they recognized on the team sheet.
“Do you think it’s a disaster?” she asked.
He shrugged, smiling with half his mouth. “Everythin’ we do here is a disaster until it works,” he said. “I called him because I trust my gut. I’m tellin’ you because I trust yours.”
She hated him a little for that. For making it about trust and not just numbers.
She thought about the last time Sonny was behind the wheel of something she’d helped design. About his hands on the steering wheel, the way he talked about a car as if it was a living thing. She tried not to picture it—until she did. His hands. The wheel. And the stupid private ritual: fingers in a pocket, a card pressed flat.
She thought about the crash. The onboard cut out halfway through, but she’d watched the spikes, the drop to zero. Sat there with a pen in her hand, not writing anything, just… listening to her heart pound in her ears.
“Is he healthy?” she asked. “Like… properly? Neck, back, all of it?”
Ruben nodded. “We’ll make him do the medical again, but yeah. He passed all the tests he needed to for the series he’s in. We’ll be stricter.”
She glanced down at her glass, then back up.
“You should’ve given me more than one evening to process this,” she said.
“If I’d told you last week, you’d have had time to build a case against him and email it to the board,” Ruben said. “This way, you have to go with your instincts.”
“My instincts are sayin’ ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, not him,’” she said.
“What’s your brain sayin’?” he asked.
She sighed.
“My brain says…” she paused, choosing the words carefully. “My brain says he’s one of the best drivers I’ve ever worked with at articulatin’ what the car’s doin’. My brain says Joshua needs that. My brain says if we’re serious about movin’ forward, we need someone in the car who isn’t afraid of a long debrief.”
“And your heart?” he pressed, softer.
She gave him a flat look. “Don’t.”
“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “Okay. I won’t. Just… don’t kill him on sight, yeah? Or me.”
She snorted.
“Depends how he says hello,” she said.
Ruben grinned. “I’ll warn him.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said quickly. “I want to see his face.”