Page 53 of Reckless Heir
"I still expect to be hit."
"But you're ready now." He turns to look at the circuit below. The cars are completing the installation lap, the field beginning to compress for the grid. "That's the difference."
I watch them for a moment. The cars are beautiful at night — the headlights forward, the glow of the brake discs as they slow for corners, the specific way the rear lights streak in the dark. The circuit runs close to the water here, and in the distance the harbor reflects everything — the buildings, the lights, the movement of the race folded into the bay like a mirror held up to the city.
"Luca?" I ask.
"Good." Niko's voice is careful. "He's stopped trying to intercept your communications through official channels and started building his own. Your brothers are — adapting."
"To me being here."
"To you being here and not being retrievable." He glances at me. "It's not the same as accepting it. But it's movement."
I nod. Tuck that away. Luca building his own channels — that sounds exactly like Luca, methodical under the fury, finding the indirect route when the direct one is blocked. I think ofhim keeping the lemon tree alive and something in me settles, fractionally.
"Dimitri was asking about you," Niko says. Not casually. The specific not-casual of something he's decided to say because not saying it would be worse.
"Here?"
"At the Regent event last night. The private one — you weren't invited." He turns to face me properly. The easy warmth is still there but underneath it is something more serious, the thing I've come to understand is the actual Niko beneath the comfortable surface. "He's building something. I don't know yet what shape it takes, but I know it involves you, and I know it's been in motion since October."
He pauses.
"He doesn't want you personally, Sofia. He wants the position. Whichever one you represent."
"Leverage against Aleksei."
"Leverage against the Romanov succession. There's a Regent vote in the spring — seat assignments, House standings for the next decade. Aleksei is positioning to consolidate. Dimitri is trying to find the crack before he can." Niko looks back at the circuit. "You're the crack he's decided to look for."
Below us, the cars complete their formation lap. The grid is set. The lights are on — the five red lights of the start sequence, one after another, the whole circuit holding its breath.
"What do I do with this?" I ask.
"Know it," Niko says. "That's usually enough."
The lights go out.
The race runs two hours and forty minutes.
I watch from the suite for the first half, tracking the circuit on the television feed with the kind of attention I didn't have two months ago. I understand the strategy now — the early pitstop on lap eighteen that trades track position for fresher tyres, theundercut attempt in the second stint that doesn't quite work, the twenty-lap battle for second that resolves when one car makes a small error into turn seven and loses two positions in a single corner.
He's been leading since lap three.
The gap builds incrementally, lap after lap — not dramatically, not in the kind of moments that make the broadcast cut to his onboard, but in the steady accumulation of two-tenths, three-tenths, five-tenths. He runs the race at a level that looks controlled and is actually something else entirely: the edge he lives at, which from a distance looks like control because he's so good at it.
I understand this about him now.
I go to the garage for the last ten laps because I can't help it, because the suite is beautiful and comfortable and the wrong place, and the engineers at the screens are the right place now. I've learned enough to follow it. I understand the lap delta. I understand the tyre strategy call on lap thirty-two that trades track position for a faster final stint. I understand what the engineer means when he sayshe's managing beautifullyin a tone that contains relief, and I understand what the gap to second means with three laps to go.
He wins.
The team detonates. The contained, professional detonation of people who've spent a season building toward moments like this — voices, headsets, hands finding other hands. I stand in the middle of it and feel the impact of it, which is different from watching it through glass.
He climbs out of the car.
He's looking before he's fully out of the cockpit — scanning, the way he always does, the assessment automatic and immediate. He finds me. Dark eyes, visor off, the race still in his face. He holds the look for a beat.
Then the team is around him and I'm watching from the edge of it.
