Chapter 1 Call Me Maya Baudelaire

MAYA POV

A driver who hesitates is a liability to the constructor. A driver who loses control is already dead.

Evaluation Day is always the most brutal. Maybe that’s why the New York skyline looks especially sharp through the rain this morning—because I know one wrong move inside this glass fortress will end my career before the season even starts.

I tighten the strap of my gear bag over my shoulder and climb the wide marble staircase of Apex Racing Headquarters, keeping my weight carefully balanced on my left leg. By the time I reach the third-floor corridor leading to the board’s executive suite, my right knee is throbbing from the damp Manhattan chill and the scar tissue along my ribs pulls tight with every breath.

Two years of grueling physical therapy, three titanium pins, and six hundred hours in a simulator, and my own body still tries to stage a mutiny before nine in the morning.

I’m so fucked.

The reporters crowding the lobby downstairs are already sharpening their knives for the press conference at noon.

For the first time in years, a woman has earned a full-time seat on the world’s most prestigious racing grid. Half the networks are calling my signing a historic breakthrough; the other half are calling it a desperate publicity stunt to please sponsors. None of them know my right hand still wakes up shaking at four in the morning.

And none of them are ever going to find out.

The suited executives lining the hallway avoid my eyes as I pass. Fine by me. Being underestimated is annoying, sure, but being treated like I’m fragile is a thousand times worse.

"You cannot let them put her in that car!" a familiar voice rings out from the alcove outside the boardroom doors, and my steps falter.

There’s only one woman in New York who refuses to lower her voice for billionaire team owners, and she’s supposed to be in Brooklyn until this afternoon. Mom.

"Lower your voice, Celia, the press pool is one floor down," a second voice—younger, urgent, and fiercely protective—pleads back. Evelyn.

I round the glass partition just as my heavy bag snags on the railing, yanking my bad shoulder backward. I wince, catching myself against the wall before my knee can dip.

"Look at her," my mother says, crossing the alcove in three quick strides. She stops herself just short of grabbing my arm, her dark eyes scanning my face. "Maya, your color is terrible. Tell me you slept last night."

"I’m fine, Mom!" My cheeks heat, and I force my spine straight. "I slept great."

If you count staring at the ceiling until four and running braking points in my head as sleeping.

"Don't lie to me," Celia Baudelaire says quietly. At forty-nine, my mother carries twenty years of grief in the fine lines around her mouth. Racing took my father when I was a kid, leaving her a widow before thirty-five, and she has spent every day since terrified the asphalt will come back for her only daughter. "Evelyn just told me what the board added to your contract today."

I whip my head toward my best friend.

At twenty-four, Evelyn Hart looks every inch the prodigy race engineer she is, her blonde hair clipped back, her tablet clutched to her chest like a shield. We’ve been inseparable since our junior championship days, and she was the one holding my hand through every screaming nightmare after my crash two years ago.

Right now, she looks like she wants to throw up.

"I saw the addendum on the server twenty minutes ago, Maya," Evelyn says, stepping to my side and hooking her fingers briefly around my wrist—right over the pulse point where she checks if my heart rate is spiking. "They aren't giving you the standard two-year rookie development clause. The board put you under a mandatory one-season evaluation. If you don’t hit their podium benchmarks by the finale, you're out."

I scoff, though a cold fist squeezes my lungs. "One season?

Half the men on this grid spent their first two years putting carbon fiber into the barriers!"

"Half the men on this grid aren't women," Evelyn snaps, anger flushing up her neck. "The media is already asking if Apex only signed you for publicity, and the sponsors want immediate results. They’re setting the bar twice as high just to watch you fall."

"Maya," Mom says, her voice cutting through Evelyn’s outrage. She steps closer, curling her hands into her coat pockets because she refuses to turn her fear into control, even when it’s tearing her apart. "You don't have to sign that paper. Walk away with me right now. You proved you could recover. You don't owe those men inside that room your life."

"I'm not doing this for them," I say, my throat tightening.

"I'm doing it because I earned that seat."

"Your father earned his seat, too," Mom whispers, the raw terror in her eyes hitting me harder than any concrete wall.

"And all it gave me was a closed casket. I hate what this sport did to your body two years ago, and I am terrified of what happens the next time a car fails at two hundred miles an hour."

I swallow hard and cover her cold hand with mine. "I’m not going to die, Mom. And I’m not quitting before the lights even go out."

She searches my eyes for a long beat, then lets out a shaky breath and touches my cheek. "You have your father’s stubbornness. Call me the second you’re out of the car today. Don't make me watch the ticker to know you're breathing."

"I promise."

Wait until she’s in the elevator, I tell myself. The second the doors slide shut, Evelyn pulls me behind a pillar.

"Give me your hands," Evelyn orders softly.

"My hands are fine, Ev," I lied.

"Maya, I watched you relearn how to hold a fork two years ago," she hisses, prying my right hand open to reveal the faint tremor in my fingertips. "You're tensing up because you know he's down in Bay One."

Just thinking about him sends pure venom straight into my bloodstream.

Nico Laurent. Reigning World Champion. Apex’s golden boy. And the bastard who put me into the wall two years ago and walked away without a scratch while my career shattered on the track.

"He drives his car, I drive mine, and you run my pit wall," I grit out, flexing my fingers until they are still. "I don't have to say two words to him."

Evelyn bites her lip, the color draining from her face.

"That’s the other part of the board’s clause, Maya. They won't let you run an independent test program. They ordered Nico to train you."

The air rushes from my lungs. "They what?"

"If you don't follow his program today, they'll void your contract before the first race," Evelyn says, squeezing my hands. "I know you hate him. I hate him for what happened to you, too. Just put your helmet on, run the laps, and prove them wrong. I’ll be on your radio every second."

I suck in a breath through my nose and lock the fury behind an iron door in my mind. If the board thinks pairing me with the man I hate most is going to make me quit, they don't know a damn thing about me.

We head down the stairwell to the ground-level garage, where the scent of high-octane fuel and wet rubber hits the back of my throat.

"Watch your step, rookie. Standing water through Sector Two."

Adrian Mason, a rival driver in a navy suit, tosses a towel over his shoulder as we pass the scales. Unlike the media pundits questioning whether I belong here, Adrian looks at me like any other threat on the grid. "Drainage at Turn Seven is pooling water, Baudelaire. Keep off the painted curb or you'll aquaplane into the wall."

"Giving me free tips, Mason?" I arch a brow. "People might think you're going soft."

"Hell no," he grins. "I just want your car in one piece so I can beat you cleanly at the opener."

I push through the heavy glass doors into Bay One—Apex

Racing’s main garage—and my heart simply stops.

Standing between two gleaming silver-and-crimson cars, stripping off damp racing gloves, is Nico Laurent.

He’s taller than the cameras make him look—over six feet of lean, disciplined muscle in a black-and-crimson racing suit unzipped at the throat. Rainwater clings to his dark, windblown hair, and the harsh garage lights carve shadows along a jaw so sharp it looks cut from stone. Even the faint scar along his left cheekbone only makes him look more lethal.

He is the most unfairly striking man on the grid. And I hate every breath he takes.

"Laurent," the team principal calls out. "Your new teammate is here."

Nico turns, and his storm-gray eyes slam into mine. Cold, calculating, and merciless, his gaze sweeps over my suit and the way I’m holding my weight—like he’s reading my telemetry before I’ve even sat in the seat.

"Baudelaire," he says, his voice rough velvet edged in steel.

"Laurent," I counter, lifting my chin.

He steps closer until I have to tilt my head back to meet his glare. "Two years. I wondered how long it would take you to claw your way onto my grid."

"Last I checked, my name is painted on that chassis right next to yours," I snapped. "Though I'm sure you'd love to put me into the wall again and save yourself the competition."

A muscle in his jaw flexes. "If you drive today the way you drove two years ago, I won't have to touch you."

"You took my line and drove me off the track!"

"Is that still the story you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?" His gaze drops to my right hand, then snaps back to my eyes.

Outside, thunder cracks, and a reserve car from another team hydroplanes down the pit exit, slamming rear-first into the steel barrier with a sickening crunch of carbon fiber. Sirens wail across the wet asphalt.

Nico never takes his eyes off me as I force my gaze back to his.

"The board gave me final sign-off on your evaluation, Baudelaire," Nico says, a cold smirk tilting his lips. "Let's see if you even make it through Turn Seven. Get in the car.”