Free Web NovelChapter 89: Chapter 89 Second Run
_Rowena’s POV_
The second run was supposed to be clean and simple.
I had the points from the first run already banked.
The sensible approach was to drive efficiently, finish without incident, and save the car for the later rounds. I had told myself this in the staging area between runs while the mechanics checked the Ferrari and Silas’s team relayed a few notes through the earpiece.
I intended to do exactly that. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
Then I watched Kaelen pull out of the bay for the second run and something in how his car moved told me the conversation his team had with him between runs had produced results.
He was different.
The aggressive front-loaded pressure of the first run was gone. What replaced it was something more considered, more patient, the kind of driving that came from a tactical decision rather than an emotional one.
Someone on his team had identified where the Ferrari’s advantages were smallest and had given him a specific plan for exploiting those sections.
The narrow parts of the track. The technical corners where raw speed became less useful and line precision became everything.
He was going to try to race me on technique rather than pace.
“Your brain works fast. Damn.” Kyra applauded as I analyzed the situation.
That was smarter than the first approach. I gave him credit for it.
I gave him credit and then I started thinking about what I was going to do about it.
The signal fired.
I came out at my pace and Kaelen came out at his and the first third of the track played out almost exactly as I expected.
He wasn’t chasing. He was driving the track, finding his lines, being patient. His gap to me was consistent rather than growing, which meant he wasn’t losing ground and he knew it, and I could feel the intention in it even from inside my car.
He was building toward something.
I let him build.
The middle section had three corners in sequence that tightened progressively, the kind of layout that rewarded cars with strong mechanical grip and punished power-heavy setups that needed room to breathe.
Kaelen had done his homework. He was picking up ground through that section, not dramatically but measurably, and I watched it happen and let it happen, also keeping my pace.
By the time we reached the back straight his front was in my rear camera at a distance that would read to him as genuine progress.
I watched him respond to it.
His lines got slightly more committed. The confidence was building. He was reading the gap as evidence that his strategy was working and he was feeding that reading back into how he drove and it was producing exactly the result he wanted.
For about forty-five seconds.
Then the long straight came and I hit it with everything the Ferrari had.
Not a gradual increase. Everything. All at once.
The gap opened in a way that had nothing gradual about it. One moment he was there in the rear camera at a distance that looked like a race, and then the straight was doing what straights did for cars with this much power and that distance became something else entirely, something that communicated very clearly that the gap I had been showing him had been a choice rather than a result.
I felt the moment he understood it.
I knew it from how his car moved in the rear camera.
The change in line was small but readable. The patience he had been building the run on cracked slightly at the edges and something underneath it came through.
He pushed past where he should have pushed.
He was trying to recover ground in the next corner sequence and the line he attempted was not a line the track supported at that speed with that approach angle and I was close enough and aware enough that I made the decision before it was fully formed in my thinking.
I moved the Ferrari into his space.
I controlled the Ferrari, deliberately. Not a panicked reaction but a considered one, the kind that took about a quarter of a second to execute and communicated everything it needed to communicate about who was managing this race and who was responding to it.
I let Kyra handle the wheel and ram the Ferrari into his. The contact sent his car off its line.
The track edge caught it at the wrong angle and Kaelen’s car went into the barrier. He crashed hard and I was sure he sustained a few cuts. Or maybe a heavy one. No one cared.
I was already past it.
I crossed the line.
The staging area came up and I brought the Ferrari in and sat in it for a moment before doing anything else. The crowd noise was coming through the helmet in waves. I took the helmet off and the noise hit me fully and it was not the noise of a crowd with a complaint.
Behind me I could hear Kaelen’s team. The words came through clearly enough.
“That bitch cheated!!”
I smiled to myself.
I looked at the track.
The paramedics were already at Kaelen’s car, moving with calmness. The calmness told me that Kaelen was still alive and was moving inside the car.
He would be bruised across the shoulder and probably the ribs from the harness load and his pride would require significantly longer to recover than his body.
I got out of the Ferrari.
I stood beside it and looked at the officials who were looking at me and then at the rulebook.
The crowd was still going. They cheered for me because I’d made them win a lot of money. I figured people placed bet on my win on this second run.
Nobody moved to disqualify me.
The crowd made it very clear how they felt about that outcome and the officials, who had no say just accepted it. I wasn’t disqualified for trying to kill Kaelen.
I handed my helmet to the nearest member of the crew.
I had won the second round too.
Whatever Kaelen’s team wanted to do with the rulebook could happen through the formal process, which would take time and produce a committee review and ultimately arrive at the conclusion that contact in competition was assessed on a case by case basis and that the margins involved were within the range of competitive driving.
I knew this because I had read the rulebook myself.
Twice. Before I had ever gotten into the car.
