Page 50 of Red Flagged
Ivy choked.
Aurélie choked harder.
I glanced at Marco. Marco glanced back. The moment lasted one second too long.
Wait.
Did he know something? Did Ivy? What the hell did Aurélie tell her?
Realization dawned on Marco’s face before he deadpanned, “Did you tell him your nickname, or is that just divine intervention?”
I didn’t respond. Just raised my glass and took a slow, deliberate sip of whiskey, letting the silence speak for me.
Truth was, I didn’t mind. Let the world guess what kind of man I was behind closed doors. They didn’t need to know that half the time, Aurélie had me on my knees metaphorically—or literally—and the other half of the time, she had me undone. They definitely didn’t need to know how sacred it felt to be with her in every way I could. That when it was just the two of us, we broke every rule we made up for the world to follow.
Aurélie covered her face with both hands.
“Okay, okay,” Ivy interrupted, clapping her hands before stealing a croissant from the room service tray that had been delivered while the girls were in the room getting ready. “Business time. We’ve got roughly”—she checked her watch—“an hour before the GPDA dinner. So. Let’s talk optics.”
“Oh, goody,” I muttered, tossing back the last of my drink.
“First of all,” she continued, fully in PR-goblin mode now, “the crash footage has officially gone viral. Every angle. Every slow-mo. Every dramatic fan edit set to Hozier. Congratulations.”
Marco raised a hand. “Is it wrong if I ask for links?”
“Yes,” Ivy retorted. “But I’ll send them anyway.”
She spun her iPad around and showed us the latest headline:
IS F1’S HOTTEST COUPLE ALREADY SPINNING OUT? TROUBLE IN PARADISE FOR DUBOIS AND FRASER?
I groaned. “Fucking hell.”
Kimi leaned in, squinting. “Where’d they get that photo?”
“From the pit lane,” Ivy replied. “You flipping off the cameras, Aurélie yelling at Callum, Callum grabbing Morel. It’s giving Bonnie and Clyde. But like… make it F1.”
Aurélie sighed. “Thatwas not part of the plan.”
“That wasbeforethe plan,” I corrected.
She scowled at me, hazel eyes glittering with mirth.
Ivy snapped her fingers. “Focus, you two. No eye-fucking before we leave for dinner.” She turned to Aurélie. “This is good, Frenchie,” she said brightly. “Dramatic. Fiery. To the world, it proves you’re not faking anything. Not the fight. Not the crash. Not the fact that your team forced you to keep driving a sabotaged car while your sport let Morel coast without so much as a slap on the wrist. And definitely not the fact that your car, and Morel, are dangerous to the rest of the goddamn grid. That doesn’t make either of you a villain. It makes you the only ones with integrity.”
She clicked again, spinning her iPad toward us again like she was running a TED Talk. “And better yet, the FIA just scheduled a follow-up meeting with us during the break.”
Aurélie’s perfectly shaped brow arched. “They did?”
“Yep. A teleconference in a week and a half during the Silverstone to Belgium gap. They want to talk ‘driver cohesion strategy.’”
I raised an eyebrow. “Corporate speak for ‘please don’t start a civil war in the pit lane,’ yeah?”
“Exactly, Scottie,” Ivy said, looking far too pleased as she snapped her fingers. “So congratulations. You’re now everyone’s favorite scandal.” She paused and tilted her head, her black hair catching in the light. “Again.”
Then she scrolled down to the comments. “Also, you’ve earned a new couple nickname. A few, actually.”
Kimi squinted. “Don’t say Frabois.”
