Chapter Text
𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗲ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ
I heard the voice before I felt anything else.
It was Hannah, but it sounded like it was coming from underwater. Muffled. Panicked.
“Ness? Ness?! Do you hear me? Talk to me, please—”
My eyes were open, but the world was wrong. The sky was spinning. The barriers were spinning. The grass was spinning. Everything was spinning except the pain.
A thin, white-hot line of fire ran from the bridge of my nose up toward my left eye. I tried to blink and couldn’t. Something was stuck there. Something sharp. Metal. I could taste blood and rubber and the faint, sweet smell of coolant.
I was still in the car.
The RB21 was on its side, wedged against the tyre wall at the exit of the Senna curve. The left-front wheel had torn clean off. The nose was crumpled like paper. A jagged piece of carbon fibre and titanium — part of the front wing endplate — had punched through the cockpit and was now buried in my face, just above the bridge of my nose, less than a centimetre from my left eye.
I couldn’t move my head.
I couldn’t scream.
All I could do was breathe in short, wet gasps and listen to Hannah’s voice cracking over the radio.
“Nessa, if you can hear me, squeeze the steering wheel. Just once. Please.”
I tried. My fingers wouldn’t obey. The world tilted again.
Then the memories came in flashes, sharp as broken glass.
𝜗ৎ
It had started two days earlier, back in the Imola paddock.
The announcement dropped on Thursday morning like a grenade.
Alpine Racing confirms: Jack Doohan out, Franco Colapinto in for the remainder of 2025.
The paddock exploded. Jack had been quiet all morning, eyes red, trying to smile for the cameras. Franco arrived wearing the blue race suit, looking younger than his twenty-one years, eyes wide with disbelief and hunger. He hugged Jack for a long time, both of them pretending it wasn’t devastating.
I found Jack behind the Alpine motorhome later, sitting on a stack of tyres, staring at nothing.
“He’s faster than me,” Jack said without looking up. “They’re not wrong. But it still hurts like hell.”
I sat beside him. We didn’t speak for a long time. Just the sound of the wind in the poplar trees and the distant roar of engines testing in the distance.
“You’ll be back,” I told him eventually. “This sport eats people and spits them out. You’re not done.”
He gave a small, broken laugh. “Tell that to the seventeen-year-old who just took my seat.”
𝜗ৎ
Qualifying day at Imola was grey and damp. The old circuit felt alive in a way modern tracks never do — narrow, unforgiving, soaked in history. The Senna curve loomed at the end of the long straight like a question no one wanted to answer.
Q1
I went out on inters. The track was drying in patches. I pushed hard, found a decent lap, P8 provisional. Safe.
Q2
The grip was coming. I switched to softs for the final run. The car felt nervous, the rear stepping out in the fast left at Tamburello. I caught it. Sector one good. Sector two better. Into the final sector I braked late for Tosa, carried speed through the esses, and then…
I never saw the piece of debris.
It must have been from someone else’s car — a small titanium bracket from a front wing, torn loose on the previous lap. It was lying on the racing line at the entrance to the Senna curve, almost invisible against the dark asphalt.
I hit it at 280 km/h.
The front wing exploded.
The car snapped left.
The world turned sideways.
The tyre wall rushed at me.
Then the impact.
Then the pain.
𝜗ৎ
“Nessa… Nessa, stay with me. The marshals are coming. You’re going to be okay.”
Hannah was crying now. I could hear it.
I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t work. Blood was running down my face, warm and sticky, pooling in the bottom of my helmet. The metal shard was still there, pressing against the bone just above my left eye. Every heartbeat sent a fresh spike of agony through my skull.
I thought of my mother.
Of Dami.
Of Jazmín and Jaybin.
Of Kimi’s voice note from last night: “I’ll be watching every lap. Be safe, yeah?”
I thought of Max’s hug after the sprint in Miami.
Of Seb’s words on the phone.
Of the girl who once believed that being fast enough would make the world kind.
That girl felt very far away now.
The marshals arrived. I heard the sound of the medical car, the hiss of the extinguisher, the urgent Italian voices.
Someone cut the harness.
Someone lifted my visor.
I saw a flash of red — blood on the white of the helmet lining — and then the world went black.
The last thing I heard was Hannah’s voice, raw and broken over the radio:
“Ness? Ness?! Do you hear me? Please… please answer me…”
Then nothing.
Just silence.
And the dark.
𝜗ৎ
The world had gone quiet.
I was still there, somewhere inside the wreckage, but everything felt far away. The pain in my face was a dull, throbbing roar. I could taste blood and the sharp metallic tang of the titanium shard that had punched through the halo and buried itself just above the bridge of my nose, dangerously close to my left eye. My left eyelid wouldn’t open. My right one fluttered weakly, showing only flashes of red and white and the blurred shape of a marshal’s orange suit.
I tried to speak. Nothing came out.
Hannah’s voice kept coming through the radio, more desperate with every second.
“Nessa… Nessa, if you can hear me, move your hand. Please. Just move your hand.”
I couldn’t.
Then the marshals arrived. I felt hands on my shoulders, the harness being cut, the steering wheel being removed. Someone was shouting in Italian. Someone else was saying my name over and over.
“Stay with us, Nessa. Stay with us.”
The halo was lifted away. The shard stayed where it was — they didn’t dare touch it. A cervical collar snapped around my neck. I was extracted from the car like a broken doll, laid on a stretcher, and slid into the medical car.
The last thing I registered before the world went completely black was the sound of the session still going on behind me — engines screaming, tyres howling, the race continuing as if nothing had happened.
Because in Formula 1, the show never stops.
On Track – During Q3
The red flags never came. The session was too far gone, the timing too tight. The stewards simply threw a local yellow at the Senna curve while the marshals worked.
Radio chatter filled the airwaves.
➥Lando Norris (on team radio, voice tight):
“Is she okay? Someone tell me she’s okay. That looked fucking horrible.”
A pause. Then, quieter, almost off-hand:
“…Guess the car finally reminded her she’s not invincible.”
It sounded concerned on the surface. Almost caring. But the tone was wrong — the slight edge, the tiny hint of I told you so. The kind of comment that would be clipped, memed, and dissected for weeks.
➥George Russell (on team radio, perfectly polished):
“Jesus… is the girl alright? That was a big one. Hope she’s conscious.”
Then, a few seconds later, almost as an afterthought:
“These young ones push too hard sometimes, don’t they?”
Again, it sounded like worry. But the subtext was clear: she’s too young, too inexperienced, she wasn’t ready. The same polished, double-edged tone he always used when the cameras were watching but the microphones were still live.
➥Max Verstappen (urgent, angry):
“What the fuck is going on? Is Nessa conscious? Tell me right now.”
➥Charles Leclerc (quiet, shaken):
“Mon Dieu… please tell me she’s moving.”
➥Kimi Antonelli (voice cracking):
“Nessa? Bono, is she answering? Please say something.”
The session continued. The cars kept lapping. The world kept turning.
At the Hospital – Maggiore Hospital, Bologna
They flew me by helicopter. The journey was a blur of lights and sirens and the constant beep of monitors. The shard was still in my face when I arrived — they wouldn’t remove it until they had full scans.
I was taken straight into trauma. CT. MRI. Blood everywhere. The left side of my face was swollen, the skin split open in a clean, vicious line. The metal had missed my eye by four millimetres. Four millimetres.
I was unconscious for almost four hours.
When I finally woke, the first thing I saw was the white ceiling and the worried faces of two legends standing at the foot of my bed.
Sebastian Vettel was on the left, arms folded, eyes red-rimmed. Nico Rosberg was on the right, hands in his pockets, jaw clenched so tightly the muscle jumped.
Seb spoke first, voice rough.
“Hey, kid… you gave us all a heart attack.”
Nico tried to smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. “The doctors say the shard missed everything important. You’re lucky. Stupidly lucky.”
I tried to speak. My throat was raw. “How… bad?”
Seb sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand gently. “Bad enough that the whole paddock stopped breathing for twenty minutes. The internet is losing its mind. Some people are praying. Some are already writing your obituary. The usual circus.”
Nico added quietly, “Jack’s devastated. Franco’s in shock. The whole rookie group is in the waiting room. Kimi hasn’t stopped pacing since he got here.”
I closed my eyes. The pain in my face was a living thing now — sharp, hot, pulsing with every heartbeat.
The Internet – Real Time
#PrayForNessa was trending worldwide within minutes.
#JusticeForCheco had been replaced by #GetWellNessa and #TooYoungForThis.
But the darkness was still there.
“Finally the car showed her she doesn’t belong.”
“Hope she’s okay… but maybe this is the wake-up call Red Bull needed.”
“Sixteen and already in hospital. Told you it was reckless.”
“Praying for her… but let’s be honest, this sport isn’t for girls.”
And then the clips started circulating — Lando’s radio message, George’s comment — slowed down, analysed, memed.
“Even Lando sounded worried… but that tone though.”
“George Russell with the mask off for 0.3 seconds.”
Back in the Room
Seb squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to answer any of it. Not now. Not ever, if you don’t want to. Just focus on getting better.”
Nico nodded. “We’re here. All of us. The VR boys don’t leave their own behind.”
I tried to smile, but it hurt too much. A single tear slipped down my uninjured cheek.
Outside the window, the Italian sky was turning pink with dusk.
Inside the room, two former world champions stood guard over a sixteen-year-old girl who had just learned, in the most brutal way possible, that the hunt could go both ways.
The car had tried to take me.
But I was still here.
Barely.
𝜗ৎ
The next morning I woke up in a white room that smelled of antiseptic and fear.
My face throbbed with a dull, rhythmic pain, as if someone were hammering a nail into the bone just above my left eye. The shard had been removed in surgery during the night; now there were thirty-two stitches marching across the bridge of my nose and up toward my eyebrow like a grotesque zip. The left eye was swollen almost shut, the skin around it the colour of bruised plums. A thin bandage covered the wound, but I could still feel the ghost of the metal, cold and sharp, pressing against the memory of my skull.
I was alive.
That was the first surprise.
The second was how calm I felt.
No panic. No tears. Just a cold, clear stillness, like the moment before the lights go out — when the engine is already screaming and the only thing left is the hunt.
Seb and Nico had stayed the night. They were both in the room when I opened my right eye. Seb was slumped in the chair by the window, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Nico stood by the door, arms folded, jaw tight. When they saw me awake they both moved at once.
Seb reached me first. “Hey… easy. Don’t try to talk too much.”
I swallowed. My throat felt like sandpaper. “How bad?”
Nico answered, voice low. “Four millimetres. Four millimetres from losing the eye. The halo did its job. You’re going to have a scar, but you’re going to keep your sight. The doctors say you’re stable. They’re keeping you overnight, but… you’re clear to race tomorrow if you want it.”
I didn’t answer straight away.
A nurse came in, checked the monitors, and left a tablet on the bedside table. “Your team sent the radio transcripts from yesterday. They thought you might want to see them.”
I picked up the tablet with shaking fingers.
I read Lando’s words first.
➥Lando Norris (radio):
“Is she okay? Someone tell me she’s okay. That looked fucking horrible.”
(pause)
“…Guess the car finally reminded her she’s not invincible.”
I read it twice. Then three times. The surface was concern. The underneath was something else — a tiny, satisfied blade slipped between the ribs. I told you so. You’re too young. You don’t belong.
Then George.
➥George Russell (radio):
“Jesus… is the girl alright? That was a big one. Hope she’s conscious.”
(pause)
“These young ones push too hard sometimes, don’t they?”
Polite. Professional. Poisonous.
I set the tablet down.
Something inside me clicked into place with a sound like a seatbelt locking.
The girl who had arrived in Melbourne — the one who smiled shyly, who apologised for existing, who believed that if she was good enough and respectful enough the world would eventually be kind — that girl died on the exit of the Senna curve yesterday.
In her place sat someone colder. Sharper. Hungrier.
I looked at Seb and Nico, voice hoarse but steady.
“I’m racing tomorrow.”
Seb opened his mouth, closed it. Nico studied me for a long moment, then gave a single nod.
“Alright,” he said quietly. “Then we do this properly.”
𝜗ৎ
I woke up on race morning with thirty-two stitches pulling at the skin above my left eye and a single, ice-cold thought in my head:
Today they would learn what it felt like to be hunted.
The pain was still there — a hot, metallic throb that flared every time I blinked — but it no longer frightened me. It sharpened me. The bandage was smaller now, a neat flesh-coloured strip that ran from the bridge of my nose up toward my eyebrow. My left eye was still swollen, the bruising a deep violet, but I could see. That was enough.
I stood in front of the mirror in the motorhome and looked at the girl staring back. The old Nessa — the one who apologised for existing, who smiled shyly in press conferences, who believed that being fast and polite would eventually make the world kind — was gone. She had died at the exit of the Senna curve yesterday.
In her place was something quieter. Colder. Patient.
I was no longer racing to prove I belonged.
I was racing to make them feel what I had felt when I read their radio messages while bleeding in a wrecked car.
Lando’s casual little knife: “Guess the car finally reminded her she’s not invincible.”
George’s polished poison: “These young ones push too hard sometimes, don’t they?”
Today I would return the favour.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Lap after lap.
I would stay half a second behind them, always in their mirrors, always close enough for them to taste my exhaust and feel the pressure building in their chests. I would force them to defend, to overdrive, to cook their tyres, to doubt every single braking point. I would not crash them. I would not take them out. I would simply exist behind them until their confidence began to bleed out, drop by drop, until the psychological weight of being chased by the girl they had mocked broke them from the inside.
Cannibalism of the mind.
I would eat them alive, one corner at a time.
𝜗ৎ
Formation Lap
The Imola sky was grey and low, the old circuit soaked in history and damp morning mist. I sat on the grid in P2, the RB21 idling beneath me, engine note rising and falling as I weaved to build temperature. The bandage on my face was visible through the open visor. The whole world was watching.
Radio from Hannah, calm but tight:
“Strategy is one-stop, mediums to hards, window lap 28-32. Tyres are critical in this cool air. You know what you’re doing. Just drive your race.”
I answered, voice perfectly level:
“Copy. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Lights out.
𝜗ৎ
The Race – 63 laps
I launched like a predator leaving cover.
By Turn 1 I was already glued to Max’s diffuser. He defended cleanly into Tamburello, but I stayed right there — half a car length, no more, no less — for the entire first stint. The pain in my face pulsed with every heartbeat, but it only made me sharper.
Lap 8: I pitted early for fresh mediums, undercutting both Lando (P4) and George (P6). When they came in a lap later I was already ahead, waiting.
Now the real hunt began.
I let them catch me. I wanted them to feel me.
Lap 15
I was right behind George through the Rivazza chicane. I stayed there for three full laps — never trying to pass, just sitting in his mirrors, forcing him to defend the inside line into Tosa, forcing him to carry extra speed through the fast left at Tamburello. His rear tyres began to grain. I could see the smoke in my mirrors.
Radio from George, tense:
“He’s all over me. The girl’s not giving me any space.”
I smiled behind the visor.
Lap 22
Lando was next. I switched targets. I dropped back half a second, then closed again, staying glued to his gearbox through the long run to the chicane. Every time he looked in his mirrors he saw the number 73. Every time he defended into Turn 1 I simply waited, patient, then reattached like a shadow.
Lando’s radio, voice rising:
“She’s just… sitting there. I can’t shake her. It’s fucking with my head.”
Exactly.
I wasn’t attacking. I was haunting.
Lap after lap I stayed half a second behind them, forcing them to drive on the limit just to hold position. Their tyres cooked. Their confidence eroded. Every defensive move cost them time. Every glance in the mirror cost them focus.
Meanwhile I was driving within myself — smooth, clinical, ice-cold — managing my own tyres perfectly because I wasn’t fighting the car. I was fighting their minds.
Lap 41
Max pitted for his second stop. I stayed out one more lap, then came in for fresh hards. When I rejoined I was right behind Lando again. He was now in P3, tyres shot, confidence gone.
I stayed there for ten laps.
Ten laps of pure psychological pressure.
He tried everything — dirty air, late braking, even a desperate lunge into the chicane on lap 48 that nearly put him in the wall. I simply waited, then reattached.
On lap 52 he made the mistake I had been waiting for. He overcooked Turn 1 trying to defend, ran wide, and I slipped past on the inside with clinical precision.
P3 became P2.
Lap 55
George was ahead in P4, but his tyres were finished. I closed the gap in three laps and passed him at the end of the straight with DRS, again without drama, again without risk. Just relentless, patient pressure.
P2 became P1 when Max made a small mistake at Rivazza on lap 58, running slightly wide. I didn’t lunge. I simply took the lead cleanly on the following straight.
From that moment the race was mine.
I controlled the pace. I managed the tyres. I brought the car home 3.8 seconds ahead of Max, 7.2 ahead of Norris.
P1.
The radio cracked the moment I crossed the line.
Hannah, voice breaking:
“Nessa… P1. You just won the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix. After everything. I don’t… I don’t have words.”
I let the car coast down the straight, lifting both hands off the wheel for a single second in quiet acknowledgement.
“Copy,” I said, voice perfectly calm. “Tell the team thank you. That was a hell of a car today.”
But inside my head there was only one thought, cold and clear:
They felt it.
Lando and George had spent fifty laps with me in their mirrors. They had felt the shadow. They had felt the pressure. They had felt what it was like to be hunted by the girl they had dismissed.
And I had won.
𝜗ৎ
Podium
I stood on the top step for the first time since Australia, the Italian crowd roaring my name. Max was beside me on the second step, Norris on the third. When the champagne sprayed Max aimed his bottle at me first, grinning with genuine pride.
“You hunted them today,” he said quietly, only for me to hear. “I saw it. Well done.”
I smiled, small and real. “I learned from the best.”
Below us, Lando’s smile was tight. George’s was polite, but his eyes were haunted.
The hunt was over.
For now.
𝜗ৎ
The podium steps felt different this time.
I climbed them slowly, the pain in my face a steady, hot pulse beneath the bandage. The Italian crowd was roaring — a wall of red, green and white — but the sound seemed to come from very far away. My left eye was still half-swollen, the stitches pulling tight every time I breathed. I could feel the dried blood at the corner of my mouth. I looked like someone who had been through a war.
Because I had.
Piastri stood on the top step, Max on the second, me on the third. When the Australian anthem played for Piastri, I stood perfectly still, hands clasped behind my back, staring straight ahead. My mind was no longer on the music.
It was on the two men standing one step below me.
Lando and George.
They had spoken on open radio while I was bleeding in the wreckage. They had looked at a sixteen-year-old girl trapped in a broken car and chosen to remind the world she was young, fragile, out of place.
Today I had made them feel what that felt like.
I had stayed in their mirrors for fifty laps. I had forced them to defend, to overdrive, to cook their tyres and their nerves. I had not crashed them. I had not taken them out. I had simply existed behind them until their confidence began to bleed.
And now they stood on the podium with me, smiling for the cameras, while I looked down at them with something colder than anger.
The Argentine anthem began.
The moment the first notes rang out, something inside me shifted.
This was no longer about proving I belonged.
This was about conquest.
I stood taller. The pain in my face became fuel. The roar of the crowd became background noise. I was no longer the girl who hoped the world would eventually be kind if she was fast enough and polite enough.
I was the girl who had just made two experienced drivers feel hunted.
And I liked how it felt.
When the anthem ended, Max turned to me first. He pulled me into a quick, fierce hug, one arm tight around my shoulders.
“You didn’t just win today,” he said quietly, only for me to hear. “You took something from them. I saw it.”
I hugged him back, voice low. “They took something from me first.”
He pulled away, eyes searching mine for a second, then nodded once — understanding.
Lando came next. His smile was tight, the public mask firmly in place.
“Well done,” he said, shaking my hand for the cameras. “Proper drive.”
His grip was firm. His eyes were not.
George followed, all polished charm and British politeness.
“Impressive recovery,” he said, voice carrying for the microphones. “Really mature racing from someone so young.”
The words were perfect. The tone was poison.
I looked him straight in the eye and answered, soft enough that only he could hear:
“Thank you. I learned a lot from watching you defend today.”
His smile faltered for half a second. Just half a second.
But I saw it.
And I savoured it.
𝜗ৎ
Interviews
The press pen was packed. Cameras flashed like strobe lights. The questions came fast and sharp.
“Nessarose, first win since Australia, after a horrifying crash in qualifying. How does it feel?”
I looked straight into the lens, voice calm and steady.
“It feels like justice.”
A pause rippled through the room.
“Some people said you were too young, too inexperienced. Today you beat drivers with decades of experience between them. Any message for the critics?”
I tilted my head slightly, the bandage on my face catching the light.
“They can keep talking. I’ll keep winning.”
The Mexican journalist who had been hostile for months asked the inevitable question:
“After everything that happened with Checo, how does it feel to stand here as a winner?”
I answered without hesitation.
“Checo is a great driver. I respect what he achieved. But I am not here to be him. I am here to be better.”
The room fell quiet.
I walked out of the pen with my head high, the pain in my face a reminder of what I had survived — and what I was now willing to become.
𝜗ৎ
Later – Private Corner of the Paddock
The sun was setting over Imola when Helmut Marko found me.
I was sitting alone on a stack of tyres behind the Red Bull motorhome, still in my race suit, staring at the ground. The stitches pulled every time I breathed. My left eye was throbbing.
He approached slowly, hands in his pockets, the old Austrian predator in a team polo.
“Nessarose.”
I looked up.
He studied my face for a long moment — the bandage, the bruising, the coldness in my eyes.
“You did not just win today,” he said quietly. “You sent a message. Lando and Russell felt it. The whole grid felt it.”
He stepped closer.
“Listen to me carefully. In this sport, enemies are not optional. They are inevitable. Some will smile to your face and sharpen knives behind your back. Some will call you too young, too female, too everything. You cannot change them. You can only become something they fear.”
He leaned in, voice dropping to a low, almost intimate growl.
“Be hard. Be fast. And if you have to destroy them to win the championship — destroy them. No mercy. No hesitation. This is not a sport for the kind. This is war. And in war, the only thing that matters is who is left standing at the end.”
He straightened, eyes glittering.
“You have the talent. Now decide if you have the stomach.”
He walked away without another word.
I sat there for a long time, the evening wind cooling the sweat on my skin, the pain in my face a steady drumbeat.
Something inside me had changed.
I was no longer racing to prove I belonged.
I was racing to conquer.
To show every single person who had doubted me, mocked me, or tried to break me that I was not here to win politely.
I was here to dominate.
And from this moment on, I would.
The girl who once dreamed of triumph had died in the wreckage at the Senna curve.
What rose from those ashes was something far more dangerous.
A hunter.
A conqueror.
And the season had only just begun.
𝜗ৎ
I won the race, but I did not feel like a winner.
The podium champagne was still sticky on my race suit when I finally closed the door of the motorhome behind me. The roar of the Italian crowd had faded into a distant hum, like something happening to someone else. I stood alone in the small, dimly lit room, the air thick with the smell of sweat, rubber and the faint metallic tang of blood that still clung to the bandage on my face.
Thirty-two stitches.
Four millimetres from losing my left eye.
And yet the real wound was somewhere deeper, somewhere the surgeons could never reach.
I sat down slowly on the narrow bench, elbows on my knees, and stared at the floor.
The girl who had dreamed of this moment — the one who used to lie awake in Córdoba imagining herself on the top step, laughing with pure, unfiltered joy, waving to her family in the grandstand, feeling the sun on her face and believing that being fast and good and brave would be enough — that girl was gone.
She had died somewhere between the Senna curve and the chequered flag.
In her place sat someone colder. Someone who had just spent fifty laps deliberately breaking two grown men inside their own helmets. Someone who had taken pleasure in the way Lando’s voice cracked on the radio, in the way George’s smile had faltered when he realised the girl he had dismissed was now standing above him on the podium.
I had hunted them.
I had enjoyed it.
And that was the part that terrified me most.
I closed my eyes and saw flashes of the old me:
𝜗The shy sixteen-year-old in the lilac dress in London, heart hammering, whispering “It’s an honour” into a microphone.
𝜗The girl who cried quietly in hotel rooms after reading death threats, but still believed that if she drove well enough, the world would eventually be kind.
𝜗The girl who once thought winning would feel like flying.
Now winning felt like stepping on throats.
Helmut Marko’s words echoed in my skull, low and sharp:
“…if you have to destroy them to win the championship — destroy them. No mercy. No hesitation. This is war.”
I had listened.
I had obeyed.
And the worst part was that I didn’t regret it.
Not really.
I felt the shift happening inside me, slow and irreversible, like ink spreading through water. The innocence I had carried from Córdoba — that bright, stubborn belief that talent and hard work and respect would be enough — was being crushed under the weight of what this sport actually demanded.
You do not come to Formula One to win.
You come to conquer.
You come to prove, lap after lap, that you are better than every single person who ever doubted you, mocked you, or tried to break you.
And to do that, you must be willing to break others.
I looked at my hands. They were still trembling slightly from the adrenaline, from the pain, from the cold satisfaction of watching Lando and George unravel in my mirrors.
I had become exactly what they said I was too young to be.
Ruthless.
The darkness was not sudden. It did not arrive with thunder and lightning. It crept in quietly — a numbness in my chest where joy used to live, a cold calculation where excitement once burned, a detachment that made every podium feel less like celebration and more like another body left behind on the climb.
I was decaying.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
Just… slowly.
Piece by piece.
The girl who once dreamed of standing on the podium with tears of happiness was learning to stand there with dry eyes and a colder heart.
I stood up, walked to the small mirror above the sink, and looked at my reflection.
The stitches.
The bruising.
The hard line of my mouth.
I no longer recognised the girl staring back.
And the worst part?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I turned away from the mirror, picked up my phone, and opened the rookie group chat. Dozens of messages. Congratulations. Heart emojis. Kimi asking if I was okay.
I read them all.
Then I closed the app without replying.
There would be time for softness later.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was the next race.
The next throat to step on.
The next piece of my old self to leave behind.
The hunt was no longer just on the track.
It was inside me now.
And it was only getting started.
The internal decay is now clearly underway — slow, quiet, painful, and irreversible.
Nessa is no longer the innocent dreamer. She is becoming the conqueror Helmut spoke of, and she is beginning to understand the terrible price.