Work Text:
OPERATION: The Crown of Aidea
Report filed by:
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Major Crimes Division, International Operations Unit
Notes: Ongoing interrogations and intelligence review underway.
United States Department of Justice
INTERVIEW OF: CHARLES LECLERC (CL)
DATE: ▉▕▋▜ ▔▚▄▋▙▄▔▇, ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▅█▙▄
APPEARANCES: For the United States: DANIEL RICCIARDO, (DR) FBI Special Agent, Deputy U.S. Holding Cell, #7, ███████████, East Coast.
1
I N T E R V I E W
DANIEL RICCIARDO: State your name for the record.
CHARLES LECLERC: Charles Leclerc.
DR: Do you accept responsibility?
CL: Yes.
CASE NO #: 160697
SUMMARY OF INCIDENT:
At approximately ███ local time, a coordinated criminal operation targeting a high-value historical artifact (hereafter “the Crown”) was disrupted by federal and international law enforcement agencies. Seven male suspects were detained in connection with the attempted theft. The operation involved advanced surveillance interference, coordinated internal access, and multiple entry points within the estates infrastructure. The suspects are believed to have operated as a temporary coalition rather than a standing organization.
PERSONS DETAINED
- Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc
Believed architect of operation. Extensive record is speculated.
Status: In custody. Injuries sustained during arrest.
- Max Emilian Verstappen
No formal criminal record located. No record located.
Status: In custody. Identity verification ongoing. Name was provided.
Injuries sustained during arrest.
- Sebastian Vettel
Previously incarcerated for unrelated offenses. Extensive record.
Status: In custody.
- Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton
Suspected information broker. Extensive record is speculated.
Status: In custody.
- Jenson Alexander Lyons Button
Known for prior involvement in international theft operations. Prior arrests violating international law. Extensive record.
Status: In custody. Minor injuries sustained during arrest.
- George William Russell
Background in military or private security suspected. Extensive record is speculated.
Status: In custody. Identity verification ongoing.
- Oliver James Bearman
Youngest suspect. Sustained injuries during the incident.
Status: In custody. Hospitalized, then transferred to custody. A medical report is attached.
OPERATIONAL NOTES
Suspects utilized encrypted communications, camera desynchronization, and internal routing manipulation. No civilian casualties reported. Significant property damage avoided. The Crown artifact was not removed from the premises. Evidence suggests internal conflict and breakdown of coordination during execution. One (1) suspect sustained physical injury during on-site confrontation. Two (2) suspects displayed signs of physical restraint during apprehension.
ASSESSMENT
Investigators conclude the operation was highly sophisticated, indicating extensive prior experience among participants. However, the presence of multiple external actors and unexpected internal interference resulted in partial operational collapse. The motivation behind the theft remains under investigation.
United States Department of Justice
INTERVIEW OF: MAX VERSTAPPEN (MV)
DATE: ▉▕▋▜ ▔▚▄▋▙▄▔▇, ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▅█▙▄
APPEARANCES:
For the United States: DANIEL RICCIARDO, (DR) FBI Special Agent, Deputy U.S. Holding Cell, #3, ███████████, East Coast.
1
I N T E R V I E W
DANIEL RICCIARDO: State your name for the record.
MAX VERSTAPPEN: I already did.
(NOTE: ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO RESTART.)
DANIEL RICCIARDO: State your name for the record.
MAX VERSTAPPEN: Max Verstappen.
DR: Do you accept responsibility?
MV: For what?
DR: We’re looking at multiple charges now. But consider yourself lucky, you’re a clean slate. No record. How is that?
MV: I have a record.
DR: You don’t. Interpol couldn’t locate your DNA. Do you understand that? You have ruined your life with this. You could have lived a quiet life. Left countless women and men alike with no trace. An unknown God, with that physique. With those hands of yours, dissected through our most dutiful forensic experts, you could have gotten yourself a large some of hot cash and fucked yourself sensless with irrevocable greed and blasphemy, something of a Dionysus.
MV: A quiet life, clearly.
DR: What I am getting at, is that you are nobody. No one.
(NOTE: Suspect remains quiet. Facial expressions analyzed, doubt is suspected display by pursed lips, tilted head, a slight frown.)
DR: I understand. You could have been searching for an identity in this crime.
(NOTE: Suspect grins.)
DR: But guess know what? You still could be exactly what you were. You could remain a man unknown. Clean slate. I’ll offer you a deal. What do you think?
(NOTE: Suspect is silent for ███s.)
MV: My name is Max Emilian Verstappen. You will record my name and you will remember it well. Your deal can go fuck itself.
2018
St. Moritz
“Timing’s off. Twelve seconds in the corridor during shift change.” Russell, laying out his gear on a wool blanket picks fiberscope, ceramic blades, adjusts a slider on his own tablet without comment, observing a brief notation in messy handwriting. “Fixed. Compensated for the…snow muffling footfall.”
Button hums, perched on the edge of the heavy oak table with a chipped enamel mug he’s refilled far too many times. Steam coils around his amused expression, clouding his view of the files he’s engineered by heart. “Twelve seconds is generous. I’d call it ten. Their heaters are overloading the old circuits near the service door. Makes an awful hum. Covers sound.”
From the dark floor by the fire, Antonelli, sitting cross-legged with a laptop balanced on his knees, his young face peers upwards. “Eight.” It’s quiet, save for the technology. The only sound is the pop of sap in the fireplace, repeating.
Max glances down, a glacier shifting, a steady eye, confident voice commanding, “Explain.”
Kimi tilts the screen, along with his chocolate eyes, and rimmed glasses. A cascade of code, weather data, and guard payroll logs, he explains, motioning “rotation overlaps here,” he taps a point, “when the exterior climate sensor trips at -15. They hesitate at the door, because they aren’t locals. They hate letting the cold in. Eight seconds of bundled-up stupidity.”
George leans in, “Assuming hesitation.”
“I’m assuming humans in cheap boots,” Kimi replies, a hint of a smile on his features, teeth showing. “They’ll pause to stamp their feet. Boss doesn’t pay much.”
Jenson grins, wide and proud, gesturing his hands wildly to the two men nearby, careful to not knock down his coffee, which he promptly picks up, “Told you the kid was good.” And cheers. “Reads like data streams.”
If Max heard anything George or Jenson had said, it doesn’t show. He offers a single, slow nod to Kimi. “You’re right. Eight.”
Kimi nods back once. He fixes his glasses, a smile still fixed on his face. The first time it took a week. Now it takes until T-1.
“Clean to the first gate.” Jenson puts his arms up from his position, voice clear through electricity, chipper, “Georgie, you’re a ghost.”
“Pressure plate at the threshold. Half-second delay. Stepping…now.” George murmurs, a faint click echoes in their ears.
A clear voice rings out. “Kid, you have the door.”
Kimi is already at the keypad, not typing. He holds a small device against it, feeling for the faintest thermal residue on the buttons. “Four…” He whispers them, “7-2-9-1.”
“Birth year of the bank’s founder.” George’s grin is so shit eating into the radiowaves, Max fights the urge to not to turn off his communication device.
“Everyone has a tell. Even banks.” And now Jenson’s laughing.
Inside the inner vault the target is still the Frostfire, displayed in a cryogenic case to enhance its diamond’s clarity, a beautiful, beautiful necklace with only one notable public appearance on the bosom of a famous actress.
“Case is wired to a capacitance field. Break the seal and it screams.” Kimi murmurs, in awe as the crystal glows.
“George. The air vent. Three meters left of the case.”
George doesn’t question Max. He scales a shelving unit, silent, and unscrews the vent cover with two precise twists of a custom tool. “I see it. Secondary laser grid inside the duct. Invisible from the floor.”
“Grid is on the building’s original blueprints. Decommissioned in ‘98. Someone got nostalgic. Sending a bypass pulse.” The grid dies. George reaches in, his arm moving with hypnotic slowness. From above, he lowers a thin, frozen filament of glass until it touches the top of the case, the only point not wired. He applies a precise, ultrasonic vibration. A perfect, silent circle falls inward. He catches it.
“Now.”
With hands steadier than his years should allow, Kimi uses elongated titanium tweezers. Through the hole, past the frozen air, the necklace lies on a pedestal of black velvet. He slides the tweezers underneath, lifting it in one fluid motion. A slight of hand worthy of praise. “Clear.”
“Fall back. Jenson, status.”
“All quiet, Max. The night manager is watching a football match in Lisbon. The contingency van is warmed up and idling. No heroics, children.”
They are in the van, heat blasting. The Frostfire necklace is sealed in a lead-lined case, the replacement steady under protective measures that lost the true prize. George drives, his eyes constantly scanning mirrors. Jenson has long shredded his digital footprints from the bank’s servers. Kimi stares out at the dizzying drop, the valley lights below. “The pause. By the door. It was exactly eight seconds.” He murmurs, watching snow collect on the rim of the vehicle windows.
Jenson passes him the thermos of sweet, terrible coffee. “Like you said. Cheap boots.”
Max, in the front passenger seat, watches the road. He pulls out a small, no doubt costly chocolate bar, breaks it into four precise squares, and passes them back without a word. They eat in silence, the chocolate rich and smooth. A ritual.
Jenson grins. “Clean run. No deviations.”
George pouts at the lack of chocolate, earning him a shove into his mouth by Jenson, a small swerve of his tires in the icy paths ahead.
“One.” Max meets Kimi’s eyes in the rearview. “The warmth on the keypad. You didn’t just read it. You anticipated it. That’s the difference between good and gone.”
Kimi holds the sharp gaze, then nods, taking another sip of the awful coffee. He pulls his cap off, runs a hand through his hair. “No peppermint in the coffee?”
“Kid thinks he’s funny.” Jenson, a man scorned, does nothing to hide his devotion to the mints he drags into everything.
George, who’s just finished his chocolate, “Drinks in Milan, right? My turn to pick the bar.”
“Can I-“
“No drinks for the kid.” The words are spoken in unison, earning a pout from Kimi. The van descends, leaving the pristine of the Alps for the chaotic warmth of the future, an unlikely unit intact, their trust in each other as solid and tested as the mountain rock.
The hiss of wet asphalt, into early morning. Glow of passing streetlights paints stripes across the interior. Jenson is out first, leaned against the window, his breathing a deep, even rumble. Kimi followed soon after, curled in his seat, the knit cap pulled over his eyes. Max is now behind the wheel, hands at eleven and three, the road a familiar meditation. His eyes flick to George in the passenger seat, a silhouette against the early sun, still and watchful. He had been tired when they switched places, but remained awake as if all fatigue had left him.
“Just after you worked with his old partner. Before he picked up the kid.” A long stretch of road. A truck passes, a brief roar, then silence.
Max’s voice is a low gravel in the dark, “That’s right.”
“Never asked.” George continues. “Never seemed to be my business.” But the decision is made when he questions now, firm and unshaken. “Who was he? Jenson’s old partner.”
The question hangs in the warm, recycled air of the van, suspended between the sleeping and the awake. Max’s profile is cut from stone. George can almost feel him weighing the answer, not for secrecy, but for the weight of the name itself.
United States Department of Justice
INTERVIEW OF: SEBASTIAN VETTEL (SV)
DATE: ▉▕▋▜ ▔▚▄▋▙▄▔▇, ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▅█▙▄
APPEARANCES:
For the United States: DANIEL RICCIARDO, (DR) FBI Special Agent, Deputy U.S. Holding Cell, #5, ███████████, East Coast.
1
I N T E R V I E W
DANIEL RICCIARDO: Do you accept responsibility?
SEBASTIAN VETTEL: Good to see you too. It’s been what? Years?
DR: Malta 2015. You got lucky.
SV: Oh yeah. Your operation team was laughable.
DR: As was yours last night. I wonder why, that is. You were on site I suppose?
SV: You already know that.
DR: It’s the first time you haven’t restrained yourself from arrest. Unlike that friend of yours.
(NOTE: Facial expressions analyzed, agitated expressions displayed with taut posture and Tightly set lips.)
SV: Well he doesn't like getting caught. Doesn’t like you too much either.
DR: Feelings mutual.
SV: Is he okay?
DR: Yes.
(NOTE: The suspect is smiling.)
DR: Don’t do that. It doesn’t look good on a man your age.
SV: Always so feisty. I don’t really know how ████ liked you.
(NOTE: ▍▀▌▄ █▒ ░▄▃▀▂▔▄▃ ▎ ▕▔ ▎ ▅ ░▄▒▏▄▂▔ ▅▎ ░ ▔▇▄ ▃▄▂▄▀▒▄▃. AS WELL ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO CONTINUIATION.)
DR: Walk me through it.
SV: You’re seriously desperate. How many of us have you already talked with?
DR: Enough.
T-72 HOURS
Location: Constantine Villa
On the surface of the white marble table, blueprints, satellite imagery, and a holographic projection of a breathtaking crown, glittering.
Charles stands at the head, a conductor before an orchestra of thieves. His finger taps the hologram, making the light glint, coloring his skin.
“The Crown of Aidea. Fourth century. Lost for five hundred years, found in a shipwreck, bought at private auction for a sum we can only guess at. It is not just jewels. Its current owner, a media-shy shipping magnate, by the name of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, is loaning it for a single, three-hour exhibition at the Gala d’Argento in Monaco. After that, it vanishes into a private vault, likely forever.” He looks around the table, making eye contact with each person with their focused expressions. “The fortune it represents is absolutely remarkable. The cut between our crews are high enough to make this worth the considerable risk. This job is a fortress.” He gestures to one side of the table. “Lewis, Seb, Ollie and I…we have a history of scoring big. This is another level. The coverage will be global, relentless.”
His gaze shifts to the other side. “Which is why I am putting my confidence in your team as well, Verstappen, Russell, Button. I know you are all more than capable. I am not requesting. I am demanding your expertise.”
The word demanding lingers, a sour note for Charles. If he lets it show, it goes albeit unnoticed save for one.
“We will need a team for oversight. A team for casing and transport. And a dedicated team for the jewels themselves. Every single one is a rarity, but the Ruby Crown Jewel is indispensable.”
A throat is cleared. George’s voice is calm. He’s been studying the hologram’s security layers, not the crown.
“There should be a separate team just for the crown. Isolate the variable. The jewels are the entire point of contact with the security system. They can’t be an afterthought in the casing team’s plan.”
Hamilton, sleek in a tailored bomber jacket, raises a single, expressive brow. Amused or challenged? It’s impossible to tell.
Vettel leans forward, hands steepled. The voice of weathered pragmatism. “We don’t have enough crew for that level of specialization, George. Not without leaving another sector thin. It’s about resource allocation.”
Jenson, lounged back with an air of perpetual ease, lets Seb speak. He watches the dynamic, a faint smile playing on his lips. He knows this dance, a familiar one.
Bearman, the youngest at the table, eager, leans in. “I’m sure one person, the right person, on the Crown Jewel detail would be fine. A specialist. Less moving parts.”
All eyes drift, inevitably, to Max. He has not moved. Has not looked at the crown, or Charles, or anyone. His eyes are fixed on a seemingly blank spot on the blueprint, structural load-bearing point. His silence is a physical pressure in the room.
“Alright.”
Charles watches Max for a second, gets nothing, then claps his hands once, decisively.
“We will have a dedicated jewel team. A single point of contact. With our established crews merging, we will go over all methods of communication, signals, and our combined inventory. Every tool, every alias.” He moves to sit, the business seemingly settled.
Jenson’s voice is light, cutting through the procedural tension. He gestures around the table with his chin, a wry grin finally breaking through. “So for now…we’re all stuck together. One big, happy crew.” He lets the word hang in the air, breaking into a smile. “Cute.”
A beat of shared, slightly uneasy silence. Hierarchies, unspoken and old, are grating against this forced alliance. Max finally moves. He reaches out and rotates the holographic blueprint a fraction, his eyes still cold, still calculating.
The formal war room has bled into a more casual, tense dispersion. The blueprints are now stacked, the hologram off. In a corner by a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the dark sea, Lewis pulls Charles aside. His voice is low, a private rumble against the distant sound of waves.
“You sure about the size of this? A smaller test run…a lower-profile score…it would let us see how the machinery works before we ask it to lift a mountain.”
Charles’s eyes aren’t on Lewis. They’re fixed across the expansive suite. There, by a long leather couch, Oliver is happily showing Max a disassembled, high-caliber rifle. The components are laid out on a silk cloth. Ollie points to a custom-milled bolt carrier, his face bright with youthful pride, explaining its reduced lock time. Max stands with his arms crossed. He isn't looking at the parts, but there’s no doubt that he's listening, his head tilted slightly, absorbing the information without granting the enthusiasm behind it any purchase. It’s a study in contrast, Ollie’s open, eager energy bouncing off of Max’s impenetrable, focused calm. Lewis follows Charles’s line of sight. He sees it too, the two different species of professionals in one room.
“I am certain.” Charles says it while looking directly at Max. It’s a statement fired across the room. I am certain about the job. I am certain about the risk. I am certain about you. Across the suite, as if feeling the weight of the stare, Max’s eyes cut away from Ollie’s presentation. For a single, electric second, his gaze meets Charles’s. There is no acknowledgement. A cool, appraising look that holds a universe. Max looks back down at the rifle components. He gives an imperceptible nod to Ollie, a technician’s approval of the tool, nothing more, and turns to walk towards the terrace doors, leaving Ollie beaming. Lewis watches Max’s retreating back, then looks back at Charles.
A sigh, resigned. “Certainty is a luxury in our line of work, Charles. It’s usually the first thing stolen.”
Charles finally turns back to Lewis, the ghost of Max’s challenging stare still on his own.
2018
Saint Tropez
“Fuck I love this place. I know a place where the champagne is overpriced and the mistakes aren’t remembered until noon, let's get fired up Lewis, buddy come on.”
The sky is watercolor, pale lilac bleeding into gold. The air is cool, smelling of jasmine. A sleek, unmarked car rolls to a silent stop, its engine ticking as it cools. The side door slides open. Sebastian is the first out, stretching like a cat. There’s a giddy energy buzzing off him, the post-job adrenaline looking for an outlet. He pops a spearmint into his mouth with a practiced flick of his wrist.
Lewis exits next, moving with a weary grace. He pulls off his gloves, finger by finger. “The only place you’re going is to bed, old man. You’re not twenty anymore.” He catches a whiff of the mint. “And for God’s sake, find a new brand. Smells like a chemical spill.”
“Says the man who used to close down bars in Marrakech and still make a 5 a.m. extraction looking like a fashion plate. I remember. You and that bartender…God, you know I got so much crap about that from your old pal.” He grins, unrepentant, breathing a cloud of eye-watering spearmint in Lewis’s direction.
A rare, true smile touches his lips, quickly schooled. Lewis gruffs. “It was a tactical necessity. And a lifetime ago. We have the merchandise. We have our health. That’s the routine.”
Ollie tumbles out next, buzzing with a different, brighter energy. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes wide. He’s holding a small, carved jade figurine he “liberated” from the study, not part of the plan. “That was incredible! Did you see the look on his face when the lights went out? He spilled his whisky!” He glances between Seb and Lewis, trying to parse their history. “Wait, you guys partied after jobs? My old partner–-he had this girlfriend who was terrified of anything illegal. The irony. He’d just go home to her, eat pizza, and watch telly. Said it was better than any club. I hated her.”
Charles, who has been quietly securing the van, barks a laugh, a real, surprised sound that cuts through the dawn. “Your old partner? Ollie, I can’t believe that was real. When I met you, you thought a partner was someone you got paired with in chemistry class.”
Ollie flushes deeper, clutching his figurine defensively. “I did not! I had a very sophisticated…understanding of the industry.” Sebastian slings an arm around Ollie’s shoulders, still chewing his mint. “Don’t worry, kid. We’ll corrupt you properly. First lesson, the best parties start when the job ends.” He winks at Lewis, a challenge.
Lewis shakes his head, but the fondness is there. He looks at Charles, a silent communication passing between them. “Get inside. All of you. We debrief, we inventory, then we sleep. The only thing we're celebrating tonight is that we’re not in a French prison.” He herds them toward the villa’s side door. Sebastian goes, still murmuring about a jazz club in Nice. Ollie looks back at the van, then at the figurine in his hand.
Charles brings up the rear, his laughter faded into a soft, watchful smile. He pulls the villa door shut behind them and the minty-fresh scent of a job well done.
A map of the French Riviera is pinned to a wall, dotted with red markers. Empty espresso cups and a half-eaten box of pastries litter a low table. Lewis stands by the map, a laser pointer in hand. He taps a complex route weaving through the hills behind Saint-Tropez, towards a certain villa. “The transfer from the private airstrip to the villa. I’m trying to show you this. It was…Nico’s idea. Drafted it years ago. It requires a larger crew. Two diversionary teams, a separate driver for the switch. We don’t have that.” He looks at Charles, who is pacing slowly, fingers pinching his lower lip in thought.
“We’ve only just gotten this crew together. Solidified. Besides…” He glances across the room. “…the kid needs more time to learn a play that complex. We keep it tight.”
Lewis follows his gaze. In the corner, Ollie is animatedly explaining something to Seb, using salt and pepper shakers and a butter knife to demonstrate a potential vault mechanism. Seb listens, arms crossed, a faint smile on his face. Without looking over, voice dry, “Kid’s not wrong about the pressure sensor bypass. Unconventional. But not wrong.”
Ollie is giddy. “See? It’s about creating a systemic overload, not a stealthy pick—”
Sebastian, interrupting, turns to the others, “Which is why, for this job, we’re using the sewage access. Less poetry, more results.
Lewis sighs, fondly, “The poetry was the problem last time in London.” If he’s referencing something older, it goes unnoticed.
Charles stops pacing, a decisive spark in his eye. “Alright. New plan. We use Ollie’s overload idea but here, at the perimeter grid. As the primary distraction. Lewis, you and Seb take the sewage route with the grab. Ollie, you’re with me on the overload. We create the noise, they swim through the silence. It’s bold.” Charles’s leadership is collaborative, almost improvisational. He builds the symphony from the instruments in the room, even if they’re playing different scores. Lewis studies the revised plan on the map, mentally running the clock. A slow nod.
Sebastian walks over, wiping his hands on a towel, “It’s reckless. I like it. Better than my old route, at least. Old partner would’ve insisted on a helicopter extraction for a job this small. Total disaster.”
With a smirk, Lewis adds, “He’d have demanded a specific helicopter. And complained about the upholstery.”
Ollie, leaning over the map, while Charles is finalizing the marker lines, looks up curiously. “Hey, isn’t your old partner—”
United States Department of Justice
INTERVIEW OF: JENSON BUTTON (JB)
DATE: ▉▕▋▜ ▔▚▄▋▙▄▔▇, ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▅█▙▄
APPEARANCES:
For the United States: DANIEL RICCIARDO, (DR) FBI Special Agent, Deputy U.S. Holding Cell, #2, ███████████, East Coast.
1
I N T E R V I E W
DANIEL RICCIARDO: Do you accept responsibility?
JENSON BUTTON: When do I get to my cell?
DR: After this interview, there’s a nice little area in solitary waiting.
JB: I’m fucking exhausted. Can we do this later Daniel?
DR: I’ll explain why you need to cooperate. You resisted arrest.
JB: I corrected someone’s grip.
DR: You put an officer on the floor.
JB: He slipped.
DR: You’ve added assault to an already impressive list.
JB: If you’re trying to scare me, you're about fifteen years too late.
DR: This isn’t about fear. It’s about leverage.
JB: Whose?
DR: Yours. For now.
(NOTE: The suspect appears to be in pain.)
JB: Get to it.
DR: You were the contingency specialist.
JB: Allegedly.
DR: You checked transport routes minutes before execution?
JB: Habit.
DR: Or intent.
JB: Or competence. You should try it.
DR: You were prepared to leave.
JB: I didn’t leave.
DR: You prepared to.
JB: That’s not the same thing.
DR: It is when someone gets hurt.
(NOTE: Facial expressions analyzed, pupils dilating, excessive blinking, eyebrows drawing together, suspect is concerned.)
JB: Is Oliver okay?
DR: We’re not discussing—
JB: Is he okay?
DR: He’s receiving medical attention.
JB: That’s not an answer.
DR: It’s the one you’re getting.
JB: Did you drag him into this room? Told him to be brave—
DR: Jenson.
JB: You don’t get to use the kid as pressure. That’s fucking low.
DR: You used him as cover.
(NOTE: Suspects surges forward, chains clatter. ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO CONTINUATION.)
DR: Sit properly.
JB: Tell me if he’s okay.
DR: You don’t dictate terms here.
JB: Then get someone else in here. Someone who isn’t playing games over a fucking kid.
DR: This is an interrogation.
JB: This is bullshit.
DR: Final warning.
JB: If Oliver’s hurt because of something I did, say it to my face.
DR: Interview suspended.
JB: Don’t you walk out—
DR: You’ll cool off in solitary. Or until you’re ready to continue this interview. I’ll be back.
JB: Daniel!
1999
Amsterdam
“There’s another here for a lighter possession. Do not think about that.”
The scene is a bruise of shadow and sodium light. Rain drums a cold, steady rhythm on corrugated iron and slick cobblestones. The air smells of diesel and river mud, a warehouse deal has gone to hell, a silent, swift unraveling. A rival crew is moving in, cutting off exits. The atmosphere is pure wire, stretched to singing tension. Jules Bianchi moves through the gloom. Beside him, a step behind and watching everything, is Charles Leclerc with an edge not yet hardened by his own failures. He is Jules’s shadow, his protégé, absorbing the older man’s lethal and legendary grace.
“Watch the crane,” Jules murmurs, not looking at him. “Exit route three. It’s the only one they won’t think to clog.” Charles clicks his tongue, filing the lesson away. His eyes, however, keep darting to the north wall. To the figure there. There’s a boy. It's a silhouette against the bruised sky, backlit by a distant security lamp. He isn't watching the encroaching rivals. He’s studying the warehouse much like Jules is, its rust patterns, the sag of its roof, the overflow pipe gushing water onto a transformer box. Jules’s crew is prepared to fade, to vanish into the maze of containers. A textbook disengage. It’s what Charles has been taught. Precision, patience, vanish.
The boy’s voice cuts through the rain. A statement of fact. “They have a scanner van. Two blocks east. Your fade is a funnel.”
Jules stops. His head turns slowly. He knows the voice, unlike Charles. Knows the reputation blooming, a prodigy who sees angles like other people see color, a boy the age of Charles.
“Max Verstappen.” There’s no warmth. Acknowledgment, nothing more. Charles knows how the older man is, how he is with anybody that isn’t him. Or that puppy eyed man he’s been seeing lately. Jules can be intimidating.
The boy, Charles fixes his gaze on, his eyes are Arctic. They sweep over Jules, dismiss him as a known quantity, and land on Charles. For a long second, they hold. Charles feels it like a physical challenge, iron fillings thrown in the space between heartbeats and magnets. There’s no hostility in Max’s gaze, it's a brutal, assessing lucidity. It ignites something in Charles, a spark, a fire that doesn’t yet know how to burn, a match that had been dormant his entire life has suddenly raptured from within. It’s all consuming.
“The roof,” Max says, turning back to the warehouse. “Only weight-bearing point is the southwest corner. Drop it. It takes out the transformer, the lights, and the scanner feed. Creates a sixty-second blind spot across four blocks.”
Charles’s brain reels. It’s audacious. Brilliant. Jules’s face hardens. “That’s a demolition charge. It brings every cop in the city down on the entire dock. It burns everyone.”
Max shrugs. A tiny movement. “It works.”
“It’s a mess,” Jules snaps. “You don’t compromise the entire theater to escape the play. You slip out the side door.”
“Your side door is a trap,” Max counters, his tone never changing. “My way, you live. Your way, you gamble.”
The standoff lasts no more than three seconds.
Jules makes his choice. The mentor’s choice. “We fade. As planned. Charles, let’s move.”
Charles is still looking at Max. He’s the enemy, the rival crew. That defiant spark has become a furnace. The ruthless efficiency of that plan. He wants it. It’s the opposite of everything he’s been taught, and it sings to him, beckons him, stitches his sclera to another's cornea.
Jules grabs his arm, pulling him back into the shadows. “Now.”
It’s tight, closer than it should have been, smelling of panic because of the scanner van Max was right about. They escape, but it’s messy. It’s a scrape, not a victory. In the safe, dry quiet of a backroom office, Jules patches his arm gently, the older men of his crew gone now. “You hesitated back there.” He pours a glass of water, another, pushes one to Charles. “That is how you die young, Charles. You do not set the world on fire to keep your own hands warm. You understand? That is a rule.”
Charles takes the glass, doesn’t drink. The fire Max ignited is still there, banked but hot. “His way would have worked.”
“At what cost?” Jules leans forward, focusing like a ray of light. “We are not terrorists. We are surgeons. You blur that line, even once, and you become something else. Something you cannot come back from. That boy. He is already that something. A ghost. You do not envy ghosts, Charles. They are alone.”
Charles meets his mentor’s gaze. The defiance is there, burning behind his iris’. Not directed at Jules, but at the rule. At the limit. It’s the same fire that had sparked when Max’s eyes had locked with his across the rainy dock. “I understand,” Charles says, and he means it, but his voice is too tight, too unquestionable.
Jules sighs, sits back, and drinks. He slides over a silver cufflink with a custom inscription. “Heed my warning. You are a Prince, Charles. A Prince strikes only when he is sure he can kill.”
Charles is not sure he accepts it, something of a non sequitur. The compromise has been made, not in action, but in his mind. In the rain-soaked dark of Amsterdam, an enmity is born. Max revealed a part of the game Charles never knew existed, a part Jules warned him never to play.
A part of Charles, defiant and burning, desperately wants to play it.
2010
Beijing
A battlefield of quiet perfumes and quieter threats, black tie and tactical weave mingle beneath a crystal chandelier the size of a car. Charles moves with a new gravity. The youthful flak is still there, but it’s armored and sharpened by loss. Pierre's shadow walks with him, a constant, silent partner, he cannot believe Pierre is gone, a structure of five years crumbled like sand. He’s never done it alone, and thankfully he doesn’t have too. At his shoulder now is Carlos Sainz, a steady, grounding presence. They are a unit, precise, complementary, lethal in their harmony, safe to say Carlos makes a great partner.
Across the gilded room, Max stands alone by a marble pillar, a legend solidified. His job with Lewis had been a spectacle, a clash of titans that ended in a draw so explosive it became an underworld myth. Now, he is back to his essential state, a solo instrument, playing a symphony only he can hear.
The target is the same, unknowingly.
The Cicada Watch, a piece of technology masquerading as jewelry, capable of scrambling any digital lock in a five-mile radius, invoiced under the name of Toto Wolff.
Fitting for Charles, a perfect gift for the cat burglar. The auction is just the stage. His own plan is a masterpiece of misdirection. A flawlessly timed blackout, a synchronized lift from two points, a getaway through the old sewer tunnels. It is elegant. It is Jules’s kind of plan, refined through Charles’s own grief and polished by Carlos’s pragmatism.
Max’s plan is simpler.
But thrown out the window once he spots the familiar profile of a blend of masculine bone structure, an angular jaw and strong brows, with softer, large eyes and defined lips.
He lets Charles execute his.
He watches, from the shadows, as Charles and Carlos move with balletic synchronicity. He becomes familiar with the look of the Spaniard. A handsome man, a thief with capabilities unknown to him. If he’s partnered with Charles, he must be worthy. He lets them trigger the blackout. He lets them breach the case. He lets Carlos palm the watch, a perfect, silent grab. Interesting.
With a single, pre-planted signal, Max trips a secondary, silent alarm, one keyed not to the police, but to the private security of the auction house’s most paranoid, heavily-armed bidder. Chaos erupts, not in the room, but in the strategic exits. The sewer route is suddenly swarming with private mercs, tipped off to "looters" in the tunnels. Charles’s face, illuminated by the emergency lights flickering to life, is a mask of dawning fury. He sees it instantly, the machinery of his plan, foiled not by chance, but by design, a design so devilish, that he glances around, trying to pinpoint, spy it out, hair raising on his skin.
“Fall back!” Carlos barks, shoving the watch into a shielded pouch. “Route Five is compromised!” They adapt, because of course, they are professionals. They fight towards the alternative exit, a balcony overlooking a private garden. It’s everything Charles’s plan was meant to avoid. As they burst onto the balcony, ready for the rappel line that should be there, they find only cut ropes. Below, in the shadow-drenched garden, Max is already slipping into the driver’s seat of a nondescript sedan. In the moment of the grab, in the split-second of perfect distraction Max himself arranged, he’d made the switch. A feat of impossible, audacious sleight-of-hand.
Their eyes meet through the rain-spattered windshield, a vibrant mix of old and new, with traditional hutongs glowing under modern neon signs, festive lanterns, or art installations, casting reflections on wet stones. Charles is panting, his bowtie askew, his meticulously constructed world in ashes.
Max, slowly, deliberately, holds up the Cicada Watch, letting it glitter in the dash light. A receipt. The feeling that floods Charles is familiar and enrapturing, intensely overwhelming his system, shutting down thought, making him feel out of control, shaky, triggered, buzzed.
It’s not just the loss. The losses. It’s the method. It’s a violation of every principle. Max didn’t just beat him, he used Charles’s own craft, his own sophistication, as the instrument of his humiliation. Max pulls away, the sedan melting into the night. On the balcony, Carlos is already pulling Charles back, isolated from exposure. Charles is still staring at the empty space where the car was, while his sleeves are tugged.
In the quiet aftermath, in a service alley three blocks away, Max secures the watch in a hard shell case. As he closes the trunk, he notices a figure. A young boy, clutching a motorcycle helmet, peeking from behind a dumpster. His eyes are wide, not with fear, but with awe. For a second, Max’s icy composure cracks. A stark, unvarnished acknowledgment of a truth being passed on. He looks directly at the kid. He grins. It’s a quick, sharp thing. A predator’s smile, full of teeth and devoid of humor. A lesson taught without a single word: This is how it’s done.
The child steps out from behind the dumpster, the expression etched into his memory. It’s the first time he’s seen the ghost up close. And he knows, with a jolt of thrilling, terrifying certainty, that he wants to learn how to be one too.
United States Department of Justice
INTERVIEW OF: OLIVER BEARMAN (OB)
DATE: ▉▕▋▜ ▔▇█░▔▄▄▍▔▇, ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▅█▙▄
APPEARANCES:
For the United States: DANIEL RICCIARDO, (DR) FBI Special Agent, Deputy U.S. Holding Cell, #8, ███████████, East Coast.
1
I N T E R V I E W
DANIEL RICCIARDO: Do you accept responsibility?
OLIVER BEARMAN: I accept jackshit—
DR: You’re a kid.
OB: I’m a legal adult. Just because everyone else is older doesn’t mean nothing.
DR: Alright. You’ve been medically cleared.
OB: Yeah.
DR: How are you feeling?
OB: Okay.
DR: That’s good. You scared a few people tonight.
OB: I’m sorry.
DR: Don’t apologize yet. You haven’t done anything on record. You’ve done well under pressure. Most people don’t.
OB: Okay.
DR: I’m not here to trap you.
DR: You know that staying quiet doesn’t protect everyone.
DR: You were trained.
OB: Yes.
DR: By who?
DR: Lewis Hamilton. He told you what to do if this happened.
(NOTE: Suspect appears to be practicing breathing techniques.)
OB: He told me not to say a word.
DR: He’s not here right now.
OB: I know.
DR: He can’t help you in this room.
OB: I know.
DR: Talk to me, kid.
OB: I won’t.
2014
Coppenhagan
“This is small-time, Kimi. Roof-unit copper? My granddad did this during the war.”
All wiry focus is silently picking the hefty padlock on a rooftop unit. His tools are cheap, but his hands are steady. Ollie leans against the vent, keeping focus on the empty street below. Kimi doesn’t look up, a faint click as the lock yields. “Your granddad got caught. We won’t. It’s not about the copper. It’s about the line. The clean in, clean out. No noise.” He swings the cage door open. Inside, the copper coils gleam dully. “You start with perfect lines on small things. Then you get the call for the big things. I’m going to be one of the greats.”
Ollie snorts, turning from his watch. “The greats? What would you know about the greats? You’re not the Kimi from Espoo. I bet the biggest heist there is for you nicking reindeer bells.”
Kimi finally looks at him, a slow, unreadable smile playing on his lips. He starts coiling the copper with efficient twists. “I met Yuki Tsunoda once.” The name hangs in the cold air. Ollie stops smiling. “Yuki? The…the getaway driver Yuki?”
“Mhm. In Macau. He was fuelling a car that smelled like burnt clutch. He was working with Max Verstappen for a few jobs back then.”
Ollie’s eyes are saucers. “Bullshit.”
“Heard it from Oscar and Lando.” Another set of names that landed like Kurt Steiner’s hand had thrown them. Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris. Notorious, brilliant duo who dance on the edge of the big leagues but never join a crew. Independent and famously choosy. Ollie awed, voice dropping to a murmur, “You know Piastri and Norris?”
Kimi shrugs, but there’s pride in it, “They needed a silent third for a museum lift in Glasgow. I was the lock whisperer. They talked. Said Verstappen and Tsunoda did a job in Dubai. Made a security system and the diamonds inside it just…stop existing.” They both fall silent for a moment, the weight of that idea, of being so good you don’t just take, you erase, settling over their small-time copper theft.
Ollie shakes his head. “I saw him once. Verstappen. In Beijing. He…grinned at me.”
He says it like a confession, like he was blessed and cursed in the same instant.
Kimi, stops coiling. This is new, vital intel. “What was it like?”
Ollie thinks for a moment. “Like he was a God.” They stare at each other, two kids on a roof, their hands dirty with petty metal, their heads full of legends. “They say he’s working with someone new now. Not a crew. Not a partner. But with someone who…”
A sudden, sharp sound from the street below, a trash can lid clattering. They freeze, melting back into the shadows already. The moment of dreaming about giants is over. The copper is heavy in Kimi’s bag.
As they slip down the fire escape, Ollie hisses, “Who? Who’s he working with?”
Kimi glances back, the city lights reflecting in his eyes. “They say he’s working with…”
2017
San Francisco
“The Lewis Hamilton!”
Concrete floors, exposed brick, the only warmth coming from the glow of monitors and a single space heater whirring in the corner. Kimi stands slightly apart, his usual cool composure cracked. He’s just watched Max, George, and Jenson move around the space with the unspoken, fluid shorthand of a unit. It’s one thing to hear legends, it’s another to see them prep gear, George, a soldier’s efficiency, Jenson humming as he rewrites a security protocol like its childsplay, Max sitting perfectly still, staring at a single point on a blueprint. Kimi’s eyes keep flicking to Max, then to the others, connecting invisible dots. He can’t hold it in.
“Ollie was right. You really were working with Lewis Hamilton!”
The room doesn’t freeze, but the rhythm changes. George pauses his check. Jenson’s humming stops, a smile playing on his lips.
Max slowly turns his head from the blueprint. His gaze is flat, assessing. “I was. I’ve worked with Vettel. Tsunoda. And Russell.” He states it as a simple, unvarnished resume. His eyes slide to Jenson. “Unfortunately, that last one comes with your mentor.”
Jenson, sticking his tongue out briefly at Max, the white pellet visible. “You say unfortunately, but who’s the one who had to teach you what a contingency plan was, Maxie? Wasn’t Lewis, was it?”
A quick, sharp grin from George, who’s delighted with the nickname. “He’s got you there Maxie.” Max ignores them, his focus returning to Kimi, who looks like he’s been handed fragments of the true cross.
The names are a pantheon. Voice quieter, reverent, Kimi dares, “What was…what was Lewis Hamilton like?”
Max leans back in his chair, the metal groaning. “Precise. Methodical. A master of the three-step plan. Stuck on his old partner. Like most people in this business get stuck on things.”
Kimi frowns slightly, the fanboy knowledge surfacing. “Nico Rosberg? But isn’t he…” He says the name with the hushed tone of myth. The legendary, volatile partnership that burned white-hot and then vanished.
Max nods once. A quick dip of the chin. “I told him just as much.” He picks up a pen, taps it once on the blueprint, a period at the end of a sentence, as he recites the words he had said long ago. “Rosberg? He’s probably dead.”
In his world, many legends who vanish aren’t in hiding, they’re in the ground, more than six feet under, hopefully kissing the ass of Satan in hot hell, or angel filled heaven for those such as Jules Bianchi. Sentiment is a liability. Partnerships are temporary logistical alliances. Kimi just stares. The notion of the legendary duo, the drama, the partnership, the mystery of its end is just simplified into a probable corpse. It’s horrifying.
Jenson breaks the silence with a low chuckle, shaking his head. “Cheerful as ever, Max.” He throws a pack of mints to Kimi. “Here. You look like you need something to stop your brain from shorting out, kid.”
George catches Kimi’s eye. Welcome to the real game.
Max has already turned back to the blueprint. “Or as good as dead.” The conversation about the dead and the legendary already discarded, his mind on the next angle, the next living and breathing problem to solve.
United States Department of Justice
INTERVIEW OF: LEWIS HAMILTON (LH)
DATE: ▉▕▋▜ ▔▚▄▋▙▄▔▇, ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▅█▙▄
APPEARANCES:
For the United States: DANIEL RICCIARDO, (DR) FBI Special Agent, Deputy U.S. Holding Cell, #4, ███████████, East Coast.
1
I N T E R V I E W
DANIEL RICCIARDO: Do you accept responsibility?
LEWIS HAMILTON: For fuck’s sake.
(NOTE: ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO CONTINUATION. THREE RESTARTS COUNTING.)
DR: Your movements were…noticeable.
LH: Sounds good.
DR: Not in a good way. You deviated from patterns. Late exits. Unscheduled stops. You were shaky.
(NOTE: Facial expressions analyzed, narrowed eyes, dead stare, jaw fixed, suspect is irritated.)
LH: Define shaky.
DR: Distracted. Reactive. Not your usual precision, I presume.
LH: People change.
DR: Something threw you off.
(NOTE: Suspect remains quiet.)
DR: Or someone.
T-48 HOURS
Location: Constantine Villa
Jenson and Sebastian stand apart from the others, drawn to this pocket of quiet like a familiar ache. The air between them is thick with forty-eight hours of coiled tension and two decades of shared history. Jenson leans a shoulder against the cold wall. He pulls the little tin from his pocket, the one Sebastian gave him in a Berlin safehouse, ‘For the nerves,’ Seb had said, ‘or to remind you your tongue still works.’ The mints inside are violently strong, a shock to the system. A bitter familiar bond. He doesn’t offer one. The ritual is private now. He pops one, the sharp, clean scent cutting the dusty air.
Jenson breaks the silence first, voice a low purr. “You ever wonder why we stopped?”
Sebastian doesn’t look at him. Sharp in the half-light, etched with a familiar, stubborn focus. He’s watching the useless view. “No.”
A faint, knowing smile touches Jenson’s lips. “Tch.”
“For the sake of not bringing up old shit.” A long exhale from Sebastian, not quite a sigh. A release of pressure. He finally speaks to the window. “You always left before it was over. While the music was still playing. An empty chair at the debriefs. Jules hated that.”
The smile doesn’t reach Jenson’s eyes. He crunches the mint softly. “You stayed too long. Until glasses were broken and the bouncers were looking your way. We were never going to agree on the encore, Seb. By the time that crew ended, we couldn’t hold on for long. Well, I couldn’t. You and Mark could. Got a bit crowded between the two of us.”
Old, bitter jealousy of the unresolved. Sebastian finally turns to him. “That is exactly what I didn’t want to bring up.” The hall light catches the steel in his eyes, the same steel that planned a hundred perfect scores. His voice is calm, the way the ocean is calm before it swallows a ship. “Promise me something.”
Jenson raises a brow, the easy mask sliding back into place. “That sounds dangerously close to sentiment. Or a pre-nup.”
Sebastian isn’t joking.
“Promise me,” he repeats, the words leaving no room for the mask, “you won’t do it again. Not this time. Not on this job.”
The casual air around Jenson evaporates. The faint click of the opposing mint against his teeth stops. The smile fades. He looks at his oldest friend, his mirror, his opposite. Peppermint and spearmint. He hesitates, long enough for the silence to become an answer in itself.
“I’ll try.”
Sebastian shakes his head, a single, sharp movement. Disappointment, or maybe just the expected confirmation. “That’s not what I asked.”
The distant sounds of the plan feel miles away. The only things that exist are the window, the mint taste, and the unbreakable, unbearable thread between them. Jenson looks down at the tin in his hand, then closes his fist around it. He meets Sebastian’s gaze, and for once, there’s no deflection, no easy charm. Quietly, surrender to the ask, “I won’t.”
Sebastian holds his gaze for a four-count. He doesn’t say thank you. He doesn’t trust promises, he never proposes them, seen too many shattered, by fate, by betrayal, by the simple, brutal math of the game. But he needed to hear the words. He needed the line drawn in the sand, even if the tide was coming in.
Offer, acceptance, and consideration. The contract is sealed. He turns back to the window, to the useless view. After a moment, he extends a hand without looking. A silent request. Jenson hesitates, then places a single white into Sebastian’s waiting palm. A familiar sacrament. Sebastian puts it in his mouth, and they stand together in the quiet, watching nothing, waiting for everything to begin.
This sunroom is all forgotten elegance, a wall of arched windows looking out over the dark, restless sea, wicker furniture gone brittle with salt air, the smell of old cigarettes and gardenias. Lewis and Ollie have found this unused space, sitting on a faded chintz sofa that sighs under their weight. They’re not facing each other, but at an angle, both watching the invisible horizon where the black sky meets the blacker water. The only light comes from a single, low-wattage bulb in a tarnished brass lamp, painting them in soft gold and long shadows. Ollie keeps his eyes on the geometric patterns of the worn Turkish rug. The frantic, buzzing energy he’s carried since morning is finally spent, leaving something hollow and quiet in its place.
“It’s different when you lose someone. You don’t…you don’t notice right away. Not like you think you will. You just…keep reaching for them. Over your shoulder. In the plan. For the bit they were supposed to do.”
Lewis doesn’t move. His hands are resting on his knees, palms down. He knows exactly who Ollie means. The ghost in this sun-bleached room isn’t his this time. It’s younger, sharper, with quick hands and a quicker smile, a boy unknown to him, but known to others in the room and he sees it. “Kimi.” He says the name like testing a wound. “He was good, I'm told. Careful.” A statement of professional respect that hangs in the salt-tinged air.
A bitter, quiet laugh escapes Ollie. “Until he wasn’t, apparently.” They sit with that. It hangs between them, the unspoken, iron law of their entire world. Perfection is a temporary state. Safety is an illusion you maintain until the exact moment you can’t. After a long moment, Lewis speaks again, his gaze fixed on a single star struggling through the haze over the water.
“You don’t replace people. You can’t. You just learn how to work around the space they leave. You learn the new shape of the crew. The new balance. It’s never the same weight. It’s just what you carry now.”
Ollie swallows hard, the sound audible in the quiet. He pulls his knees up to his chest, amidst the villa’s decaying grandeur. A voice small, almost lost to the sea-sound, “Does it get easier?”
Lewis doesn’t answer right away. He thinks of empty chairs in lavish rooms, of a specific, mocking laugh that used to slice through tension, of the way a partnership can become a cavity in the world. Someone that is always his, especially in places like this. He turns, not fully, but enough to see the profound slump in Ollie’s shoulders, the way the boy seems to be folding in on himself against the vastness of the night and the loss.
“Missing them? No. That doesn’t get easier.”
He lets that sit, honest. The truth is the only real comfort he knows how to give. Then his voice softens, not with pity, but with a gentle, unwavering divinity. “But carrying it does. You learn how. You build a place for it inside you. It makes you clearer. The loss burns away the noise. You start to see what’s truly strong. You see loyalty for what it really is, not just a feeling, but a choice people make, actively, every single day. You see who stays when it costs them something. Who looks at the empty space beside you and doesn’t flinch.”
Ollie nods, slowly. A single tear tracks a clean line through the villa’s fine dust on his cheek. He doesn’t wipe it away. His voice is thick, “Loyalty’s what saves everything.”
“It’s the only thing that ever has.” Lewis shifts then. He reaches into the inner pocket of his tailored jacket and pulls out two things: a sealed protein bar and a small, perfectly polished river stone, smooth and dark as the sea at night. He places them both on the dusty wicker table between them. “Eat. You’re running on fumes and grief. And…take this. I picked it up on a job in Norway, a lifetime ago. I carried it for years. It’s just a rock. But it’s solid. It’s seen whole mountains wear away. It reminds you that some things hold their shape, no matter what the world throws at them.”
Ollie looks at the offerings, the practical fuel and the ancient talisman. He picks up the stone first, closing his fingers around it. It’s cool, surprisingly heavy. He lets out a shaky breath that seems to release some of the pressure in his chest, then picks up the protein bar. “Thanks, Lewis.” The older man rests his hand on top of Ollie’s head for just a second, a benediction, a transfer of calm, a grounding touch.
Lewis has just stepped out of the sunroom, quietly pulling the double doors closed behind him. He takes one deep breath, settling into his usual composed neutrality. Jenson, arms crossed, a knowing look on his face, as Lewis turns. “Aw. Careful, Lewis. You’ll give the kid hope. Or worse, a conscience.”
A fleeting crack in the composure, Lewis grimaces. “He needed a quiet word. Not a lecture.” From behind the slightly ajar door, a soft, damp chuckle escapes. Ollie, listening. Jenson grins, nodding towards the sound. “See? Already corrupting him with your profound wisdom.” He steps closer, lowering his voice. “You’re good for a chat, but I’m taking him to the casino tomorrow. The one by the old port. He needs to see how the marks breathe when they’re playing with house money. Great research.”
“The casino? He’s a kid, Jenson.” His voice is firm, protective edge returning. The door opens a little wider. Ollie’s face appears, eyes wide. “A casino? For real?”
Jenson offers the kid a wink. “Sure you can. It’s a cultural excursion. Observational study.”
“His observational study last week ended with a stolen speedboat and a diplomatic incident.” Lewis remarks.
“And he learned about maritime patrol schedules, didn’t he? Besides,” he says, Jenson’s tone shifting to a needling tease, “who are you to talk? I seem to recall a certain someone who used to ‘observe’ the nightlife of Marrakech so thoroughly we needed a UN negotiator to extract him from a rooftop bar. What was her name? The one with the…or what about the man in–”
Lewis holds up a hand, cutting Jenson off. A faint, reluctant smile touches his lips, defeated. He shakes his head. “No.”
Saluting lazily, Jenson nods. “Scout’s honor. I’ll make sure to come back with someone else's wallet for him.” Lewis just shakes his head again, this time with a sigh of surrender. He gives Ollie a final, long-suffering look, “you see what I have to deal with?” before turning and walking down the hall, the sound of his polished shoes on marble fading. Jenson watches him go, then turns his grin fully on Ollie, who is now fully in the hallway, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Right. Tomorrow. Wear something that doesn’t scream ‘expensive orphan.’ And no protein bars.” He gestures towards the stone still clutched in Ollie’s hand. “But you can bring your new pet rock for luck.” Ollie’s pout has vanished, replaced by a look of pure, scheming delight. The grief, for a moment, is held at bay by the promise of tomorrow’ chaos.
Below a black mirror under a dusting of stars. Only one figure remains, silhouetted against the low wall. Max finds him there. He moves silently, but Sebastian doesn't startle. He just takes a slow sip from a glass of water, his back still turned.
“Though you were with George.”
“Ah. He fucked off God knows where. Then Jenson came to bother. Now you. What, couldn’t sleep either?”
Max stops a few feet away, hands in his pockets, looking not at Seb but at the horizon. “I sleep fine.”
A knowing, soft chuckle from Seb. “Right. Of course you do.” He finally turns, leaning back against the balcony, studying the younger man. “That job in Zurich. The one we did.”
Max gives a shallow nod. It’s not a fond memory. A logistical alliance that yielded a 78% success rate, complicated by a 22% variance in Swiss police response times. Sebastian’s voice grows quieter, stripped of its usual dry humor. “I’m sorry, you know. For how that was. For you, then. Jules had Charles. A kid to look after, a reason to temper the wind. You didn’t have anyone like that.”
Max’s expression doesn’t change. The apology is a useless currency. He finally looks at Seb, the moonlight making his eyes look like chips of pale ice more than they do already.
“Charles didn’t have anyone after Jules anyway.”
The words are a statement, not a comfort. A correction of the record. They land with a quiet, devastating precision. Seb’s face tightens, a flash of old, familiar pain, for Jules, for the man Charles had to become overnight. The remorse is instant and deep.
Max continues, tone unchanged, “We got the bonds out. The Zurich job was clean. Your exit strategy added three minutes we didn’t need.”
Seb looks up, his old smirk returning. “It was thorough. It accounted for the human factor.”
“The human factor is a design flaw,” Max replies, but there’s no heat in it. It’s just his creed. They stand in silence for a moment, two generations of brilliance, one forged in fire, the other in absolute zero.
Seb pushes off the balcony. “This job…the Crown. It’s a different kind of beast. Lots of moving parts. Lots of history in the room.”
“History is a weakness. It clouds the mind.”
Seb’s smile this time is real, weary, and appreciative. “Spoken like a man who’s never had to share a van for six weeks with a man who snores and quotes poetry. But point taken.”
“Lewis doesn’t snore. I’m going to assume Charles doesn’t either for my sake. So it was the kid.”
Seb raises a brow. For his sake. He claps a hand on Max’s shoulder, a brief, firm contact Max tolerates without reaction. “Try to get some sleep, Max. Even machines need to power down.” He turns to go. Max’s voice stops Seb at the terrace door.
“Old man.”
Seb glances back.
Max continues, “Get some rest.” It’s not a concern. It’s an operational recommendation. A system maintenance reminder. But in the language they share, where efficiency is the highest form of respect, it might be the closest thing to care Sebastian Vettel will ever get from Max Verstappen. Seb's smile lingers as he disappears inside, leaving Max alone with the night.
The hallway is a canyon of shadows, lit only by the moonlight filtering through the tall windows at each end. Jenson, heading for the suite he shares with George, is almost at his door when a figure emerges from the main door. Charles, just materialized from the night itself, hair is wind-tousled. There's a charged stillness to him, an energy that hasn't yet bled off from whatever he's just done, wherever he's just been. They stop, facing each other in the half-light. A slow, easy smile appears, Jenson asks, "Out for a stroll, Charles? The cliffs are lovely this time of night. Also lethal."
Stripped of its usual public charm, Charles retorts, "The cliffs are fine. The company is worse."
Jenson's smile tightens. "Had a chat with your old babysitter on the terrace. He's feeling nostalgic. Remorseful, even."
"He's not my babysitter." A flicker of something cold in Charles's eyes. "And Seb's remorse is his own business."
“It should’ve become your business, all those years ago. After Jules." Jenson’s voice loses its dry humor, turning to cutting undertones. "He could have taken you in. Properly. He—we had the pull, the reputation. Instead of letting you twist in the wind, building your own from scraps and grief…"
"I'm glad he didn't." Charles' statement is simple, finite. "I learned everything I needed from Jules. I learned from the absence of him. From having to build it myself. What Seb offered or didn't offer is irrelevant. It made me what I am."
Jenson studies him, this young man who carries the weight of a fractured legacy like a crown. He sees the defiance, the immense, weary strength. He sees the leader Jules saw, forged in a far crueler salvo than anyone intended. The fight goes out of Jenson’s voice, replaced by something quieter, graver. "I heard about Gasly. And Sainz. I heard it was...brutal."
Charles's composure wavers. A muscle jumps in his jaw. The pain is a live wire, just beneath the surface. He absorbs the words, the sympathy, a vulnerability offered. He takes a slow, deliberate breath, his shoulders squaring. The leader reasserts itself, smoothing the raw edge of the man beneath. "Goodnight, Jenson." It's a dismissal. A drawing of a boundary. The conversation is over. The older man recognizes the tone. He gives a respectful nod. No more jokes. "Goodnight, Charles."
Charles turns and walks down the hall, not to his room, but towards the terrace doors at the far end, seeking the night air again, or perhaps just needing to be away from prying eyes and old regrets. Jenson watches him go, then slips silently into his own room, closing the door on the image of Charles Leclerc, a prince in a haunted house, holding his crown together with sheer, solitary will.
When Charles gets to the terrace, he feels an absence. As if someone had been there mere seconds ago, and he had just missed it.
Jenson thinks on the words. What Seb offered or didn't offer. He doesn’t let himself think about it anymore, a foolish heartache in the back of his mind.
The casino is a paradox, a reminder of why Charles needs them to get out of Vegas as soon as possible, and he will, they’ve already planned for that, a smooth ride across the atlantic. It was all safety protocol. A gilded cage of money and smoke, music of false laughter and clinking crystal masking of whispered intent. It is, as he thinks upon entering, too plush. Too loud.
Already at the green baize table in the corner, a fortress of quiet amidst the din. Max deals covertly. His hands are not those of a showman, but of a horologist, fast, precise. A card disappears from the deck. Another appears in its place. No flourish. No one at the surrounding tables comments. They either don’t see it or know better than to acknowledge it. Charles watches the table as if it’s mildly offensive. He drapes himself into the opposing chair, a study in controlled irritation. He feels like this is the closest he’s been to Max, surpassing Sahurs, and he thinks it will be the closest they’ll ever be. Physically at least.
Nothing beats Beijing for him. Those floods, waves crashing, a blizzard offering frostbite into his system, shutting down nerve fibers, making him feel out of control, shaky, triggered, buzzed. Neon lights hitting skin like fire.
This, he thinks, beats Beijing. Because now those eyes, as he remembers them, are on him and steady. That familiar, haunting shard of ice in his gut, stabbing repeatedly with brutal force.
“You’re cheating.” He settles on.
“You’re losing.”
Charles flicks a mother-of-pearl chip forward. As his hand retracts, a folded sheet of paper, blueprints printed on archival film, thin as skin and just as fragile, slides from beneath his palm. It lands, silent and exact, on the baize, precisely where Max’s wrist will cross when he reaches for the pot. Max doesn’t miss it and Charles knows he wouldn’t. His hand continues its arc, scooping the chips. The paper vanishes between his knuckles, absorbed into the movement. An act of theft so clean its childsplay for the pair.
“Casing only. That’s my assignment?”
Charles feels his skin tingle at the assessing eyes. “Yes.”
Max’s brow creases, a minute fracture in the statue of his face. “You know I could take all the jewels myself.”
“Full of yourself as always.” Charles says it like it's obvious, but every line of his symmetry is a drawn bowstring.
“That’s not an answer.”
Charles sighs, a sound swallowed by the room’s laughter. He leans back, the chair groaning softly. The casual posture is a lie. Everything is a lie. “You don’t need to take all of them.”
“I don’t need to,” Max agrees, his voice flat. “But I could.” The cards pause mid-shuffle. The world doesn’t stop, the room still hums with borrowed glamour, a woman’s shriek-laugh piercing the haze, but Charles feels like it does, feels like a poison has found its way into his throat and rendered him speechless against the man in front of him, his breath feels caught and fang ridden. A vacuum where only their familiar treachery can breathe. “Why limit me?”
Charles meets his gaze, his own eyes a turbulent, summer-storm green. A perfect lie, he pleads, that Max refrains from understanding him as well as he does, because how, how does Max know him like this. He settles on such.
“It’s best if we’re not working on the same things.”
And Charles knows damn well that Max can see through him, the faint tension at the corner of Charles’s mouth, the way his index finger taps a silent, irregular tempo on the arm of the chair. He’s reading the tells Jules Bianchi taught him to hide, it kills him, he should be better, better for Jules, better for Pierre, better for Carlos, better for—
“That’s a strange thing to say,” Max replies slowly, each word a carefully placed step, an architect of fucking everything. “From someone who trusts me with the crown.”
Charles knows how to bite. “I trust you with execution. Not proximity.” I don’t trust you.
Max’s mouth twitches, reflex. “You think we’d clash.” Lightly, as if commenting on the weather, but the words are weighted anchors.
But Charles knows how to bite. “I think we’d get distracted.”
Max’s eyes narrow, a fascination. Distracted. The word pins between them, a shared glance that felt like a challenge, Beijing, Amsterdam, and once more when the two teams had collided and Charles remembered how it felt like to breathe as if he had been unable his entire life until he’d pressed a gun to the back of Max’s head, asking why his team was booked in the same suite as theirs when it had been intentionally his choice. He leans forward, the baize table compressing the space that is both too much and not enough.
“Maybe you’re right,” Max says after a beat that feels like a lifetime.
Charles smirks, a brittle, pretty thing. “I usually am.”
Max finishes the shuffle, deals the next hand with a clean, unassuming grace. No tricks this time. The honesty is more unnerving. “Careful,” he murmurs, the word almost lost beneath the jazz spilling from a hidden speaker. “You don’t like working with me, but you keep putting yourself in my way.”
It’s silly. He’s never actually been in his way. It’s more like something of a string connecting them, circumstance. Charles glances at the cards dealt to him, a useless king, a potential straight in the making, then back at Max. His gaze is a direct hit, a shot in the dark. “And you keep taking the bait.”
Their hands move at the same time, a synchronized, unconscious dance. Chips slide across the felt with a hushed click. Cards are turned face down with a soft pap. It’s a choreography too smooth, too mirrored to be accidental. For a suspended second, in the kaleidoscope of the room’s chaos, it is utterly unclear who is leading, who is following, who is winning. Where Charles iris starts and where Max’s ends.
A figure clears its throat pointedly at the doorway, George, a silent, solid shadow. The moment shatters, dissolving like smoke in a breeze, leaving only the table, the cards, and the old, familiar ache. “Casing only,” Max repeats, the words a final seal. Charles nods, looking suddenly tired, energy sucked out of him. “Casing only.” Max stands.
Before he turns, he leans in, just enough for his next words to be a private vibration in the space between their faces, a secret in the loud room. Sahurs, he remembers. It’s the same. This is it, Charles thinks, kill me with all that you must, defy me, destroy me. Lamb to slaughter.
“If this goes wrong, it won’t be because I wasn’t capable.”
Charles doesn’t look up. He stares at his useless king, the grin on the upside down face. “I know.”
The cards remain. Max’s fingers tap the edge of the table once, habit. A tiny, rhythmic punctuation. “You didn’t answer my question.” he says. Charles still doesn’t look up. “I did. You just didn’t like the answer.” Max leans his back against the table, his posture deceptively relaxed. Others surrounding seem to know not to intrude. “You don’t like me working the core jewels. Fine. Don’t pretend it’s about operational efficiency. Your calls are getting worse, Charles.” You used to be better at lying to me.
That’s because we never spoke. Charles finally meets his eyes, and the storm there is no longer contained. It’s raw and electric, it's pulsing, raging, because Max is a fire and Charles is water. Sick with inertia, damn it all, “You want honesty?”
Max’s mouth curves, a predator’s smile, and it makes Charles nauseous. “Always.”
“How close are you to your crew?” He asks, the question a sudden, sharp left turn, intentionally slamming the brakes on whatever was in the man’s mind. It gives Max away, makes him pause with genuine, fleeting hesitation.
“You trust them. They fill gaps that you allow.” Charles continues, his tone forcibly casual, scraping against the intensity beneath. “George. You know where he’ll be without looking. That’s rare. I assumed. For a man like you.”
Curiosity cooling into something cynical. Max clicks his tongue, jaw tilted. “Is this a concern?”
“It’s curiosity,” Charles snaps, too fast, too defensive, he feels exposed, a knife at his throat, goosebumps on his skin.
The predator’s smile widens, slow and sharp, incredulous at its core. “You’re…angry?”
Charles scoffs, a hollow sound. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Then why,” Max asks, leaning in again, his voice dropping to an intimate, razor-edged undertone, “do you care who I work with? Who I trust?”
Charles exhales, a sound of utter frustration, more directed at himself or directed at Max he doesn't know. He looks away, towards the laughing crowd, a world away, unknown to the inner workings of the mind, sleeping, eating, shitting, drinking, going about their born into billions and unaware of hell beneath. “When people get close,” he says, the words dragged from a deep, wounded place, “they make stupid choices and hesitate. They become liabilities.”
He thinks he’s somewhat of a fascinating, flawed specimen, the way Max is gazing at him. “Is that from experience?” The air in their little bubble of silence becomes glass, ready to fracture.
“So, Pierre,” Max says, his tone deceptively light. “Long-term partner. Emotional leverage. A weakness.”
Charles’s jaw sets a hard line of fury.
“And Carlos,” Max continues, relentlessly. “Briefly. Pragmatic. But it was still messy when it ended. Well, I didn’t realize it was like that.”
I didn’t realize it was like that. Like what? It wasn’t. It wasn’t. You are. You are. Charles leans forward now, his chair scraping against the floor. “You don’t get to catalog my dead. You don’t get to use them as points in your fucking argument.”
“I’m pointing out a pattern. You get close. Too close. You lose them. You think my way is colder. I think yours is crueler.”
The silence that follows is restrictive, and sucks the bass from the entire gilded room. For a moment, there is only the two of them and the graveyard between them.
“My crew are colleagues,” Max says finally, the first to break the stillness. His voice is flat, factual.
It makes all of the earlier anger flicker away oddly, like it was misplaced. Max can’t hear his thoughts, for once it seems, continuing. “George and I have been running jobs together for a while. Jenson appended himself. With the kid.”
“Kimi,” Charles tests. The boy Ollie lost.
Max nods once. A sharp, downward cut. “Kimi.”
“What happened to him?” Charles asks, the question barely a breath. Max’s gaze hardens, a finality so complete it is its own kind of wall. The glacial blue becomes opaque, impenetrable.
“Some things are better left unsaid, Charles,” he replies, each word a stone laid in a cairn. “You of all people should know that.”
Charles looks away first. He breaks, eyes falling to the scattered cards. The fight bleeds out of him, leaving something resigned. He gathers the meaningless chips, pushes them into the center of the table with a soft sigh. “Casing only,” he repeats, softer now. A surrender, or a truce. Max stands, the transaction complete. He turns to go, then pauses, like a silhouette in the doorway against the riotous light. “You’re not wrong,” he says, clandestinely. “About us not working the same pieces.”
Charles glances further back, body turning from his seat, a question in the tilt of his head. “Why?”
Max half-turns, he looks less like a ghost and more like a monument, built to endure. “Because if we did,” he says, the words falling with the weight of prophecy, “someone wouldn’t walk away.”
Charles sits there for a long time, Max’s presence lingering in the empty chair ahead of him, even as it's filled by random men and women. He stares at the cards, at the king, at whatever potential had died in his hand. They don’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know. They just remind him of the game, its beautiful, brutal rules, and the one player he can never quite beat, and never quite forget. He can feel it within him. The itch.
Dark wood polished by generations of elbows, air thick with cigar smoke and the illicit deals. George had insisted Lewis be the one who sits at the far end, his back to the wall, a glass of whiskey untouched before him. He’s already done his que, for Jenson to get himself a beer while finding a way to access infrastructure for worker personnel.
Lewis feels like he should stay in his place though, like he must, a calling from his ribs. A shift in the atmospheric pressure, a familiar frequency returning after years of dead air.
Nico Rosberg slides onto the stool beside him.
The sharp, restless intelligence in his eyes is unchanged. A storm surge of emotion hits Lewis with a physical force, relief so profound it weakens his knees resting on the stool, rage so hot it sears his skin, a grief for ten thousand lost days, a longing so sharp it feels like acid between his bones. His hand twitches toward his glass. He wants to throw it. He wants to embrace him. He wants to feel his skin. He wants more than he can ever have.
He turns the glass a precise quarter-turn on the coaster. His voice is a controlled scrape of gravel, he cannot believe how the words sound easy on his tongue, as if he rehearsed them too many times in the mirror. “You look good for a dead man.”
The old, infuriating smirk. “I’ve been on a beach.”
“I’ve been at your funeral,” The words are an accusation, a confession, a wound ripped open. “I gave a eulogy. I chose the music you’d have hated.”
“That Bach piece,” Nico says, “I heard. We’re a long way from that London job.”
London, god, every unsaid thing between them screams in space, the trust, the betrayal, the partnership that was everything, the silence that followed which was a deeper void than any death. A million words, a million questions, three that stick out more than anything but all Lewis can get out is, “Why?”
It’s the only question that matters. It contains all others.
Nico finally looks at him. The smirk is gone, replaced by a weary honesty that is somehow more shocking. “The game we were playing was going to kill one of us. Probably me. So I let the player die. The man went to the beach.”
The hurt in Lewis’s voice is a raw, naked thing he cannot hide. “You let me think you were dead.” It all stings. “For years.”
“I know,” Nico says, and there is no apology in it. A necessary burden. “It was the only way you’d stop looking. The only way I could stop looking over my shoulder for you, either as my partner or as my…competition. We were a closed loop, Lewis. A perfect, destructive equation. So I broke the loop.” Lewis processes this. The ruthless, Nico-logic of it.
The absolute, unforgivable selfishness. The strange, twisted thread of care and cruelty. His hand tightens around the glass. He wants to shatter it. He wants to order himself another drink. He does nothing. Nico’s voice drops, leaning in. The scent of him, a faint, familiar cologne, jet fuel, washes over Lewis, a sensory ambush. “I’m not here for forgiveness. I’m here to warn you.”
Lewis’s eyes snap to his. The personal storm is shoved aside by the professional instinct. “Warn me?”
“The Crown of Aidea, going for it with Leclerc, Verstappen, that whole circus.” Nico’s gaze is deadly serious. “I have my own crew. We’ve been tracking it longer. We’re gunning for it. And we’re not the only ones. There’s a third bidder in the shadows. Nasty piece of work, it seems. Leclerc’s going to check himself blind.”
“Why are you telling me this? A courtesy? After everything?”
Nico’s eyes hold his, and for a fleeting second, Lewis sees the man he’d trusted with his life, his back, his secrets. The man who knew his words better than he did himself.
The man he loved. “My crew likes you. Annoyingly so. And I like Verstappen. I’ve appreciated his work, you know this.” He places something on the bar with a soft click. A small, smooth stone, identical to the one Lewis gave Ollie. A mirror, a mockery, a message. Dread. A sudden, definitive absence, he slides off the stool.
“Nico—” Lewis’s voice cracks. It’s not a command. It’s a plea. Stay. Explain. Let me be angry for a decade more. Let me forgive you. Just stay. Do the job. Do it with me. Take the crown. Let Verstappen take the crown.
“The beach was boring, Lewis,” he says, his voice barely carrying. Melting into the crowd and out the side door like a spectre, leaving no ripple in the reality of the bar. Lewis is alone. The storm inside him is now a howling, directionless gale. He looks down. The whiskey is still untouched. Next to it, on the polished wood, sits the river stone. His hand, still wrapped around his glass, trembles urge to sweep it all to the floor, the drink, the stone, the entire unbearable truth of it. He closes his eyes. Breathes. When he opens them, his face is calm. He throws back the whiskey in one burning gulp, stands, and walks out into the Vegas night, the ghost of his oldest friend walking beside him, and the warning of his newest enemy ringing in his ears.
United States Department of Justice
INTERVIEW OF: GEORGE RUSSELL (GR)
DATE: ▉▕▋▜ ▔▇█░▔▄▄▍▔▇, ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▔▚▄▍▔▜ ▅█▙▄
APPEARANCES:
For the United States: DANIEL RICCIARDO, (DR) FBI Special Agent, Deputy U.S. Holding Cell, #6, ███████████, East Coast.
1
I N T E R V I E W
DANIEL RICCIARDO: Do you accept responsibility?
GEORGE RUSSELL: Define responsibility
DR: I don’t have the time to entertain more bullshit.
GR: You’re the one who took a lot to get here. Seriously, am I the last one you’re interviewing?
DR: You are one cocky son of a bitch. In fact, your entire crew are cocky sons of bitches. What did you even need the money for? Why risk everything?
GR: The government didn’t pay much.
DR: You made thousands. Special Operations, you could have made even more. Did you enjoy being under another person's command? Verstappen’s?
GR: God, no. Why does everybody think that? Fucking hell. Do I present that way?
DR: Well it’s either him or Charles Leclerc, as it appears.
GR: I feel nauseous. I hate that guy.
DR: What?
GR: You heard me. He’s not my biggest fan either. He’ll probably like me now though, considering I had to save the kid's ass.
DR: Why doesn’t Leclerc like you?
GR: Are you questioning me on a crime or a soap opera, Jesus. Vettel said you were a professional.
T-36 HOURS
Location: Constantine Villa
“Alright. Since someone.” Charles starts, his eyes cutting briefly to George who stares back impassively, “decided to get creative with our travel documentation, we’re grounded here. I’ve re-routed, re-papered, and re-bribed. We move at the original window. The time difference be damned. Rest well tonight, everyone.” A few soft chuckles ripple through the room, Jenson shakes his head with a smirk, Sebastian lets out a dry huff alongside Lewis. George doesn’t smile, but gives a satisfied nod. His “creativity” had likely saved them from a far worse fate, in his defence.
Max is already speaking, his voice cutting through the fading laughter, his finger tracing a security schematic. “Firearm ideals. Compact, subsonic only. Nothing that echoes in those marble halls. If you’re holding metal, it’s a tool, not a weapon. A lockpick, a wedge, a distraction. Guns are a declaration of failure.” His gaze sweeps the room, landing for a fraction on Ollie, who sits up straighter. “If you fail quietly, you might live. If you fail loudly, you die. Choose your failures in advance.”
Sebastian takes over without pause, pointing to the entry points on the map. “The setup. We use the gala’own security against them. Their panic is our cover. Their lockdown procedures create our corridors. Max and I will case the routes in real-time during the initial chaos. We find the soft spots, we relay them. You,” he points at the others, “move where we say, when we say. No improvising.”
Lewis steps forward. His demeanor is different from the gentle mentor in the sunroom. This is an archivist, strategist, voice low and carrying absolute authority. “The split. We are not one target. We are three. We will be taking a system.” He touches the map. “Two for oversight. Ollie, George. You’re our eyes in the sky and on the street. You see everything, you say nothing unless it’s critical. You are ghosts. I want you both unharmed.” He moves his finger. “Two for casing the active security response. Max, Sebastian. You map their movements in real-time. You are the tacticians, you’re getting the casing.” His finger lands on the heart of the display, the jewel room. “Two for the primary jewels. Jenson, with me. We take. They’re the heavy pieces, the obvious grabs. We let them see us.” Finally, his finger taps a smaller, isolated chamber connected to the main room, displayed alone. “One for the Crown Jewel. Charles.”
A beat of silence. It’s then that a subtle, repetitive sound begins. A soft, rhythmic tap. Max’s foot, barely moving, tapping the floor under the table. It started the moment Lewis said Charles’s name. The plan is logical, elegant even. Lewis’ eyes sweep the room, lingering for a moment on Max’s impassive face, then on Charles’s carefully neutral one. “Some of you may have already deduced your roles. Some may have…strong feelings about them.” His gaze flicks to Max’s tapping foot, which does not stop. “I am saying it now, out loud, so there is no ambiguity. No debate at the moment. You have your assignments. The machine has one function. We are its parts. We are a crew and we will do our job. Loyal.” He looks at Charles, a silent pass of the baton.
Charles meets his eyes, then looks around the table, “Questions?”
There are none. Only the silent, heavy understanding of the roles, the risks, and the unspoken fissure running through the center of the plan, measured out in the soft, relentless tap-tap-tap of Max Verstappen.
Two distinct packing styles are evident. One side, Jenson's, an artful sprawl of gear that somehow suggests he could grab any item blindfolded. The other, Lewis's, a precise grid of items laid out on the bed before being placed with exactness into a custom, foam-lined case. Lewis is meticulously securing a set of micro-tools when Jenson pads in, drying his hands on a towel. He watches Lewis for a long moment.
“You’re sulking.”
Lewis doesn’t look up, his movements never faltering. “I don’t sulk. I process logistics.”
“Right. And the processing involves you folding that balaclava for the third time. What’s up?” Lewis finally pauses, placing the folded black fabric aside with a sigh. He looks at Jenson. “It’s odd for you to ask. You’re usually the first one out the door when the planning’s done.”
Jenson shrugs, pushing off the doorframe and picking up his own custom piece, a slender jammer disguised as a high-end pen. “Usually, the plan doesn’t have you playing jewel thief while the two human lightning rods are sent off to map the weather. Why’d you agree to go for the jewels? You should be on casing with Seb. Or oversight. I’d say you hate the grab. Too many variables. Rosberg was that guy..”
Lewis is quiet for a beat, his gaze distant. He picks up a small, polished river stone from his nightstand, the one from Nico, turning it over in his fingers before placing it carefully in a zippered compartment. “Charles decided the roles,” he says, his voice carefully neutral. “He’s running the board. It doesn’t matter what I think about the placement of the pieces.”
Jenson’s eyes narrow slightly, not in suspicion, but in recognition, professional disagreement, a deeper, personal concession. Lewis, the master strategist, has deferred. He’s accepted a role in the spotlight, a distraction, to keep the volatile elements, Max and Seb, occupied elsewhere, and to leave the crown’s fate solely in Charles’s hands. A slow, understanding grin spreads across Jenson’s face. It’s not mocking. It’s admirable. He shakes his head, a soft chuckle escaping. “Right. Of course. Charles decided.” He says it like it explains everything.
Lewis shoots him a look, a warning and an admission in one.
Jenson just raises his hands in mock surrender, the grin still in place, and goes back to packing his pen. The loyalty, as always, is absolute. Even when it means playing a part you wouldn't have chosen. Lewis returns to his meticulous packing, a smile touching his own lips. Jenson’s grin, as irritating as it is insightful, has a way of making even the most convoluted, emotionally fraught decisions feel like just another part of the job.
A whirlwind made of tactical gear and cheap energy drink cans. Ollie is in the middle of it, trying to force an absurdly large climbing rig into a bag that is clearly too small. He’s muttering to himself, a tangle of webbing around one ankle. The door, which he’d left ajar, pushes open silently. Max stands in the frame, taking in the chaos with a single, sweeping glance that seems to catalogue every inefficiency. Ollie jumps, dropping the carabiner he was holding. It clatters on the floor.
“You pack like you’re expecting a siege, not a surgical extraction.” Max comments, stepping in, not waiting for an invite. His eyes land on a photo taped to the mirror, a blurry, printed shot of two figures on a Copenhagen diner, all grins. “He pack like this too?”
He knows the answer, but he asks anyway. Ollie swallows, following his gaze. “Kimi? No. He was neat.”
A faint, almost imperceptible nod, Max agrees. “He was.” He picks up a discarded multi-tool from the bed, examines it, sets it down in where he’s determined to be a more logical place. “You remind me of him. The way you assess a problem. Looking for the underlying system, not just the lock.” He glances at Ollie. “Similar to Yuki Tsunoda. All potential energy. A coiled spring in a small package.”
The double comparison leaves Ollie momentarily speechless. He manages, “Tsunoda. Kimi talked about him. A cat burglar hybrid of a prowler who thought gravity was a suggestion.”
A flicker in Max’s eyes. Something close to approval. “He was efficient.”
Emboldened by the rare openness, Ollie dives into the deep end. He signals vaguely in the direction of the villa’s master wing. “So you worked with the best wheelman. Why’ve you never worked with the best cat burglar? I mean, the Princ–Charles Leclerc. On paper…” He waves his hands, trying to conjure the obvious synergy. “It’s perfect. He finds the impossible paths. You’re like–a fucking God–it’s like it’s the ultimate combo.”
Max doesn’t look at Ollie, now inspecting the tensioning device on Ollie’s abandoned climbing rig, making a minute adjustment with a twist of his fingers. “We’re not compatible.”
“But why?” The frustration of youth, of seeing a perfect equation and being told not to solve it. “It seems like you should be. It's math!”
Max sets the device down. He finally looks at Ollie, with the flat coherence of a physics professor stating a fundamental law.
“On paper, a striker and a primer are perfectly compatible. They create an ignition. That is the problem. You don’t use them to start a car. You use them to detonate.” The analogy lands definitively in the messy room. Ollie’s enthusiastic logic falters, replaced by the image of an explosion, total, and destructive. Max studies the kid’s face, seeing the understanding dawn, and perhaps a hint of disappointment. Then, in a movement so abrupt and uncharacteristic it’s shocking, he reaches out and ruffles Ollie’s hair. It’s a brief, rough, abrasive gesture. A circuit-breaker. A physical full-stop. It reminds him of his dreams.
“Pack smarter,” Max says, his voice back to its usual tone. He nods at the climbing rig. “You won’t need that. And the caffeine will make your hands shake.”
He turns and leaves as silently as he entered.
Ollie stands alone in the middle of his gear-storm, his hair sticking up where Max’s hand disturbed it. He touches the spot, then looks at the photo of Kimi on the mirror. He looks at the perfectly adjusted tensioning device. Some perfect combinations aren't for building things. They're only for breaking them.
A small table is wedged between them, laden with the remains of room service, espresso cups, empty pastel de nata plates. Below is a blinding sheet of blue, stretching to forever. The air is clean, salted, at odds with the conversation. Sebastian leans back, sipping his espresso. He watches Charles pick at a flake of pastry crust.
“You know, I still remember you trying to pick the lock on Jules’s gun case with a hairpin. You were all elbows and frustration.” A faint, teasing smile. “Look at you now. Head of the table. Very commanding.”
“You’re an old man, Seb. Nostalgia is a sign of decay.”
Seb puts a hand to his chest. “Wounded. Truly.”
Charles finally lifts his gaze, not to Seb, but to the vast, cloudless sky. His voice softens, losing its edge. “I wish we didn’t have to do this job.”
Sebastian’s teasing demeanor vanishes. He sets his cup down. “The Crown?”
“Jules mentioned it once. Just in passing. Said it was a fairy tale for people with too much money and no sense.” Charles’s throat works. “When Lewis brought the file, I remembered. It felt like…it should feel like some sort of magnum opus. A destined thing. But it doesn’t.”
“Not every big score has to feel like fate, Charles. Sometimes it’s just a big score.”
“This one does.” He finally looks at Seb, his eyes stormy. “I mean, look at who I’m working with. It’s a circus.”
A weary, knowing wave, Seb smiles at him. “I told myself I’d never work with Jenson Button again. Too glib.” He glances inside, where the faint sound of Jenson’s laughter echoes from another room. “But ever since this team formed, it’s been good to have a lot of other people near. Even when they’re the most irritating company on earth. They cover angles you can’t.”
Charles doesn't look convinced, head shaking in a sharp, dismissive motion. “They’re only here because we need them. Lewis needs the manpower. Max…” He tests the name, sour on his tongue as usual. “Max knew about the Crown. No doubt. He has a way of sniffing out the most complicated lock in the world.”
Sebastian watches him carefully, the concern surfacing. “Why does that worry you so much? The job is solid. The split is logical.”
Charles stands up abruptly, grips the balcony rail. His knuckles are white. “Max Verstappen has been the bane of my existence since I was a kid. Suddenly, he’s on the job. The biggest one. And I can’t. I can’t think straight around it. We’ve never crossed paths on a job, not directly. So how? How did he even get in the room? Max doesn’t work with other people. He uses them and discards them. Everyone knows that.” He runs a hand through his hair, exasperated. “And now he has a crew. George Russell, for God’s sake. Jenson. And he had Kimi. It’s weird. It’s all wrong.”
Sebastian is silent for a long moment, parsing the outburst. Not the words, but the heat behind them. “It bothers you,” he says slowly, “that he’s working with a crew. That he has people.”
Charles freezes, his back still turned.
“You’re the same, Charles. You have Lewis. You have Ollie. Me. And before us, you had Pierre. You had Carlos. Maybe you’re worried because you’re looking in a mirror, and you don’t like the reflection you see.”
“We’re not the same. Far from it.” Charles lets out a dry, humorless chuckle. “He has a different task. The casing, I mean. A supporting role for someone like Max Verstappen. He barely protested it, and he knew before I even said the words–I mean, sure. His cut is still hefty, but it’s not the Crown.” He turns, his face shadowed. “He’d jeopardize the whole operation on the casing if it meant I didn’t succeed.”
Sebastian goes very still. He puts his cup down with a definitive click. “You think that?”
“I know it. I know him like the back of my own hand. That’s why I’m trying to be prepared for anything. For everything.”
This brilliant, wounded, paranoid young king, girding himself for a betrayal he sees as inevitable. He chooses his words with care. “Charles…I think you have the wrong idea about Max.”
“I’m right. And when he proves it, I’ll be ready.”
Seb stands. He places a gentle hand on Charles’ shoulder, before leaving him be.
A single lamp pools light onto a deep armchair where George sits, a worn copy of The Idiot open in his hands. The gentle sigh of the air conditioning and the distant sea envelopes the room.
Charles enters, shedding his jacket. He’s wired, the conversation with Sebastian still buzzing under his skin. He sees George and his lip curls faintly.
“Reading. Of course. Dostoevsky.”
“It’s thematic. Where’s everyone else?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you?” He pours a finger of whiskey, doesn’t offer any.
“Well?” George turns a page. “Jenson and Seb took the kid out. ‘Cultural immersion.’ Showing him the local landmarks, which means every police patrol route. Lewis is having dinner with a contact. Max is…somewhere.”
Charles only nods, sinking into the armchair opposite. His eyes scan the room, the empty spaces where the others should be, the quiet that feels like a trap. He can’t settle.
“Barcelona ’10. The Gaudi museum grab. Clean, but you left a signature. Frayed blue thread from your glove, or that Spaniard’s on a sensor they’d written off. Then there was Geneva last year. The private auction. That was a Bianchi move. Was all the rave.”
Charles’s eyes narrow. “Are you praising me or profiling me?”
“Noting. I worked with Albon for a while. He worked with your Pierre before you did. I’ve heard stories. I definitely know of you.”
“Funny.” A cold, thin smile, a taste in his mouth, tangy. “I’d never heard of you until you started shadowing Max Verstappen.”
“Yeah,” George says, utterly unbothered. He finally marks his page and closes the book. “I’m used to that.”
Charles swirls his whiskey, the ice clinking, a warning bell. “Where do your loyalties lie, George? To your crew? To Max?”
“Where do yours?” George counters, his gaze level. “To a ghost? To the idea of being an heir? Or to the people actually in the room with you?”
White-hot bitterness. “Well,” Charles says, his voice dropping, “we didn’t get a kid killed.”
George lets out a soft, puffed breath. “Ouch.” He sets the book aside completely now, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. The soldier is present, assessing a threat, marking him for takedown, an assignment, a target. “For the record, it was Jenson’s idea. The Crown. Kimi was still around then. He was the one who suggested reaching out to the Bearman kid. Jenson’s been planning this merger since before you even knew the Crown was on the market.”
His urge to correct George is strong, but something else is stronger, the information is a key turning in a lock he didn’t know existed in the back of his mines. “So,” he says, the word precise. “It wasn’t Max’s idea.”
“You know,” Georgie studies Charles’s face, the frantic calculation happening behind his dark forest eyes. A look of genuine, weary annoyance crosses his features. “You’re obsessed with him. It’s quite annoying.”
The sneer is back, uglier now. “What would you know anyway, Russell? You learned your trade from…who exaxtly? Some ex-SAS burnout? A mercenary?”
“A man Jenson knew. His name was Mark. At least, I think it was Mark. Aliases are confusing.”
Charles is locked on a single track. “Why?” he demands. “Why did you start working with him?”
George lets out a long, exasperated groan. He leans back, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Max this, Max that. Don’t you ever relax? If anything, you’re the exact opposite of how he describes you.”
“What,” he says, “is that supposed to mean?”
George has had enough. He picks up the book again, a definitive end to the interrogation. He opens it, his gaze dropping to the page.
Charles’ voice is a low, dangerous silk. He hasn't moved a muscle. “He describes me.”
A long-suffering sound, George sighs but doesn’t lower his book. “Everyone describes everyone. It’s a small, gossipy hellscape of a profession.”
“No.” The word cracks out of him. Charles stands, setting his untouched whiskey down with a sharp click. He begins to pace, a caged predator in the lamplight. “Max doesn’t ‘describe’ people. He categorizes them. Assets. Liabilities. Obstacles. So.” He stops, directly in George’s line of sight, forcing him to look up. “What’s the category, George? Am I an obstacle? A liability he has to tolerate for this score?”
George meets his gaze, his own weary and unimpressed. “You’re the Crown Jewel specialist. That’s the category.”
“Don’t be so deliberately fucking dense,” Charles snaps, a flush of anger high on his cheeks. Stripped away by sheer, pettiness. “He talked about me. To you. What did he say?”
George closes the book again. He stands, facing Charles. The height difference is minimal, but the soldier’s calm is an immense, infuriating wall. “He said you were predictable.”
Charles recoils. Death knell for a cat burglar.
“He said you’re brilliant, but you run on rails. Jules’ rails. You’d rather lose beautifully following an old playbook than win ugly with a new one. Your sentimentality is a bigger weakness than any security system. He said you care too much about how the story looks. About legacy. That’s why you’ll always be a step behind, because you’re carrying too many ghosts to run your fastest.” Each word is a jab, laying Charles bare under a professional autopsy. Charles’s breath is coming fast now, he feels a sickening fear Jules had whispered about on a rainy dock, articulated with Max’s brutal clarity.
“And you?” Charles fires back, his voice trembling with the effort to control it. “What’s your category? The loyal guard dog? The useful soldier? Does he pat you on the head when you fetch the right blueprint?”
George offers a faint, pitying smile. “See? Predictable. You can’t even insult me without making it about him.” He picks up his book and walks towards the hallway leading to the bedrooms. He pauses at the threshold. “For what it’s worth, Leclerc,” he says, not looking back, “the man he described? That’s not the guy who’s been vibrating out of his skin all week, trying to anticipate every move of a man he supposedly hates. That guy seems pretty obsessed.” he finally glances over his shoulder, his gaze flat, “That makes you the most unpredictable thing there is.”
The verdict settles through his intake of oxygen. Was it true? In Max Verstappen’s eyes, is he a known quantity? A solved equation?
No, George has to be right. He will be right. Charles runs a finger over a discarded blueprint. The Crown Jewel. He’s focused. Enough of Max Verstappen. The Crown Jewel. Enough of grief.
Charles is certain of what he wants.
You are.
It stares back at him. Red, ruby, glittering, diamond.
2007
Vienna
“C'est pas grave!”
Gloriously drunk, crammed into a corner booth, a forest of empty glasses between them. Charles has his head thrown back, laughing at nothing, a sound so free and bright it’s foreign to him now. Pierre is grinning, a flush high on his cheeks, gesturing wildly with a half-eaten pretzel. They’ve just finished the Hofburg job. A brutal, four day siege of a private archive that left them stinking of dust and adrenaline. They’re filthy rich. Not just paid, rich. The weight of the Jules-shaped hole in the world is, for this one buzzing, golden hour, bearable enough on his skin, held at bay by sheer, giddy success.
Pierre, slurring slightly, triumphant, “I told you! The ventilation shaft! ‘It’s too narrow, Pierre,’ you said. ‘It’s a deathtrap, Pierre.’” He jabs the pretzel at Charles. “Who was right? Whose beautiful, narrow shoulders saved the day?”
“Your shoulders are not narrow, you idiot, you got stuck! I practically had to fucking oil you!” He mimics a frantic pouring motion. Pierre shoves him, and Charles shoves back, and they’re just two young men in a bar, victorious and liquor stupid.
“Worth it! The look on that guard’s face, chef’s kiss!” He sobers for a second, a rare moment of seriousness swimming up through the ale. “Jules would’ve loved that move.” Charles’s smile softens, doesn’t vanish. “He taught it to me.”
“I know.” Pierre clinks his glass against Charles’s. They laugh it off. “To the ghosts. May they never stop giving us good ideas.” The moment is warm, not painful.
Eyes lighting up with excitement, Pierre starts, “Okay, okay. I heard something wild. From my guy, you know, Alex? From Thailand. Check this. Rosberg and Hamilton.”
Charles nearly snorts his beer. “Ha, what about them? Total myth, no one’s that good and stays together that long. It's branding. They probably hate each other.”
“Get your head out of the books, would ya?” Pierre shakes his head, utterly sure. “No, no, it’s real. A hundred percent. My guy’s cousin did a currency run for them last year in Bali. Said they were synced. Finished each other’s sentences about ratios and bypasses. It was creepy. Left behind their bedsheets and shit.”
Charles stares, the concept not computing. “How? How can you be that close, in this business, and not…”
“Not what? Kill each other? Or fall in love?” Pierre grins, a wicked, tipsy sparkle in his eye. Charles takes a moment, trying to ignore the thought creeping up his mind, the sound of rain.
“Maybe it’s both! Maybe that’s the secret.”
Charles just shakes his head, the world tilting a little. The idea of such seamless, unwavering partnership feels like a fairy tale. He shakes off Pierre’s words, a refusal.
“Now, Vettel and Button…” Pierre continues, diving back into his pint, a wicked thing. “That’s a different story. Heard they’re on the rocks. Big fallout after the Beirut thing. Bickering like an old married couple who’ve run out of things to love and only have things to hate.”
Charles pouts, displeased, “Jules said they were brilliant to work with. When they were on. Said Button made Vettel laugh, and Vettel made Button care.”
“Well, maybe the laughing stopped. Or the caring got too heavy. Then there was the whole Mark thing.” He shrugs, the philosopher of doomed partnerships, the gossiper, “Wonder if anyone will work with them if they split. They’re legends, but damaged goods. Who wants one half of a broken machine?”
Charles looks into his drink, a sudden, unexpected pang hitting him. Not for Seb or Jenson, but for the fragile, precious thing he and Pierre have built in Jules’s absence. This trust. This laughter is in a safe, dark corner. “They’ll work alone,” he murmurs. “If they split. That’s what you do.”
Pierre catches the shift in his tone. He knocks his knee against Charles’s under the table, a solid, anchoring touch. “Hey. If they split. Big if.” He leans in, his voice a conspiratorial, beer-soaked whisper. “Who cares though? We’re better. Faster. Prettier.” Charles looks at him, his best friend, his partner in the chaotic dance of building a life from the ruins. The carefree joy returns, pushed against the dark. “Much prettier,” Charles agrees, a real smile breaking through again. They order another round. The night stretches ahead, infinite and safe. There is just the two of them, invincible in their corner of the world, drunk on success and each other’s trust, the future a bright, unbroken road.
2019
Cyprus
“Fuck!”
It all started out of curiosity.
It was supposed to be a whisper. A sendoff to the New Year. A biotech firm hidden away in a small village, Ayios Yeoryios. Data extraction, clean. It turned into a hell unknown. Jenson is the first to break the hush of their flawless entry. A sharp, wet hit as a suppressed round, fired from a door they’d cleared, catches him high in the shoulder. He grunts, staggers back into a server rack, his free hand clamping over the bloom of dark red on his grey sweater. "Contact rear!" George’s voice is a flat, calm knife in their earpieces. He’s already moving, not towards Jenson, but past him, putting his body in the line of gunfire, returning two precise shots into the doorway. A choked gurgle answers. George drags Jenson back into cover behind a humming mainframe unit, his movements efficient, brutal. "Jenson's-he’s hit. We are in shit!"
Max is at the terminal. The data is at 87%. The plan is fracturing, and his mind is an engine recalculating.
"Kimi," he says into the comm, his voice devoid of anything but instruction. "Loop the security feed. Give me ten seconds."
But it’s quiet. Long gone is the voice of the boy.
This makes Max’s head tilt.
"Kid." Nothing. No soft tap of keys from the van two blocks away.
A colder kind of ice floods Max's veins.
George’s voice registers, a panic, "Comms from the van are dead. He’s offline. His vitals aren’t showing—kid!”
Max abandons the terminal. 92%. He leaves it. He moves toward the rear exit, the one George just secured. "George, get Jenson to the secondary rally. Now."
"But Kimi—"
"Now!"
George shoulders Jenson up, the older man biting down on a curse, and they vanish into the service stairwell, a trail of blood droplets, gruesome. Jenson’s hands are unsteady as he reaches for a device in his pocket, a button, but George slaps his hand away with a sneer. Max hears the echo of Jenson’s pained murmurs. “Save the child.”
Max moves, and he’s quick. Towards the street. Towards the van. He knows before he sees it, laser focus directly.
The van's side door is open, swinging gently in the damp night. The interior is a cave of darkness, the monitors dead. The chair is empty. Kimi's laptop is gone. His worn cap is on the floor. No sign of a struggle. Vacancy.
Kimi was the target. Max stands in the open door of the van, the night air soaking into him. He hears the distant warble of police sirens, drawn by the gunfire. He hears his own breath, too even, too controlled. He sees it all with clarity.
The variable he allowed. A crew. People to cover, people to worry about, people who become liabilities, who become leverage. Jenson's blood. Kimi's empty chair. Max always preferred working alone. He built his legend on it. He’d allowed the architecture of a team to be built around him. He’d allowed Kimi to watch, to learn, to become a part of the machine. Kimi was gone. Taken.
Max had given him a place to be taken from.
A pure, incandescent fury directed inward. His right hand, clenched into a fist of tension, lashes out at the solid brick wall of the alley beside the van. The impact is shocking in its violence. A sharp, dull crack of knuckle and bone meeting an immovable object. The brick spiderwebs. Flakes of mortar and red dust shower down. The skin over his knuckles is split, bleeding, already swelling. He flexes the fingers once. They still work. He turns from the van, from the empty space where a brilliant kid had been smiling at a screen just minutes ago. He walks away, not toward the secondary rally, but into the deeper shadows of the city. He works alone. He always had. He just needed a brutal, silent reminder in the form of a missing boy and a crumbling wall to remember why.
Kimi Antonelli is dead.
Not to the world, but to Max Verstappen. He tells the others as much when Jenson is patched up, because Max is a liar and Kimi is a lesson, written in blood, betrayal, and crumbling brick. He turns and walks into the night, alone. The smiling, ambitious kid is now just another piece of operational data.
He ponders about it. About Kimi.
An asset compromised. Presumed terminated. Do not re-acquire. Predictable.
Sometimes, in Max’s dreams. He sees it differently. Kimi is half-sprawled on the pavement beside the open door, one leg still hooked inside. His face is turned towards Max, pale under the sickly yellow streetlight. A dark, glistening stain high on his chest, soaking his dark shirt. His eyes are open, aware, filled with a child’s sheer, bewildered terror. His lips moved, cracked and bloodstained. An apology in his iris’. In his dreams, Max always drops to his knees beside him. He doesn’t touch the wound. He’s seen enough to know this isn’t a field patch, something George’s medical training couldn’t handle. He’d put a hand on Kimi’s freezing cheek, a gesture so alien it feels like someone else is moving his body. “I know,” Max whispers, voice a rough stone. “I know.” Kimi’s eyes hold his, softening into something else, a desperate, fading need to understand.
In his nightmares, a shadow moves at the end of the alley. They have what they came for. The asset, wounded, dying, his brilliant mind perhaps still salvageable for a few precious minutes. Max looks from Kimi’s face to the approaching shadows. He calculates. He could fight. He could try to carry him, outnumbered. He would die. Kimi would die. The data, Jenson, George, everything all for nothing. In Kimi’s eyes, he sees the moment the kid understands it too. The acceptance. The terrible, final gift of translucency. A promise. In his nightmares, he doesn’t look back as he melts into a deeper, parallel alley, the sound of his own breath a roar in his ears. He hears the swift, soft footsteps of the extraction team reaching Kimi. He doesn’t hear a shot, because they want him alive. He makes it two blocks before the wave hits. A white-hot anger so vast it has no target but himself.
He thinks, at least. Curiosity.
There is a bitter shell within the aorta that pulses at the thought of green eyes, a deity unknown, stitched into his neurons and run down tugged at fibers. He wants to tell him now, wants to see him now. He understands it. He understands.
T-24
Location: Villa Monaco
Painting the harbor in honey and rose gold, dawn breaks. The scent of coffee and salt air mixes somewhere far and few between, Charles is on the vast, white sofa, a book open but unread on his lap. He’s still in last night’s clothes, shadows like bruises under his eyes, flight anything but kind on him. Jenson pads in from the kitchen, already dressed, holding two steaming mugs. He stops, assessing.
“You look like hell.”
Charles doesn’t look up. “Couldn’t sleep. Was reading.”
Jenson hands him a mug. Charles takes it automatically. Jenson’s eyes flick to the book’s spine, a dense text. Certainly not his book, stolen from Russell’s bookmark but certainly not his collection. He lets out a low, knowing whistle.
“That’s not a sleep aid. That’s Max’s. Not the best pre-heist reading, unless you’re planning to rebuild the casino from the girders up.”
Charles’s grip tightens on the mug. Jenson settles into an armchair, sipping his own coffee. “Ah, kid. You’ve grown. Seb was right.”
“Sentiment before seven is tragic.”
Charles watches him over the rim of his mug, a calculated shift in his eyes. “Whatever happened to Mark Webber?”
Jenson’s smile doesn’t falter, but his eyes sharpen just a fraction.
“Well that’s a name from the archives. Last I heard, he’s tangled up with Schumacher and Räikkönen. Some resort schemes. Went quiet after that. Who knows?” He shrugs, a masterpiece dismissal, unwilling to talk more. “In this life people find their exits”
Charles gives a slow nod, filing the non-answer away. Jenson fixes his gaze, however.
A door opens and Lewis walks in. A taut energy around him, a rawness to his gaze that suggests he hasn’t slept either.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Or should I say, look who dragged the cat.” Jenson gives a low, teasing whistle. “Out all night in the principality. Now that’s the Lewis I know. Do tell. Who was the lucky lady? Or gentleman?”
Lewis shoots Jenson a look that could freeze the Mediterranean. He walks past, heading straight for the espresso machine, his silence a wall.
Before the awkwardness can settle, Ollie bounces in from his room, face lit up. “I ordered pancakes! With gold leaf! Three portions! Who’s in?”
A fond grin touches Charles’s lips. The kid’s unfiltered joy is a brief, clean light in the murky room. “Alright, save some for the rest of us, mon chou,” he says, the weariness lifting for a second.
His smile dies as Max steps out of the bedroom corridor, heading for the kitchen just as Lewis did. But he’s more a spectacle, shirtless, damp hair dark, a body built for purpose. It’s not the physique that steals Charles’s breath. It’s the scars. A pale, precise line along the lowest rib, a knife, expertly parried not fully avoided. A starburst of puckered skin on the left shoulder, a close-range shot, poorly stabilized. A long, thin seam running diagonally across the taut abdomen. A map of near-misses and survived disasters written in silver-white on skin. Charles looks away instantly, his heart doing an irregular, hard stutter. The image burns itself onto the back of his eyelids, a laser pointed into his soul, he feels the weight of every single scar on his skin, as if he had survived it all, as if Max was his body he was detached from. The cool, invincible idea of his nightmares is a patchwork of old wounds that has been hurt.
He’s bleedable.
A red, ruby, glittering, diamond. He stares rigidly into his coffee, it’s the violent, unwelcome jolt of heat it sparks in himself.
“If we are arrested,” Charles begins, his voice too calm, “it will happen in stages. Monaco police first. They are theatrical. They will try to separate us immediately, use the glamour, the shock.” He draws a crude flowchart. “You say nothing. Not your name. Not the time. Nothing. You request your embassy. You stare at the wall.”
Lewis is watching, arms crossed. His eyes cut to Ollie, who’s perched on the arm of a sofa, being taught a particularly grim school lesson. Lewis’s voice is low, a private rumble meant only for the kid, but it carries in the silent room. “If they put you in a room, Ollie, and they smile, and they offer you water, you look through them. You say nothing.”
Ollie swallows, nodding.
Charles continues, tapping the board at the next stage. “From there, if the Interpol flags hit, it becomes international. This is the public factor. They may move us. Likely to a more secure facility.” His marker hesitates. He talks about extradition treaties, about procedural delays, about lawyer codes. Max is sitting in an armchair by the window, turned away from the board, looking out at the yacht-dotted harbor. As Charles delves into the hypothetical workings of a French holding prison, Max’s foot begins to tap.
A habit, Charles has come to be annoyed by. A metronome counting the beat of what Charles is not saying. Charles plows on, discussing meal schedules, exercise yards. Escapes. It’s all for show, this has been saved for practically last because they do not expect arrest, they do not aim for arrest, and their men of their reputations do not get arrested.
Sebastian seems to understand the language of Max’s rhythm. He clears his throat, interrupting Charles’s clinical breakdown of European penal architecture.
“The Americans,” Seb says, his voice dry. “They will be involved. As we know, insurance on the Crown is backed by three New York firms. The FBI will have a liaison here, they don’t care about Monaco’s procedures.”
The room chills. Charles’s marker pauses. He doesn’t look at Seb. “That is a later-stage contingency. The priority is the initial—”
“They will want to talk,” Seb continues, as if Charles hasn’t spoken. His eyes are in the middle distance, on something it appears only he, Jenson, and Charles can see. A ghost with an easy smile and a devastating talent for getting people to talk. “They have people who are very good at making you want to tell them things.” A specter of a legendary, charismatic interrogator, the man who could get a confession with a joke and a cup of coffee, hangs in the quiet.
Charles forcefully redirects. “The point is, we never let it get that far. This plan is a formality. An untouched protocol. We will not need it.”
Max’s foot hasn’t stopped. It’s louder now. He knows, with cold purity, what Charles is avoiding. If this goes truly wrong, they won’t see the inside of a Monaco cell for long. They’ll be on a private jet, cuffed to a plush seat, headed for a black site in Virginia or a bright, clean room in the middle of Georgia where the rules are whatever they do not need them to be. Charles knows it too.
Lewis’ gaze flicks from Charles’s tense back, to Seb’s grim face, to the steady, angry tapping of Max’s foot. His eyes narrow slightly. He sees the unspoken fear Charles is papering over with procedure, and the brutal reality Max is counting out on the floor.
The others are scattered. Resting, checking gear, nursing private anxieties. Sebastian is re-running the transport sequences on a tablet, his brow furrowed. A nagging detail about the decoy boat’s fuel capacity won’t leave him.
He needs the master file from the secure server Jenson set up. He accesses it. Enters his own override code, a relic of their partnership Jenson’s clearly never bothered to change. The files bloom on the screen, manifests, routes, timers. And there, nestled in a sub-folder, is another file.
The date stamp is from three years ago. The title is a single, stupid word. Buttonhook. It was their code, back when codes were just jokes, when Jules nagged them about going out like regular people, getting dinners and walking in parks.
The exit no one sees coming. He opens it. Devastatingly complete. A full escape protocol for one. False passports, a buried cache of currency and diamonds in Liechtenstein, a quietly purchased vineyard in New Zealand under a holding company with a name that makes Seb’s throat tighten, SV Racing Ltd. A shared joke about retiring to build fast cars. The most updated entry is from last week. Post-extract, divert to M62 berth. Asset solo from there. Confirm wipe. He had promised. With the mint between his teeth, it’s the weary, familiar taste of being right.
The promise meant nothing. The plan was always there, renovated, polished, ready. Jenson was always going to leave. Some part of him had never stopped leaving. He wants to smash the screen. He wants to walk out and shove the tablet in Jenson’s smiling face.
His eyes, trained for a lifetime to see past the obvious deception, catch something else.
In the very root directory of the contingency folder, separate from the escape plan, is another file. A string of numbers that Seb recognizes as geographical coordinates and a device ID. He knows what that is. They’d designed it together, in a safehouse in Cancún when trust was still a tangible thing. A single-use, subdermal beacon. A panic button. It would send a one-time, untraceable ping to one pre-programmed receiver. A digital whisper, I’m gone. It went wrong. This is where. A death wish. Jenson had it. He'd kept the receiver code, the only one in the world that could trace that ping, updated in this file. The only person it would ever contact was Sebastian. The fury drains away, leaving a hollow, aching cold. He reaches into his own pocket. His own device. He’s also prepared, in the most permanent way, to make sure Jenson knows if it’s truly over.
He closes the tablet.
A quiet, steep side street away from the glittering harborfront, a temporary escape from the villa's pressure cooker. “He’s growing on me,” George says abruptly, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning the rooftops out of habit. “Leclerc.”
Ollie blinks, stunned yet thrilled, “Really?!”
“He’s a jealous cat,” George clarifies, a faint, imperceptible smile on his lips. “Hisses and arches his back when you get too close to his things. But he doesn’t actually scratch. Not unless you push him. There’s a code. I can respect a code.”
Ollie frowns, trying to square the image of Charles Leclerc, a possessive feline. “That’s an odd description. He's super cool. I mean, the Prince of Thieves is fucking cool.”
George snorts. “The ‘cool’ is the armor. The cat is what’s underneath.” He glances at Ollie. “Don’t tell him I said that, kid.”
They round a corner, emerging into a small, floodlit plaza centered around a burbling fountain. The light is bright, blazing. Ollie’s gaze, wandering over the tourists and evening strollers, snags. Across the plaza, leaning against the railing overlooking the lower town, is a figure. A familiar slope of shoulders under a dark hoodie. In this heat? A particular way of standing, weight on one hip, head tilted as if listening to music only he can hear.
Ollie’s breath stops. His heart feels like a truck, giving a single, violent slam against a car. It’s him. The hair, the posture, the figure turns slightly, profile caught in the fountain’s glow. For a split second, Ollie sees the sharp line of a cheekbone, the shadow of a jaw. A laughing group of women in sequined dresses sweeps between them, a blur of color and noise. Ollie blinks, shoving forward, his pulse a drumbeat in his ears. He stumbles to the railing.
The spot is empty. Just the warm stone and the view of descending, twinkling streets. He scans the plaza, frantic. Down the narrow alley to the left. The steps to the right. The figure has dissolved into the Monaco night as completely as a shadow at noon.
“Ollie?” George is at his side in an instant, his stance activated, sharp, hand subtly hovering near his concealed waist. “What is it? What did you see?”
Ollie stares at the empty space, the afterimage written onto his retinas. The certainty is already crumbling, replaced by a shaky, sickening doubt. The grief, the lack of sleep, the stress, it’s a cocktail for hallucinations, surely.
“I…” He swallows, forcing his voice steady. “It was nothing.” Not when it sounds so insane. George doesn’t push. He places a firm, grounding hand on Ollie’s shoulder, his gaze still sweeping the plaza with steady professionalism. He sees no threat. Only the normal, wealthy chaos of the principality.
“Alright,” George says, his voice low and calm. “Let’s head back. Too many eyes out here anyway.” He steers Ollie away from the railing, back toward the villa. Ollie goes willingly, but he casts one last, lost look over his shoulder at the empty spot by the fountain.
He’s not in the planned casing team gear. He’s in black jeans, a dark sweater, no earpiece. A solo walkthrough. A protocol ignored. A shadow detaches itself from it’s carrier.
From a pillar near the future site of the Crown’s display. He knows that voice, those eyes, familiar steps into the dim lighting, stark on viewing. “You’re early,” Charles says. His voice doesn’t echo. It’s absorbed by the thick air, and Max takes a moment to swallow. “And alone.”
He doesn’t stop walking a planned, grid-like path, continuing, eyes flickering back and forth. “You’re here. And alone.”
The look on Charles' face. Defiant. Angry. A man scorned, a familiar sight. One he’s longed for since a time he cannot remember fully. No, he remembers everything, when it comes to Charles he is no exception, he is highlighted like a bright colored folder. Images, afterthoughts, higher levels of the dark pigment eumelanin, mountain cliff complexion of a perfect ratio.
“You have a solo protocol too. So this,” Max gestures between them, “doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t know me.” Charles grits, denies. “You don’t know what’s in my head.”
The empty display case for the Crown is a silent altar between them, and Max knows best to play coy.
“I could get to know you,” Max can’t help but grin into the statement, a flirt, a taunt, a double edged six words that come with the start of every genre in fiction. It’s a logistical proposition. An assessment of a variable. “If you stopped running the script and showed me the raw data.”
The audacity, the rigidness of it, hits Charles. It’s more piercing than an insult, he feels a sickening shame, hot red. “You know enough,” he spits out, the words tight in his larynx.
“Okay. Max’s head tilts. “I know you’re grieving. I know you lead out of guilt. I know you think in poetry but wish you could think in pure math.” He pauses, clear, he feels clear, he feels it like an air from the Arctic possessing him. “So. Offer retracted. I seem to know enough.”
Charles feels the lingering of George’s words hours prior, the smug diagnosis that made him unable to rest, typewriting letters of Max’s stupid book riddled with annotations into his flesh.
Predictable.
It boils over.
“You think I’m predictable,” Charles snarls, stepping closer. “That’s what you told George. That I run on rails. That I’d rather lose beautifully than win ugly.”
A flicker of genuine surprise crosses Max’s face. It’s there and gone, a glitch. “George talks too much.” Charles doesn’t deny it. Max doesn’t seem to care for any denial. “But if you know, I think that proves me wrong.”
Max’s voice drops, not to a whisper, but to its essential, uncompromising core, smooth into Charles’ ear.
“Why are you aiming for the Crown Jewel, Charles?”
It’s the same question, laid bare here.
Charles is caught.
The rehearsed answers, best man for the job, logical split, die in his throat. The real answer is a tangled knot of legacy, defiance, and a desperate need to prove something to the ghost in Amsterdam and the ghost standing right in front of him. He can’t voice it. It would be a surrender, a proper one, because even though everything in the grasp of Max seems to be wrong, he cannot bear compromising himself, not now.
Max can sense the hesitation, the internal war. Conflict, battle, dust settling, Max waits. One second. Two.
Charles’s eyes blaze with a frustrated, helpless fire, because he just can’t.
A minute, an indiscernible shake of Max’s head. A final calculation. The variable remains unsolved.
Charles can’t bear it, the scrutiny, the tranquility, the feeling of being perfectly, painfully understood and completely misunderstood at the same time. He turns on his heel, the movement sharp with finality. He walks away, his footsteps unnaturally loud in the cavernous hall. He reaches the service door they’d both illicitly used, yanks it open, and steps through without a backward glance. The heavy door slams shut behind him with a final, echoing clang. Max looks back at the velvet-lined cavity where the Crown will sit. “Predictable,” he murmurs to the silence, but the word holds no victory.
Only the sterile taste of a confirmed hypothesis.
Charles feels the air hit his skin as his steps recede. ‘What’s all this? Is he really the heir to anything?’
2
I N T E R V I E W
DR: You planned the operation.
CL: You’re giving me too much credit.
DR: You aligned it.
CL: That’s a bit better.
DR: You anticipated arrests.
CL: I anticipated incompetence.
DR: Including your own?
CL: Especially not mine.
DR: You remind me of ████████.
CL: He wouldn’t be thrilled you brought him up.
DR: He wouldn’t be thrilled you kept stealing.
CL: You only dated him for a few months, Daniel. I have known him since my birth.
DR: I know he raised you well.
CL: He protected me.
DR: From what?
CL: From people who ask questions like you.
DR: Let’s talk about Monaco. Your childhood. The money. The access. You learned early.
CL: You’re guessing.
DR: You grew up around criminals.
CL: I grew up around opportunity.
(NOTE: Daniel stands, circles behind him before taking his seat at ███s.)
DR: Did you know ████ wanted out?
CL: That’s a lie.
DR: He wanted you safe.
CL: That’s not mutually exclusive.
DR: He wouldn’t recognize you now.
(NOTE: Suspects surges forward, chains clatter. ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO CONTINUATION.)
CL: Try harder.
(NOTE: ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO CONTINUATION.)
DR: You disappeared during execution.
CL: So did your certainty.
DR: Someone betrayed you.
CL: Or I planned for it.
DR: Max Verstappen—
CL: —predictable.
DR: Nico Rosberg—
CL: —now that was irrelevant. I love Lew, but it was obvious.
DR: Oliver Bearman is hurt.
CL: You’re lying.
DR: Am I? His blood managed to reach many of your men somehow. It’s funny. You lot think you can’t bleed because you’re smart.
CL: And you lot don’t have anything that sticks.
DR: We can make things stick.
CL: Oh yeah. Corruption of the FBI. Pony trick. You can try.
DR: Final chance. Give me something useful.
CL: None of this information is useful anyway.
DR: You don’t feel pain?
CL: I feel time. It’s late. I was busy reading 24 hours ago.
DR: You’re arrogant.
CL: I know. This is the part where you throw me in my cell.
DR: You know, I almost believed you.
CL: You still do.
DR: About ████. About the crown. About being prepared for betrayal.
(NOTE: Facial expressions analyzed, amusement is suspected by twitching lips, crinkled eyes.)
CL: You’re stalling.
DR: I’m recalibrating.
(NOTE: Daniel slides a photo across the table. Face down.)
DR: Turn it over.
(NOTE: Suspect doesn’t.)
DR: You should.
(NOTE: Suspect flips it, smile dropping. █▌▀▆▄ ▎ ▅ ▂▀░▋▎ ▒ ▒▀█▍▟)
DR: He was very cooperative.
CL: You’re lying.
DR: No. He came to us first.
CL: You’re lying.
DR: He liked you. That was the problem.
CL: Fuck off.
DR: Carlos Sainz was a double agent. Embedded early. Short-term, like you thought. Allegedly deceased, also like you thought.
CL: You’re lying.
DR: He fed us routes. Names. Habits. Yours. After Gasly’s gruesome death, I had someone watch out for you.
CL: He wouldn’t.
DR: He did.
CL: He was sloppy, not stupid.
DR: He was scared.
(NOTE: Suspect remains quiet.)
DR: You don’t forgive fear, do you?
(NOTE: Suspect leans forward.)
CL: You think this hurts me?
DR: I think this explains you.
CL: You think betrayal is new to me?
DR: I think this one mattered. He told us where you’d disappear during execution.
CL: If he told you that, you wouldn’t be sitting here.
DR: We didn’t listen.
(NOTE: Suspect remains quiet.)
DR: That’s why you vanished, isn’t it?
CL: You don’t know what you’re talking about.
DR: You built redundancy for everyone except him.
(NOTE: Suspects' chains rattle.)
DR: Because you already knew. Like ████ knew.
(NOTE: Suspects' chains rattle further.)
CL: Stop speaking his name.
DR: He chose us over you. Me, technically.
(NOTE: ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO CONTINUATION.)
CL: Say it again and I will kill you.
DR: That’s the first honest thing you’ve said. He taught you well.
(NOTE: Suspects surges forward, chains clatter. ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO CONTINUATION.)
CL: Throw me in my fucking cell.
DR: Gladly. But first. I told you I wasn’t lying.
(NOTE: █▍▅▎ ░▌▀▍▔ ▎ ▏▄░▀▔█▙▄ ▂▀░▋▎ ▒ ▒▀█▍▟ HAS ENTERED THE ROOM UNDER AUTHORIZATION ▎ ▅ ▃▀▍█▄▋.)
Carlos Sainz: Charles.
CL: You’re dead.
CS: I get that a lot.
CL: You don’t get to sit there.
CS: I do, actually. Immunity’s a funny thing.
CL: You sold me out?
CS: I survived.
CL: You sold me out.
CS: You were never meant to go this far.
CL: You followed me into it.
CS: I followed Pierre. Needed to know what happened. Loyalty is everything.
CL: I taught you loyalty.
CS: You taught me paranoia.
DR: Carlos provided us with early intel. A rat in your system.
CL: You were always bad at timing.
CS: I warned you. You were going to burn everyone eventually.
CL: Look at me.
(NOTE: Carlos does.)
CL: You tell them where I’d be?
CS: I didn’t know shit. I just helped with your arrest. And any information on you they have, it’s from me.
CL: That’s fucking unreal. You don’t know me at all.
CS: I know you better than anyone.
(NOTE: Suspect is laughing.)
CL: Are you fucking stupid? All those months, Prague to Malaysia, and you think you know me better than–
CS: I didn’t know his name. But when he gladly accepted his arrest and gave us his name, it jogged my memory.
CL: Then you knew what this would cost you. Caging me in. Caging us in. You’ll irritate him. He’s not big on that.
2
I N T E R V I E W
DR: Let’s talk about Gasly.
GR: That’s not really my thing. Talking.
DR: We arrested a couple men last month. Norris. Piastri. Albon. Interested now?
GR: Oh. Okay. So what?
DR: Did you tell Charles Leclerc what you knew from Albon?
GR: It wasn’t really my place.
DR: So you do know.
GR: There you go. Got that information out of me.
DR: Wow.
2008
Yavas
"Thermals show four warm bodies in the main car.”
The cold isn't weather. It seeps through thermal gear, bites at cells, turns breath into raptures. A regional governor's private train, stalled on a desolate stretch of track, carrying uncut conflict diamonds, hard, frozen light. Charles and Pierre move as one organism against the white void. Invincible, just another mission. A big score in a frozen wasteland.
Pierre's voice crackles in Charles's ear, clear despite the howling wind. "Two static by the door. Easy."
"Easy," Charles echoes, a grin in his voice he can't suppress. Pierre covers, Charles picks the fortified lock on the baggage car with fingers that should be numb but move with liquid precision. Jules taught him that, how to make the cold an aid, how to let it sharpen focus to a needlepoint. The diamonds are in lead-lined cases, absurdly heavy for their size. They work in nothing amplified, passing cases back to the sled they've hidden in a gully.
It's going perfectly. It's boring.
But the universe is unkind. A door at the far end of the baggage car slams open. A private contractor, face obscured by a balaclava, weapon raised, a sleek, military-grade rifle Pierre's intel hadn't accounted for. "Charles, down!" Pierre shouts. Charles is halfway turned, a diamond case in his hands. He sees the muzzle flash a fraction before he hears the shot. Pierre shoves him.
A violent, full-body impact that sends Charles sprawling behind a stack of crates, the diamond case skittering away. The round meant for Charles' center mass hits Pierre instead. A sickening, wet thump. Time slows. Charles sees Pierre stagger back, a dark, blooming star on the left side of his chest. He sees the surprise on Pierre's face, the way his mouth forms an O as the air leaves his lungs.
Charles doesn't think. His own weapon is his hand. He fires, not a precise shot, but a storm of panicked, deafening retaliation. The contractor drops. Charles doesn't check. He scrambles to Pierre, who's slumped against the frozen metal wall of the car. "Non, non, non, Pierre, look at me—"
Pierre's eyes are wide, glassy with shock. He’s trying to speak, but only a burble of blood comes out. His hand feebly clutches at Charles's arm. Charles can’t breathe. Not like this. Please. Not like this. This was a nightmare. They’re safe. They’re back in the stupid motel joking about Borscht.
The world turns to fire and noise.
A spark. Something volatile, a heater's fuel cell, an old battery. The ignition is instantaneous. The explosion, a deep, concussive whump that sucks oxygen before hurling Charles backward like a ragdoll. Heat, blinding light, and a shower of splintered wood and metal. He hits the frozen ground outside, skidding, snow, as a cushion. Agony lances through his side, broken ribs. His face is seared, his vision swimming. The baggage car is a roaring inferno, a beacon of chaos in the endless white. He can’t breathe. Pierre. He thinks, over and over again. Pierre. He tries to crawl forward, the heat blistering his skin.
He thinks he’s yelling, it doesn’t ring in his ears. His scream is raw, torn from a place deeper than his lungs. The inferno is absolute. The car is a coffin of flame. There is no shape in there that could be a man. Only ash and consumption. A hand grabs him from behind. A soldier. Younger, face grim and streaked with soot, hauls him backward with brutal strength.
"Move! Now! Or you die here too!"
Charles fights, a wild animal, eyes locked on the pyre. "He's in there! Please—"
The soldier slams a fist into Charles's injured side. The pain is so vast it whites out his vision, he drags Charles away, toward a waiting, idling snowmobile Charles never knew was there. The last thing Charles sees before darkness swallows him is the burning skeleton of the train car, a funeral pyre against the starless Russian sky, reducing his best friend, his brother, his partner, to memory and cinder.
A body broken, a heart barely beating, is loaded into an unmarked helicopter that vanishes into the Arctic night.
And it isn’t Charles.
3
I N T E R V I E W
GR: I couldn’t tell anyone.
DR: A secret that big. There had to be someone who knew. A connection between you and Pierre.
GR: You don’t know shit.
2008
Yavas
The room smells of antiseptic, blood, and diesel fuel. It’s not a real hospital. It’s a forward operating base, sterile and temporary. George, face still smeared with soot and frozen sweat, stands over a gurney. On it lies an identified Pierre Gasly, unconscious, pale as the sheets. A team of medics works with quiet urgency. His chest is a mess of trauma, but he’s breathing, shallow, machine-assisted breaths. George had dumped the contents of Pierre’s tactical vest onto a side table. Among standard gear, a slim, shockproof case. Inside, not diamonds, but photographic film, maps with handwritten annotations in French, and a tiny, encrypted hard drive. A personal side-project. The door hisses open.
Yuki Tsunoda slips in, strips off his own frost-rimmed balaclava, his face grim.
“The other one?” George asks, not looking up from Pierre’s vital signs monitor.
“Alive. Busted up. Broken ribs, burns, shock,” Yuki reports, his voice clipped. “I dumped him at the edge of a village twenty klicks south. Didn’t say a word. Just got up and walked into the trees. Avoided the local police like an expert.” A note of something like professional admiration tinges his tone. “Thief’s instincts.”
George lets out a short, humorless breath. A puff of fog in the room. “Thieves.” He nods at Pierre’s stolen case. “He wasn’t just a thief. He was a collector. This is fairly sensitive. More valuable than pretty rocks.”
Yuki steps closer, eyes scanning the intel. He doesn’t touch it. “Our mission was observation. Interference was not authorized.”
“Our mission,” George corrects, his voice low, “was to secure any high-value assets from that train before the FSB swept it. He,” a jerk of his chin towards Pierre, “and his data, qualify. The other one was collateral. You followed protocol.”
Yuki is quiet for a moment, watching the medics fight for a thief’s life. The sterile, rule-bound world of their operation feels suddenly thin, absurd next to the raw, desperate gamble he’d just witnessed. The loyalty that made one man shove another into the path of a bullet. The will that made a burned, broken man vanish into a frozen forest rather than be captured. “He walked away,” Yuki repeats, to himself. Then he looks at George, a strange light in his eyes. “This life… the one they have. The stakes. The freedom to…” He trails off, gesturing vaguely at the room, at the world of orders and briefings it represents.
George finally looks at him. He sees it. A spark. The seduction of chaos. He’s felt it too, holding Pierre’s secrets in his hands, making a choice not in a debriefing room, but in a snowstorm. “It’s not freedom,” George says, but the conviction is weak. “It’s just a different kind of prison.”
Yuki just shrugs, a tiny, defiant movement. “The bars are of your own choosing, then.” He glances back at the door, towards the vast, lawless night where Charles Leclerc had just disappeared into the unknown. “I wouldn’t mind that.”
That night, in the humming silence of the base, two elite soldiers look at a dying thief and his stolen secrets, and feel the first, irrevocable cracks form in their allegiance.
4
I N T E R V I E W
DR: …So, nobody knows?
GR: No one you would know.
DR: Ah. That’s where Max comes in.
GR: Max doesn’t know about it.
DR: You withheld it from him?
GR: A common thing in this business.
DR: Seems to be a common thing among your crew.
(NOTE: ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO IMPRISONMENT.)
2020
Aruba
“The window opens at twenty-two hundred.”
Russell speaks, tapping the screen with an aggression unknown, blue light making any of the green rimmings on his pupils seem entirely oceanic. “We’re in position. No souvenirs this time.” The last part is murmured, as the communication lines flicker with disdain for the words.
Max nods without a glance, strands falling just short of his eyes, inspecting his gear. His fingers pause for a microsecond on the dark magnetic clamp, the one the kid had “liberated” from a security van in Helsinki. The one that works better than any of the new models.
Button swivels in his chair, relaxed, feet crossed on the console George referred to as the altar, or his altar more specifically. George sneered at the action, pestering Jenson to put his feet down, who begrudgingly obliged. When he relaxes into a more appropriate seating position, he comments, “Traffic’s lighter than expected. I rerouted through the service corridor. The one with the…festive mural.”
George glances over, a smile gracing his lips. “The dancing olives. Good call.”
Max looks up briefly, to Jenson. “Backup?”
“Already staged,” Jenson replies, popping a peppermint tablet, a habit he’d picked up from an old friend, as he would explain. “Two options. Neither dramatic.” Max hums in approval. That’s about as close as he gets to laughter. Quiet, filled only with the soft whir of servers and the familiar scent of Jenson’s awful peppermint preferences, George’s gun oil and Max’s aftershave. George scrolls through the thermal overlay, then pauses, running a hand through his light brown hair. His eyes fix on a spot in the blueprint, a void in the security sweep. A shape like that had cost them a fraction of a second in Milan, the quiet room as Jenson had dubbed it.
“The kid would’ve liked this setup,” Geroge says, his thumb rubbing a faint, permanent smudge of hour old coffee on his datapad. Jenson’s easy smile flickers, then steadies, aimed at a chipped corner of his monitor where a sticker had been scraped off. “He’d hate the lighting,” Jenson says lightly, steering them back. “Always complained it was ‘too polite.’ Gave him a headache.”
George nods once, the moment sealed away. He taps the screen, highlighted in soft red, Max’s face glows from where he stands, eyes narrowed on a pair of faux glasses by the computer. “He’d also say we’re talking too much.”
“Keep the olives dancing, would you?”
T-1
Charles has never felt so alive.
A high-tensile wire strung between nine people, vibrating with a frequency only they can hear. They are spread throughout the lavish space, each in their final ritual.
George checks his sidearm for the third time, his movements fluid, automatic. A prayer. Ollie bounces on the balls of his feet, a coiled spring of nervous energy, his fingers tracing invisible patterns on his legs, the overload sequence. The silence. Lewis stands perfectly still by the window, his eyes closed. He is running the timings, the pressures, the weight of the sceptre in his hand. His breathing is slow, deep, measured. Seb’s eyes are fixed on a single point on the carpet, his mind in the ducts, feeling the cool metal, the echoes. Jenson stares at the ceiling, humming a tuneless, distracting little song, his fingers tapping a flow on his knee.
2
I N T E R V I E W
DR: Oliver, deals are being discussed. People are talking.
OB: I’m not.
DR: You saw things. You know things.
OB: I’m not saying a word to you.
DR: You’re smart.
OB: I know.
DR: That confidence will cost you.
OB: Maybe.
DR: Final chance.
OB: I am not saying a word to you.
DR: Are you in pain, Oliver?
OB: I’m fine. Stop asking.
DR: Take a deal, kid. You can set the terms.
T-1
Charles is in the center of the room. His face is pale but set, the mantle of leadership worn like armor. His eyes sweep over them, his crew, his borrowed crew, the ghost at the table. They land on Max by the bar. He is not checking gear. He is not meditating. He is staring at a single ice cube melting in a glass of untouched water. Watching the physics of it. The inevitable melt. The cold becomes room temperature. His face is a mask of absolute, terrifying neutrality. He is the still point in the turning world. He is everything that grounds Charles to this very moment. The wire pulls tighter.
Ollie’s bouncing stops. He goes very still, his eyes wide. Lewis opens his. George’s hand settles on his weapon. Jenson’s humming cuts off. Sebastian breaks the silence, his voice a dry rasp in the quiet. “Clocks are synced. Remember the rain.”
2
I N T E R V I E W
DR: The hesitation says everything. Who did you see? Standing there, in the rain?
LH: This is a waste of time.
DR: No, you didn’t hesitate because you were surprised. There’s another reason. Did you want them to see you apprehended? Taken?
LH: Christ.
DR: You did, didn’t you? And nothing happened. That’s why you’re biting back, so unlike the composed man you are. You’re angry. I don't think you even know how to deal with the anger yourself.
LH: Piss off.
(NOTE: ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO IMPRISONMENT.)
T-1
It’s a reference, one that Charles doesn’t understand well. But, he remembers the rain. He remembers snow. He remembers a graveyard. Bodies, bodies, bodies. He knows what it’s like to be abandoned.
3
I N T E R V I E W
DR: Let’s move on.
CL: I’d rather not.
DR: It keeps racking my brain. What would he think of you?
CL: You didn’t deserve him. You never deserved him.
CS: When we arrested you, I identified another person on your exit. He—
CL: Putain de merde.
DR: Charles, what do you remember from 2008?
CL: You absolute sick fucking bastard.
T-1
Charles opens his mouth to speak. To give a final order, a rallying cry. Max speaks first. His voice is not loud. It cuts through the tension like a scalpel. “The Crown is a secondary objective.” Every head turns to him. Charles’s eyes flash with instant, furious betrayal, because not now, please. I beg of you.
He has it all wrong.
“The primary objective is the integrity of the crew. You break, you fall back. You see a threat you cannot immediately neutralize, you disengage. The score is nothing if we are not intact enough to spend it.” He finally lifts his gaze. It sweeps the room, impersonal, absolute. “This is the rule. The only one that matters now.” A usurpation in final moments.
He cannot fight it. The truth of it is too solid.
Charles has never felt so alive.
Jenson stands up, pops a mint. The sharp crack is obscenely loud. He winks at Ollie, a fragile attempt at normalcy. “Make a note on dancing olives, kid. Always keep 'em dancing.”
2
- RESTART: AUTHORIZED
I N T E R V I E W
DR: Calm down now? I’m waiting on the jokes.
JB: Fuck you.
DR: If you were curious, there was blood on Max’s hands. Kid’s blood got everywhere.
JB: Fuck. You.
(NOTE: ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO IMPRISONMENT.)
T-1
George meets Lewis’s eyes across the room. Sebastian pushes himself to his feet, his knee giving a faint pop. He looks at Jenson, a look that holds a decade, a subdermal ping waiting for a signal.
Ollie’s fingers find his keyboard. Lewis’s hand closes around an imaginary sceptre. George’s finger rests beside the trigger guard. Jenson tastes the chemical burn of peppermint after Seb. Charles looks at Max. Max looks back.
The world explodes into motion. It is not a coordinated departure. It is a silent, simultaneous detonation. A blur, synchronized grace, it’s perfection. The clock ticks. Charles turns to his own path, his solo route to glory, to legacy, to Jules, to Pierre, to Carlos, to Max, to himself.
The wire snaps. The clock is ticking.
George’s voice in their ears was the calm, guiding metronome. “Police diverted. Fire alarm holding. Clean window: ninety seconds.”
“Bypassing. Thirty seconds.” Jenson covered their six, his usual grin replaced by a hunter’s focus.
Max’s voice, a flat stream of data. “Guard rotation stalled at checkpoint three. Arguing. Path clear.” Seb, beside him, tracked the single warm body in the crown antechamber. “Stationary post. Adjust the approach.”
2
I N T E R V I E W
SV: Clearly not.
DR: It’s too bad for Charles though.
SV: Not funny, Daniel.
DR: Took a real hit. Did you enjoy watching that?
SV: I didn’t see that.
DR: Oh right, you were nearby Max. Well whatever you saw with Max’s arrest, Charles’ was worse. Shaky little thing.
SV: You wouldn’t have laid a hand on him. Could’ve been ▜▎ ▕░ ▂▇█▋▃. ▜▎ ▕ ▀▍▃ ▉▕▋▄▒ ▚▎ ▕▋▃'▙▄ ▇▀▃ ▔▎ ░▀█▒▄ ▇█▌ ▔▎ ▆▄▔▇▄░. Don’t try to screw with me.
T-1
It was clockwork. It was pristine. It was perfect.
Charles has never felt so alive.
A sharp, digital inhale over the comms.
Sebastian is murmuring. “I have eyes on Nico fucking Rosberg. Mezzanine level. Wired. He has a team. Three others, I suspect.” His voice, for the first time in living memory, wavered. “They’re in our placements. Mirroring our approach.”
The symphony stuttered. A single, discordant note, whisper. “Oh fucking God, Nico.”
“I…I have a visual on the service corridor feed.” Ollie’s voice, thin. “…it’s Kimi. I’m sure of it this time, George back when–holy shit–he’s with them.”
Snark, “Kid’s seeing things, Seb, what do you—” Jenson’s retort was cut off by a grunt of shock. “—holy shit!” The sound of scuffling, a crash of metal.
“What was that?” Lewis asks.
“The…kid’s holding a disruptor. He’s jamming the local feeds. How is he—?” Jenson’s comm died in a burst of screaming static.
Max’s voice was gravel grinding on stone. “Charles. Your position.”
Charles has never felt so alive.
“Charles.”
The command is left unanswered.
Lewis, ice over fire, “Ten seconds to jewel contact. Stay on task.”
Max’s heart beats in his chest. An energy from the left anterior descending artery blocked, a Doomsday Clock, he feels it, flickers of atoms, bouncing off of each other, pulsing, tapping, a stammer. He realizes he hates this feeling more than fury, more than any hatred. He’s felt it before, burdened state, concern. It’s heightened however, an animalistic instinct, an illness, uncivilized, wretched paralysis.
It's pure. It's utter terror. “Ollie. Charles’s vitals and location.”
“He’s okay! He’s already at the crown display. His mic, it’s not transmitting.”
A cool feeling. Air on his skin, rain on his shoes. Reflections on wet stones. Meticulously architect factors. A receipt. Intensely overwhelming his system, shutting down thought, making him feel out of control, shaky, triggered, buzzed. Elegance, ragged at its edges, contraption of his breath, his lungs, his bones, his skin. Predictable.
Max had lied. When George had asked him once about The Prince of Thieves, seemingly curious about Pierre Gasly’s death, Max had lied.
2020
Sahurs
“I’m sorry, sir, but it seems your husband has already checked into that suite.”
He swipes his finger over the spiral pavé diamond band he’d just acquired from the most recent job a city away, that’s convenient. The desk clerk, seemingly infatuated with him, delivered the line. Max asked for the invoice papers, scanning over credit card details, Toto Wolff. That hit his nervous system. He realizes, it’s either an enemy unknown, or…
“My mistake,” Max spoke, voice flat. “Family mix-up. My husband’s flight arrived early, I got stuck with my in-law’s. Could I have a spare key to surprise him? Room service sent up in an hour?”
The clerk, swayed by the plausibility of Max’s demeanor, handed it over. In the elevator, Max didn’t look at George or Jenson, not bothering to explain a thing to them as they looked between each other, confused at what took so long.
“When I signal. Not before.” It was the only explanation he gave them, even as George had asked if everything was alright. Max had lied.
The hallway was silent, carpet swallowing sound as he slid the key, turned the handle with infinite slowness, and pushed the door open just enough to get inside. The suite was dark, save for the glow of the abstract shapes on the ceiling.
Max took two steps in before the cold kiss of a gun barrel pressed into his occipital. A voice, low and velvet, spoke from the shadows behind him enthralls him, slightly raspy or airy, voice with depth and richness, sympathetic system running gears.
“You’re early, Verstappen. And you’re in my room.”
A thrill shot through Max, undiluted spike of adrenaline, excitement, testosterone as the cool metal kissed his skin. He kept his hands visible, the ring of white gold reflecting the man who stood behind him, beautiful as ever.
A soft whistle. The door burst open. George surged in, but Lewis was already moving from the shadows. He caught Jenson in a brutal, efficient clinch as he entered, driving him forward and down, slamming him face-first onto a glass coffee table with a sickening crack. Jenson grunted, spitting a mouthful of blood and a shattered peppermint onto the polished surface. Across the room, Sebastian had been waiting by the archway to the bedroom. He moved to intercept George, but George was faster, the soldier's reflexes. He pivoted, not to strike, but to trap, seizing Seb in a vicious headlock from behind, his own gun now freed and swinging up to aim squarely at Charles despite Lewis behind him, knife in his direction despite Jenson’s restraint.
The room was a frozen snapshot. Jenson, pinned and bleeding, twisted his head to glare at Seb, who was struggling in George’s hold, his face a mask of cold fury. “So the rumors were true.” Jenson snarled, blood flecking his lips.
Lewis didn’t increase the pressure, a statue of contained force.
Max, the gun still at his head, glanced over at Lewis. “Where’s the kid?”
Charles’s voice was ice from behind him. “Where’s yours?”
The standoff stretched, taut as a garrote. The only sounds were Jenson’s ragged breathing and the distant whine from the world below. Slowly, Charles shifted the gun from Max’s skull. He dragged the barrel down, over the tense line of Max’s trapezius, coming to rest with chilling intimacy against the side of his neck, over the carotid where light hair had raised.
George’s finger tightened on his trigger.
Charles’ eyes, burning in the half-light, were locked on the profile of Max’s face. He leaned in, his breath a hot whisper against Max’s ear, the gun a cold counterpoint. “I have an offer,” he murmured, the words only for Max. “It’s in Vegas. You can hear it, or we can paint this suite with whatever’s left of your crew after we’re done.”
He pulled the gun away, took a smooth step back, and lowered it to his side. The immediate threat dissolved. Max finally turned his head. He looked at Charles, locking eyes for only the briefest of seconds, before he gave a single, sharp nod to George, but everybody followed, shoving away with contempt. Jenson wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes promising murder to Seb, who just stared back, unblinking before popping a mint.
“Talk,” Max demanded.
T-1
Max was always a liar, and he should have known that, he should have known. No, he knew. He wanted to reject it. To silence the rebellion. It’s breaking through, a revelation, a realization.
"The prince is one of those who say so: that one must be obedient without questions, out of pure goodness of heart, and that for my worthy conduct in this matter I shall meet with reward in another world. We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of annoyance that we cannot fathom His ways. ‘Again, I repeat, I cannot be blamed because I am unable to understand that which it is not given to mankind to fathom. Why am I to be judged because I could not comprehend." (763.)
Max breathes carefully. He has never lost a heist and he shall not consider this a failure.
“Charles has broken protocol. He has taken the Crown Jewel already. All teams, abort original assignments. Converge, this is now an extraction. The crown is secondary. Get out, now.”
1999
New York
Cheap, optimistic cologne. It’s a one-bedroom box vibrating with the groan of the 1 train. Sixteen, all sharp angles, disassembling a Beretta 92FS on a newspaper spread over the chipped coffee table. The bruises haven’t faded despite the two years. His hands move with a preternatural, fluid assurance.
Daniel, smile not yet a weaponized tool, just a genuine, easy thing, paces by the window, a case file in his hand. He’s just out of Quantico. The shiny FBI badge in his pocket feels both heavy and thrillingly light. “You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor,” the boy gruffs, not looking up. He doesn’t call Daniel by any name. Names are currencies he’s learned not to spend.
“This is it, kid. The big one.” Daniel slaps the file. “The Louvre job. ’95. Cleanest art heist ever They left the frame. No alarms, no witnesses.” His eyes are bright with the hunt. “My supervisor says it’s a cold case. I say it’s a signature.”
The boy doesn’t react. He extracts the firing pin, examines it, sets it aside. He’s known who did the Louvre job for a year. Michael Schumacher. He doesn’t live in New York. He passes through. He’s a ghost who appreciates precision. The kid has been meeting with him, in the dead hours, in parking garages and all-night diners. Schumacher doesn’t teach, exactly. He shows the kid where everything is, where the security systems have a heartbeat you can slip between. He pays in cash and lessons.
“He’s here,” Daniel says, leaning in, confident. “In the city. I can feel it. This case is my ticket. Out of this apartment, into my own office…”
The kid reassembles the Beretta, a perfect, final sound. He doesn’t say he's leaving tomorrow for Geneva. “You’ll get it.”
Daniel grins, ruffles the kid’s hair. The boy tolerates it, starting to adjust to it after the weird first time when he had reacted violently. “What would I do without you, huh? My little shadow. You keep this place from feeling empty.”
He doesn’t ask where the kid goes at night. He’s learned that particular door stays closed. The kid is a locked room Daniel is happy to have in his apartment, even if he can’t see inside. Daniel’s smile turns softer. “Met someone. A guy.”
“That’s gay.”
“Well, it is. Your dad was a piece of shit, so he probably told you gay things were bad. They aren’t.” Daniel clears his throat. “You’ll see. He makes me laugh. Listens.” He shakes his head, a little dazzled. “He’s in town for a bit. Works in import and export. He’ll be here soon. He’s got a pretty strong accent, though. French. Don’t give him crap about it.”
The kid’s hands go still for a half-second. He resumes cleaning an already spotless barrel. Import/Export. The oldest euphemism in the book.
The buzzer rings. Daniel’s face lights up. “That’s him! Be cool, okay? Don’t give him the death stare.”
The boy is already moving. He melts into the short hallway, into the shadowed alcove by the bathroom, a place where he can see without being seen. A habit. Daniel opens the door. And oh wow. Handsome in a way that seems effortless, wearing a leather jacket, Italian leather, the kid has learned the difference from Michael. “Daniel.”
“You made it!” Daniel pulls him inside, beaming. They talk in the living room. Daniel offers a beer. The other man declines, his eyes doing a casual, professional sweep of the apartment. They linger for a micro-second on the newspaper with the gun parts, then move on. He talks about a delayed shipment, a problem with customs paperwork. His voice is a low, pleasant rumble, soothing. Kind. Gentle.
The boy, in the shadows, watches the hands. Still, but not relaxed. They are capable. He watches his eyes. They miss nothing. This is a craftsman. The kid feels a clarifying jolt.
P-????
The silence in the isolation block is a different creature than the quiet of planning. This muzzle is thick, solid, and smells of bleach, stale sweat, and despair. It presses in on the ears. He sits on the edge of his cot, back straight, a habit of discipline that feels absurd here. He’s been thinking. That’s all there is to do, for far too long.
He thinks of the copper in his mouth, the chemical burn in his lungs. He thinks of many eyes, alive, dead, taking away the jewel.
Red, ruby, glittering, diamond.
He thinks of Max. His voice. The betrayal of his own plan. He thinks of the blank, grey wall in front of him. Heed my warnings.
There’s an instinct within him that needs to be tamed.
A sharp buzz. His door unlocks. Lunch. He’s been polite enough to get escorted kindly. The common area is a cavern of noise, but it parts around him. Inmates don’t look at him. They look past him. Bad luck. He picks up his tray. The food is a grey-brown lump, steaming with a smell that turns his empty stomach, his muscles weak. He finds a spot at the end of a long table, alone. A shadow falls over his tray.
Lewis sits down opposite him. The elegant lines of his face are etched with new fatigue, but his eyes are still clear, still assessing. He picks up a plastic fork, pokes at his own grey lump. They sit in silence for a full minute. His voice is low, for Charles’s ears only. A rumor from the outside, passed through bars and whispers. “When they cornered him. He didn’t go quietly. Took three of their SWAT guys with him to the ground, all cold funerals. Like he knew who wouldn't be mourned. They had to beat him unconscious with rifle butts to get the cuffs on. Pulped his face. Broke his hand.”
Charles’s own hand, holding the plastic fork, goes still. He sees it. The fury, the fixed refusal to be taken. Relentless, violent eyes, that held the sky, staring back at him. A watch. The book. “I shall not murder you for your watch” (403).
A horrible, resonant understanding. His voice is rough from disuse. “The others?”
“Jenson’s in solitary. Heard it from the guards. They threw him in the hole soon as his interview was over.” Lewis says flatly. Charles closes his eyes for a second. The laughter. The final, frayed nerve snapping. He sees Jenson’s easy grin crumbling into something desperate and broken. He feels responsible. He is responsible. He opens his eyes, looks directly at Lewis, a young, shattered man, drowning in guilt. “Ollie?” The fear in that one name is palpable. The kid.
Lewis’s composure wavers, revealing the same deep, exhausted worry beneath. “I haven’t heard. Nothing. He’s not on this block.” He looks down at his tray, his jaw tight. “George either. Vanished into the system. Seb’s keeping his head down. Listening.”
Charles lets out a shaky, defeated sigh. It’s more of a tremor. He puts the fork down. He can’t pretend to eat. “All of them,” he whispers, not to Lewis, to the table, to the disaster. “All of them, because I…”
Lewis doesn’t offer empty comfort. He doesn’t say it wasn’t his fault. They both know the ledger. It wasn’t entirely. He reaches across the table and, with a swift, subtle motion no guard will see, slides his untouched apple next to Charles’s tray.
“Eat,” Lewis murmurs, the command gentle but firm. “The thinking you’re doing, it burns calories. You need to be sharp.”
For what? Charles wants to ask. A part of him knows. He picks up the apple. Its solid, cool weight is an anchor. A tiny act of stewardship from a king in ruins to his fallen prince. They sit in the buzzing, miserable din of the cafeteria.
2
I N T E R V I E W
(NOTE: ▒▕▒▏▄▂▔ ▚▀▒ ▏▇▜▒█▂▀▋▋▜ ▔▇░▄▀▔▄▍▄▃ PRIOR TO CONTINUIATION.)
DR: Leclerc likes you.
MV: I actually disagree.
DR: You’ve been agreeing with me?
MV: No, I just thought it would be funny to say that.
DR: I’m not playing around here.
MV: Is this the big one?
DR: Excuse me?
MV: Is it bigger than The Louvre job?
DR: Which one?
MV: 95.
DR: …There’s no similarities to–what?
(NOTE: The suspect laughs.)
MV: Come on. You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor.
P-????
It begins with a harsh buzz at 4 AM. Two guards with expressionless faces unlock his cell. “Leclerc. With us.”
Charles’s mind, honed by months of paranoia and regret, runs through the grim possibilities. Transfer to a worse facility, an isolated interrogation, a beating in a blind-spot corridor. He says nothing. They don’t take him to an interrogation room. They shove a bundle of civilian clothes at him, his own clothes from the heist, stale-smelling and wrinkled from evidence bags. The suit feels alien on his skin. “Change. Fast.” He dresses under their watchful eyes. The fine wool of the trousers, the cut of the jacket, they feel like a mockery. A guard tosses a cheap plastic bag containing his shit on the counter. His cufflink.
“Sign here.”
A form is shoved under his nose. He scans it. No reasons given. Just a time, a date, a signature line, a release form. His heart, a sluggish thing in the silence of incarceration, gives a single, hard thump. This makes no sense. He’s a high-profile detainee, ringleader of a Monaco disaster.
“Who authorized this?” His voice is raspy, unfamiliar to himself.
The guard doesn’t look up from his clipboard. “Sign, or stay. Your choice.”
Charles signs. The pen feels heavy in his hand. They march him down a series of sterile corridors he hasn’t seen since he arrived in chains. The buzz of the main security door is deafening. A final, heavy door groans open. He is standing in a small, empty concrete yard. Beyond a high fence, a grey dawn is bleeding into the sky over the French coast. He hadn’t even realized it was a French prison. When had they gotten from there and back? The air is shockingly cold. It's too vast. His honed senses recoil. A nondescript black vehicle is idling by the curb. The back door opens. An invitation to a new, unknown cell. Charles stands frozen on the line between the prison’s shadow and the open world. This is a trap. It has to be. They’ll gun him down for “attempting to flee.” Maybe they’re delivering him to someone else. To the Americans. Enemies from the past. There is no going back. He walks to the car, every instinct screaming. He slides into the back seat. The door shuts with a soft, expensive thunk, sealing him in conditioned air. The driver is a silhouette behind a privacy screen. The car pulls away smoothly. No one tells him a thing. He watches the prison recede in the tinted window, a fortress shrinking to a grey block, then to a speck.
He is out. He is free. And the complete lack of why is more terrifying than any lock, any interrogation, any beating. He is a pawn moved by a hand he cannot see, on a board he no longer understands.
He just lost sight of the players.
4
I N T E R V I E W
DR: I don’t mean to be rude Charles. But we have to talk about it.
CL: I don’t know what the fuck you want. You were behind my back trying to figure out more about Pierre for what reason? He’s dead. There isn’t much to figure out.
DR: Do you trust your crew?
CL: You’re really fucking annoying.
DR: Did George ever tell you?
CL: George this, George that.
CS: He doesn’t know, Daniel.
CL: Know what?
Malta
The reunion is not a moment. There’s a sickening feeling in his stomach that brews, an anger that simmers. It is a slow, careful infection of the empty space, of the safehouse he knows well, one of many gifts.
It starts with the sound of a key in the lock, a key Charles didn’t remember existed, forgotten. He’s on his feet, the gun from the table in his hand, safety off, aimed at the door. It opens. Lewis walks in, looking tired but whole, beside him, wearing a slightly-too-tight cable-knit sweater and an expression of wary amusement, is Nico Rosberg. Charles’s aim doesn’t waver. It swings from the door to Nico’s center mass. His finger tenses on the trigger.
“Charles,” Lewis says, his voice calm, of reason. “He’s how I found you.”
Nico raises his hands, slowly. “Grosjean had a key.” That’s a name Charles hadn’t heard in years. Someone from Jules’ old crew, who’d offer him candy behind Jules’ back occasionally. “I come bearing groceries. And a truly scandalous story about Swiss bank vaults that you will never believe.” A weary pragmatism. Charles doesn’t lower the gun. He looks at Lewis. The gun comes down. He’ll let Lewis deal with whatever this is.
Charles learns to stop pointing weapons at people who arrive with the people he knows.
A day later, a motorbike and a small van pull up. Charles watches from the upstairs window. He can only guess, Yuki Tsunoda gets off the bike, stretching. The van’s side door slides open.
Pierre steps out.
Scars cover his abdomen, Charles sees it when he stretches, seemingly complaining about the hot sun. He looks up at the window, and meets Charles’s gaze. Charles flinches, chokes back a sob. He cannot look him in the eye. The grief, the guilt. He understands what George kept from him. He understands what Daniel said and what Carlos did not. He doesn’t find it to enrage him. In some sick way, it comforts him. Daniel hadn’t used it against him in that stupid interrogation room, a kindness. He has no one to thank for it but Jules. He doesn’t think he can get himself to think Carlos held back for the sake of an old friend, not after everything. It doesn’t really matter. Pierre matters. Pierre is alive and well. His best friend.
The anger fades.
From the passenger seat of the van, an unfamiliar yet described kid unfolds himself, eyes flat and watchful. He glances at the house, then helps Yuki with a duffel bag. Charles meets Kimi in the dusty front hall. They stare at each other.
“So you left him,” Charles says, the accusation quiet and raw. Kimi just nods, once. “I had to.” Charles figures this conversation isn’t for him.
Pierre is saying words, grateful, sorrowful. Charles doesn’t register them. Pierre hugs him, Charles cannot move, but he feels warm inside.
An hour later, Ollie arrives, breathless, on a stolen scooter. The relief that fills Charles is unreal, and he can see it in Lewis too. Ollie hugs everybody he can see tightly, Pierre and Yuki confused but let it happen.
Ollie spots Kimi in the kitchen and freezes. He lets out a sound that’s half-sob, half-laugh, and crosses the room in two strides, pulling Kimi into a crushing hug. Kimi stands stiff for a second, then his shoulders slump, and he hugs back. Charles feels a bit bad that his reaction to Pierre being alive had been underwhelming, but it isn’t pointed out so he figures it's okay. Comparing their situations would be stupid.
George shows up next, not alone. Alexander Albon is with him, calm and steady. George looks at Charles, and the old tension is gone, washed away by the shared bath of prison. Charles feels the last embers of his jealousy gutter and die when he sees Alex caress George’s hand, while Lewis guides them around.
Pierre finds Charles on the rooftop terrace that evening. He stands beside him, looking at the same distance. “It wasn’t your fault,” Pierre says, his voice quiet. “In Russia. It was my play. They were waiting for me. I’m sorry.”
Charles says nothing. The weight doesn’t lift. He can’t look Pierre in the eye, and he isn’t sure if he ever will be able to.
The house fills.
Jenson arrives from New Zealand, tanned, perpetual grin replaced by a softer, more permanent sadness. He nods at Seb across a room. Charles is sure they haven’t had conversations behind closed doors yet.
Seb’s arrival does nothing but bring order. Charles hugs him tight, breaths in the scent of spearmint for the sake of holding onto the man. Seb presides over the kitchen, organizing meals with a quiet efficiency that gives them all a structure, a purpose. It becomes a strange, battered ecosystem.
Lewis and Nico bicker over chess strategies with a fond, old venom. Yuki and George spar in the courtyard, a violent, graceful dance. Ollie and Kimi spend hours huddled over laptops, speaking in a coded language of data and memory. Alex and Pierre play cards, talking in low murmurs, Charles realizes how familiar they are, all the time he’s missed with Pierre, all the grief he’s lost on Pierre. The sick feeling is still there.
Jenson tends to a small herb garden he’s started on the balcony.
The reflections start to form a new, disjointed picture. A fragile, comfortable peace settles. They eat together. They stand watch. Small heists carried out in different teams. They seem to heal, in their own fractured ways. Charles is never still. He is always waiting, listening for a sound that doesn’t come. Watching the empty road from the roof. When he goes downstairs, he checks the front door, met with nothing.
Night is a warm, star-dusted blanket. The sounds from below are the sounds of their new life. A clatter of dishes, Ollie's laugh, the low sounds of Lewis and Nico debating. It should be a comfort. For Charles, perched on the parapet, it’s a noise that grates, scratches against his ears. It’s the sound of a world moving on without the one piece that made the world make sense.
The sick feeling has been in his gut for far too long. A leaden confidence that has nothing to do with reason. It’s a void where a gravitational pull used to be. Tonight, it crests. A sucker-punch of absolute, desolate knowing. His body understands before his mind can protest.
Max is not coming.
The realization is so total, so final, it empties him. The world tilts. He doubles over, a hand clawing at the rough stone. A raw, wrenching heave convulses through him, and he vomits over the side of the roof, nothing but acidic bile. He gasps, tears burning his eyes from the strain, spitting to clear the foul taste that is nothing compared to the taste of the truth in his mouth. Footsteps. Quick, concerned.
“Charles?” It’s Pierre’s voice, close. Charles doesn’t answer. He shoves himself upright, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His face is pale, slick with sweat in the moonlight. The fragile peace of the last week is incinerated, replaced by a wild, desperate fury. He stumbles down the narrow stairs into the main living area, where the others are scattered.
The convivial noise dies instantly when they see his face. “Where is he?” Charles’s voice is loud, unforgiving. Silence. “Where is he?” he roars once more, the sound raw, tearing at his throat, copper on his tongue. He sweeps an arm across the coffee table, sending a chessboard flying. Lewis’s queen clatters into a corner. “Does anybody know? Does anybody have a single fucking clue?!”
He’s vibrating with a violence that feels like it will shatter his bones. He stalks towards George, who stands slowly, hands open at his sides. “You knew about Pierre! What do you know about Max?!”
“Nothing, Charles,” George says, his voice steady, but his eyes are wary. “He’s a ghost. Better at it than any of us.”
Charles whirls on Seb, to Lewis, to Yuki. “You worked with him too! You must know. You must have some sort of clue.”
Sebastian meets his fury with a wall of exhausted calm. “None of us saw him in prison, he’s—“
“Dead?!” Charles screams the word, and it echoes in the sudden, horrible quiet. The possibility, spoken aloud. “Or he left us. He walked away. He’s the only one who could, and he did.” His voice breaks on the last word. The anger is crumbling, revealing raw terror beneath. He looks around at their faces. Lewis’s grim understanding, Nico’s pity, Jenson’s deep sadness, Pierre’s pained guilt, Yuki’s concern, Ollie’s wide-eyed fear, Kimi’s hollow stare. No one has an answer.
No one has the only thing he needs. The fight drains out of him, leaving him shaking, hollow. He sags, and Pierre is there in an instant, catching him by the shoulders, guiding him to sit on the overturned sofa. No one is angry about the chessboard. Lewis picks up the scattered mugs. George rights the table. Jenson fetches a glass of water and presses it into Charles’s trembling hand. Seb disappears into the kitchen and returns with a wet cloth, handing it silently to Pierre, who dabs at Charles’s sweaty forehead. They circle him, not with solutions, but with a silent, stubborn presence. He raged at them, threatened them, and their only response was to clean up the mess and make sure he didn't fall apart. Charles drinks the water, the coolness a shock internally. He closes his eyes, the image of Max as described, pulped face, a broken hand, turning to walk into a different darkness.
The house is full.
The worst part is not knowing which truth to mourn: death, or his perfect, absolute desertion.
Spain
The rain in the Basque Country is a fine, cold wind, broken and soaking everything. It’s nothing like Monaco. This is a working rain, a grey rain for grey business. A modest, modern apartment block, a man steps out for a late cigarette under the awning, collar turned up. Carlos, living under a quiet alias, trying to remember what normal tastes like, away from the shackles of the Bureau. He doesn’t see them until they’re already there, materializing from the curtain of rain like twin wraiths.
Charles stands directly in his path, hands in the pockets of a long, dark coat. The drops have plastered his hair dark, his face a stark, controlled fury. The carefree prince is gone, the Charles Carlos remembers well. Beside him, a half-step back and to the side, is Pierre. a lean, hungry smile, visceral thrill.
Carlos freezes, the cigarette falling from his lips, hissing on the wet pavement.
“Hello, Carlos,” Charles says. His voice is flat. Pleasant, even. It feels worse than a shout.
Carlos’s voice is tight. “Charles. I heard you were out. And…Pierre’s alive.” He’s clearly just finding out about Pierre, Charles can sense it.
Carlos takes an instinctive step back towards the door. Pierre moves, a fluid shift that blocks the retreat. “Don’t be rude, Carlos. We just got here. And we have questions.”
“I don’t know anything you’d need to know,” Carlos blurts, his hands coming up.
Charles cuts him off. He takes a single step forward, invading Carlos’s space. The pleasantness evaporates. “Max Verstappen. Where is he?”
Carlos’s eyes dart between them, confusion mixing with fear. “Max? I haven’t seen him. My contacts haven’t either. No one has.” Charles’s hand flashes out, not to hit, but to grip Carlos’s jaw, fingers digging into the hinges. It’s a brutal grip, paralyzing. Carlos makes a choked sound.
“Don’t lie to me."
Pierre leans in, his voice a conspiratorial purr next to Carlos’s ear. “He’s not himself, Carlos. Thinks his man is lost. Help him find him. Consider the debt you owe paid.”
Carlos’s breathing is ragged in Charles’s grip. He sees it in their eyes, this isn’t the Charles who grieved for him, or the Pierre who was his friend. These are feral, desperate animals, and he is suddenly, terribly aware of how expendable he is to this new version of them. “I swear…I swear, Charles. Nothing.” He gasps as the grip tightens. “But if anyone could close a file that tight…”
Charles’s eyes narrow. “Who?”
“Ricciardo,” Carlos chokes out. “He’s the only one with the keys to that morgue. The only one the Americans would trust to do it clean.” Charles releases him so abruptly Carlos stumbles, catching himself on the wet wall. He rubs his jaw, his eyes wide with a fear deeper than physical pain. Charles and Pierre are already turning, melting back into the rain as if they were never there. Charles pauses, looks back over his shoulder.
“If you’re lying, Carlos,” he says, the words barely audible over the rain, “I won’t come back with Pierre. I’ll come back alone. And you will not enjoy the conversation.”
They are gone.
Carlos slumps against the wall, the air seeping through his jacket, his heart thumping against his ribs. He looks at the spot where they vanished. The rain has already washed away their footprints.
5
I N T E R V I E W
(NOTE: Carlos Sainz has left the room.)
DR: We can continue.
CL: Good, I don’t like interruptions.
DR: You threatened an informant.
CL: I corrected a mistake.
DR: You’re facing a long sentence, Charles.
CL: If I’m imprisoned, I’ll get out.
DR: That’s confidence. And the others?
CL: I’ll get everybody else out too.
DR: You believe that.
CL: I know it.
DR: You think this room is temporary.
CL: I think everything is.
DR: Trying to manipulate the FBI?
CL: I’m explaining inevitability.
DR: You’re very similar to Max Verstappen.
CL: Is that supposed to bother me?
DR: I’ll have you know he’s injured.
CL: Everyone pays.
DR: You used him anyway.
CL: He didn’t need my permission.
DR: Why the Crown Jewel, Charles?
Malta
The hunt for Daniel Ricciardo has led to dead ends, false leads, and a lack of anything complete it feels like a tomb. The sick feeling in Charles’s gut has metastasized. It’s no longer a suspicion, a cancer of certainty. This silence isn’t FBI efficiency. He sits in the study, the same room where he sent the alert that brought them all here. The house around him is quiet, the others giving him a wide berth. His right hand rests on the old, rotary phone, a secure, untraceable line they’d rigged. It trembles. A fine, constant vibration he cannot stop. He knows. He knows with a clarity. He picks up the heavy receiver. A direct line to a federal supermax facility in Colorado.
A number Jules had given him, years ago, as a joke. “I’d never get in prison. But If you’re ever in real trouble, chouchou. Call here. Ask for me. I’ll be there.” It haunted him, because Jules would never be there if he called.
The line clicks, rings once. A voice, professional, disinterested. “Administration.”
Charles’s throat is sandpaper. “I need to speak to an inmate. Maximum security block.”
“Name.”
“Verstappen. Max Verstappen.”
The sound of a keyboard. Then, the voice again, no change in inflection. “Verstappen is authorized one pre-approved external contact. Identify yourself for verification.”
The world tilts.
“Leclerc,” he whispers. “Charles Leclerc.”
“Hold for connection.”
The suppression that follows is the loudest sound Charles has ever heard. It’s the sound of the void. Then, a series of clunks, a hiss of static. And then, a voice. It’s a voice, but strained through a poor line deep, physical exhaustion. But it’s him. Alive.
“Hey, Charles.”
The sound of his name in that flat, familiar tone is a physical blow. Charles’s breath hitches. Hey? Hey, Charles? He closes his eyes, the tremor in his hand traveling up his arm. So many words. So many emotions. He’s overwhelmed, shaking.
Fuck you. I can’t believe you. Don’t tell me you did this.
“You’re alive.” It’s not a greeting. It’s accusation.
A low, staticky sound that might be a laugh. Or a cough. “Disappointed?”
“Where are you?” The words ragged, desperate, Charles hates the way his skin burns, his eyes burn.
“You called the number. You know where I am.” A brusque sound. “Are you looking for me?” The question is so typically Max, skipping the emotional wreckage and going straight to the tactical fact, that it shatters Charles’s shred of control. Fuck you.
“Everyone is out! Everyone is here! You took a deal? You let them put you in a box?!” His voice cracks, it’s unfamiliar to him, this pain, the tightening of his chest. I can’t believe you. His breath struggles to stabilize.
“My book,” Max says, ignoring the outburst. “Old man Jenson said you were reading it.” Charles hadn’t forgotten it, rehearsed the words in prison. “George was reading that,” Max continues, and there’s a faint, knowing edge to his voice.
He finds his voice from somewhere shaky. “I know.” The feeling, hot and pathetic flares. “I stole it. I wanted to see what was so fascinating.”
“And?”
“It was an enjoyable read.” Charles swallows away the pain. “Like you.”
Don’t tell me you did this.
When Max speaks, his voice is lower, strained in a new way, it maims him, disfigures him.
“I can’t…hear your voice for too long, Charles. I’ll go mad.”
The admission is so shocking, so utterly vulnerable. The sound of Charles is a torture in the silence of the box.
He feels his breath pick up again, thoughts are slippery, fleeting. “You should have thought of that,” Charles snarls, tears of fury and grief springing to his eyes, “before you decided to play the martyr and take a deal! What did you give them? What did you trade?!” He knows.
Max’s voice cools, reasserting itself through the static. “I will get out.”
Four words. A set subject. The same tone he used to say ‘I could take all of the jewels.’ Charles believes him. That’s the wretched thing. The thought of Max alone in that concrete darkness, planning his escape while Charles sat in the Maltese sun, unravels him completely.
“I hate you,” Charles whispers, the words dripping with a despair so profound it circles back to ruin. “I wish I had never seen you in the rain. I wish you were just a story.”
The line is silent for so long Charles thinks it’s dead. Max’s voice comes through, quieter than ever, lost in the hum. “I know.”
I know it feels like dying. I know. Charles can’t speak. He presses the heel of his palm against his eye socket, a sob trapped in his chest, unable to say a word, holding onto the hitch of his breath.
A soft click of static. “Tell George his theory was right.”
Charles sits, hunched over the phone, the tone a dull scream in his ear.
“Stop.” The hatred is the most honest and devastating thing he has ever felt. Fuck you. Charles’s throat closed. He tries to go on, and he does.
"I want to see you."
"No."
"I need to see you."
"You can't." Final.
"Then tell me!" Charles begged, "Tell me something. Anything. About you. Before Amsterdam. Before any of it. Tell me one true thing."
The silence stretched. Charles could hear Max's breathing, shallow and measured, over the line. He pictured him leaning his forehead against the cool concrete of his cell, the phone cord stretched taut.
"A memory," Max said, the words slow, as if dragged from depths. "Is the sound of a lock turning. Not being locked in. Being locked out. A definitive sound. My father."
Charles held his breath.
"I used to watch the rain on the window of Daniel's apartment. New York, 99." Max continued, his voice so quiet Charles had to strain. Jules’ multiple trips to the big city. His brain beats. Daniel. Max knew Daniel. This was a personal trade off. All anger dims as Max keeps going. "I'd trace the paths. It was the only thing that moved in a way that made sense."
Charles thought of Max, that kid in Amsterdam in an apartment, comforted by the sound of fucking rain. It’s something so small, so silly, so common.
“Tell me a memory.”
His eyes burned. Charles speaks. "I used to steal pastries after Jules thought I was asleep. Just to prove I could. Just to have something that was mine, that wasn't part of a lesson. I think Jules knew, though."
A soft, static-filled sound from Max, something of a laugh. It tortures Charles’ ears but he wants to hear it until they bleed.
"Predictable." This time, the word didn't feel like a knife. It felt like a gift. “I have so much I want to tell you," Charles whispered, the confession ripped from him. "Everything. All of it. The things I never said to Jules. Our last conversation. The fear after Pierre...after I thought he was gone. The way the jewel felt in my hands for that one second before it all went wrong...it was much colder than I imagined. I want to tell you all of it. I wanted you…I want you to tell me...everything. About you. I want to know the shape of the silence in your head."
"Charles." His name, just his name, but it was a plea. "My time is almost up. They monitor these calls."
"Let them listen!" Charles snapped, then lowered his voice, leaning into the phone as if he could crawl through the phone. "I don't care. Max, I—"
"I can't call again. This line, it’s one call. Daniel's favor only stretched so far."
The finality of it was a door slamming. Charles couldn’t speak, bile returning in his mouth. Somehow Max continued, as if knowing. “You knew they’d arrest us on American soil, did you think Daniel would be easy on us because of what he shared with Jules?”
“How do you–Fuck, Max…that doesn’t even matter–Just…you'll find a way. You get out. You said you'd get out."
"I will." The old, iron certainty was back, wrapping around Charles’ heart, letting it pulse. Max's voice was fading, the connection degrading. "You need to be ready." The chuckle that escapes Max does nothing but spark flickers of heat into Charles' body, destabilizing him, throwing his head on a roller coaster with no protection around his waist.
"Max—"
“Page 1048. "He had tried, all these days, to drive away the heavy thoughts that oppressed him; but what was the hidden mystery of that soul? The question had long tormented him,” Charles doesn’t want to hear this, he knows the page, knows the quote, but Max keeps going “ah, what was it…it was all to be cleared up. It was a dreadful thought." That’s been on my mind lately, if you want to know. Giving you something to think about too, a kind gesture on my part. I’d be grateful."
“Max, please don’t." Charles isn’t even sure what he’s saying. Don’t what? Don’t do that. Don’t go? Don’t leave me? What is there to leave? It falls on deaf ears and a deaf mouth, bouncing off the walls of his mind before Max’s next words slice him center, swallow him whole.
“Goodbye, Charles."
No. "Max!"
Absence. The line didn't just go dead. A complete, hollow void. As if the connection had been severed at the root. Their string had been cut. Charles stared at the receiver, the plastic against his ear. He had so much left to say. A lifetime of words, of confessions, of challenges, bottled up and now fermenting.
The phone slipped from his hand, clattering onto the desk.
3
████████████████████████
RESTRICTED ACCESS, SPECIAL AGENT FILE, UNREGISTERED DOCUMENT
STATUS: Recorder disabled at interrogator’s request. ████████████████████████
DR: You’re not who I thought I was sitting down with.
MV: Most people aren’t.
DR: This interview is over.
MV: No. It’s just starting.
DR: What do you want, kid?
MV: Everyone else walks.
DR: That’s not how this works.
MV: It is today.
DR: You’re asking me to release men tied to an international operation.
MV: Not all of us. Not me.
DR: You’ll stay.
MV: Yes.
DR: You understand what that means.
MV: Perfectly.
DR: You will never be a free man.
MV: The others matter more.
DR: You don’t get to decide that.
MV: You do.
DR: Why?
MV: Because they still have futures.
DR: And you don’t?
MV: I already lived mine.
DR: Charles Leclerc won’t accept this.
MV: You won’t tell him.
DR: You think I’d free him?
MV: For ████, yeah. You would.
DR: Kid. You’re manipulating me.
MV: You’re already convinced.
DR: If I do this—if I even try—you’ll be buried so deep—
MV: —I’ll manage.
DR: You won’t get out.
MV: I’m glad you want me out. You always wanted me out. You wiped me clean as a kid without evening knowing my name. Lots of sympathy, you used to have. Did losing ████ take it away? I understand.
DR: This stays off the record.
MV: Of course.
DR: If you speak about this—
MV: —I won’t.
DR: I’ll see what I can do.
MV: You will.
ON THE ███████████OF THE MONTH ████████████████████VIOLATING INTERNATIONAL LAW SUBJECT TO ██████████████████████████████████
████████████SENTENCED TO █████████████ACCESS ███████████████████████ CONFINED BY ██████████████████████
██████████████████████████████NOT TO BE ADRESSED IN COURT██████████████████████████████SUSPECTED ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████RELATIONSHIP███████████████████HIGH PROFILE █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████. REPORT IS ATTACHED, RESTRICTED. ████████████████████████████████ MAXIMUM SECURITY. ████████████LOCKED████████████████████████████████████ CONFIRMED.
6
I N T E R V I E W
CL: Because I wanted it.
DR: That’s not an answer. You could’ve taken jewels. Had lots of clean exits.
CL: I wanted the Crown Jewel.
DR: Why?
CL: To prove something.
DR: What?
CL: That I could do it.
DR: This is about payback?
CL: Yes.
DR: Congratulations. That cost you everything.
CL: No. It cost me this.
(NOTE: Suspect motions around room.)
CL: The job was a success.
DR: From where you’re sitting it failed. On paper it failed.
CL: On paper, I learned exactly where the cracks were. Who hesitated. Who watched the wrong feeds. Why were we arrested?
DR: You ran the operation like a diagnostic.
CL: Now I know what needs fixing.
DR: You’re not afraid.
CL: I’m curious.
DR: About what?
CL: How long it’ll take you to realize you didn’t catch me. Throw me in a cell, throw me in every cell, tighten security, put me in solitary, beat me till I tell you every single word. You have not caught me, and you will never catch me.
DR: You’re in cuffs.
CL: Temporary inconvenience.
DR: Your crew is scattered. One of them cut a deal. Another is hurt.
CL: And yet, here you are. Still talking to me.
DR: You’re mistaking attention for victory.
CL: No. I’m recognizing leverage.
DR: You’re not on the right side of this, Charles. A prince doesn’t make you a God.
CL: There is no right side. There’s the side that understands the board and the side that keeps flipping it over when they’re losing.
DR: You orchestrated a disaster.
CL: And it was precise. Tell me, how many operations have you shut down where you didn’t already know the names?
DR: Enough.
CL: And how many where the architect sat calmly and explained why your timing was off? You think you caught me because I’m here. I’m here because I wanted to see who blinked.
DR: You’re delusional.
CL: You lie a lot, special investigator. You lied to me about injuries. About leverage, the most ridiculous one about deals. And I still told you the truth.
DR: I didn’t lie. You seem to not believe anything I say, much like the others I assume. You admitted the motive. You’re playing a dangerous game.
CL: You invited me to the table.
DR: You’re not untouchable. You’re very sure of yourself.
CL: You should be grateful. Arrogant men make mistakes.
DR: And where does that leave you?
CL: On the right side of the outcome.
DR: Which is?
CL: You learned something tonight. So did I.
DR: You think knowledge equals control.
CL: I think control is overrated. Prediction is better.
DR: And what do you predict?
CL: That you’ll let this end exactly the way it needs to. And if it doesn’t, you’ll remember I warned you.
DR: Interview concluded.
CL: Heed my warnings, Daniel.
Monaco
He stands before it, hands in the pockets of his impeccably tailored suit. The operation is closed. The other players are scattered and broken. The Crown is secure. A success, a hearty paycheck for him from the government.
Daniel’s seen originals before. He knows how history settles into objects, the way weight feels wrong when it’s missing centuries, the way gold remembers the hands that shaped it, wore it. He signals the technician away with a nod.
“Give me a minute.”
The biometric lock disengages with a soft hum. The bulletproof glass lid lifts on silent hydraulics. The crown gleams under the archival LEDs, obedient and perfect. Daniel doesn’t put on gloves. He picks it up. And freezes. It’s flawless. That’s the problem. His trained eyes scan it. No micro-wear along the inner rim where a head would have rested. No subtle irregularities where centuries-old restorations should live. No asymmetry, no unique flaw that history always, always leaves behind like a fingerprint. His pulse ticks up, a quiet, professional alarm.
Slowly, carefully, he turns the crown inward, angling it to catch the light beneath the central, fist-sized. The ruby, heart of the piece. Etched by time.
Inscribed by a deliberate hand. So fine it would never show on scans, on photographs. Only visible when the light hits it at a knowing angle, a whisper in the stone.
Daniel reads it once.
Then again, the letters, achingly familiar burning themselves into his mind.
heed my warnings for i am a prince
His breath leaves him in a quiet, stunned laugh. The sound is swallowed by the immense infrastructure.
“Of course,” he murmurs, the words tinged with a profound, weary respect.
A replica doesn’t need to be perfect. It only needs to be convincing. And the person who made this one wasn’t just a forger. The entire Monaco disaster reorders itself in Daniel’s mind with a series of soft, devastating clicks. A silence on channels, not a failure, a deliberate muting. The strange confidence in his custody, the lack of fight upon arrest, only smug mutters, not defeat, but patience. The way he’d said “the job was a success” during interrogation, eyes clear, bravado or madness. The way he never once, in all the debriefings, asked about the Crown’s recovery. The way he accepted full, devastating responsibility for the chaos, but never for the loss.
Daniel closes his eyes. The pieces slot together, forming a picture of breathtaking, arrogant genius. Charles Leclerc didn’t steal the crown during the chaos of the gala.
He stole it after. He’d left this beautiful, taunting forgery in its place, a message in a bottle for the only person clever enough, and connected enough, to ever find it.
And he’d won.
Daniel places the crown on its pedestal with the reverence it deserves, even as a fake. He wonders how many others are like this. Other jewels around the world, in museums, vaults, heirlooms, engraved with the same message.
The locks engage with a series of soft, final thunks. As he turns to leave the vault, his gaze flicks once more to the case. To the warning hidden where only someone looking for the truth, for the art of the lie, would ever see it.
A prince, indeed.
Daniel walks out into the hallway, smile on his lips.