Chapter Text
The chaos inside the Piastri empire became its own kind of weather system—unpredictable, pressurized, dangerous. And like all storms, it drew opportunists.
Mae’s loyalty wavered quietly at first.
It wasn’t dramatic. It never was with Mae. She listened more than she spoke, absorbed more than she revealed. Chris Piastri knew that. He had always known which child to lean toward when he wanted a future foothold. Oscar had inherited the spine; Hattie the suspicion; Eddie the distance. Mae, however, had inherited the hunger.
Chris spoke to her in the mornings, when the house was still and Oscar was buried in ledgers and damage reports. He framed everything as regret wrapped in wisdom.
“I made mistakes,” he would say, fingers folded around a porcelain cup. “But mistakes teach you how power really works. Your brother is strong—but he’s burning himself alive to hold it.”
Mae didn’t answer him outright. She didn’t need to. Chris mistook silence for consent.
By the time Oscar realized Mae was slipping—not away, but sideways—it was already being noticed by people who thrived on fractures.
Gabriel Bortoleto noticed immediately.
From Amsterdam to London, Gabriel’s expansion had been quiet but relentless. He didn’t conquer; he insinuated. Licenses changed hands. Inspectors looked the other way. Banks hesitated at the wrong moments. He never needed to threaten when systems could be nudged.
Family instability was leverage.
He began feeding Mae information—carefully curated, never enough to expose him. Rumors about Oscar’s allies. Concerns about Lando’s influence. Subtle implications that Oscar was building an empire too fast, too visibly.
Gabriel didn’t push. He waited.
Meanwhile, Carlos Sainz returned.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. He appeared where peace was always negotiated—in neutral rooms, under polite smiles. A dinner invitation in Madrid. A conversation after a race weekend, framed as nostalgia.
Carlos came with clean hands and dirty history.
“The war’s bad for everyone,” he told Oscar calmly, as if they were still just drivers who shared paddocks and champagne. “Leclerc’s gone. The board’s fractured. Europe’s watching you now.”
Oscar listened without interrupting. He always did when someone thought they were teaching him something.
Carlos continued, choosing his words with care. “Ferrari survived because it adapted. You should too. There’s no shame in consolidation.”
Lando stood a half-step behind Oscar, tense but silent.
Oscar finally replied, voice even. “You didn’t come here for peace. You came to see if I’d blink.”
Carlos smiled faintly. “And did I?”
Oscar didn’t answer.
While diplomacy unfolded on the surface, Max Fewtrell worked underground.
The police tip-off had bothered Oscar more than anything else. It wasn’t just interference—it was precision. Someone had known where to look, when to look, and whom not to touch.
Max followed money first. Always money.
It led him away from Gabriel. Away from Palou. Away from foreign banks and shell companies.
It led him home.
Chris Piastri hadn’t tipped the police directly. He’d never be that obvious. Instead, he’d floated an idea at a private dinner. A regulatory “concern.” A suggestion that certain warehouses might not be as clean as Oscar believed.
The rest had taken care of itself.
When Max told Oscar, the room went quiet in a way that scared everyone else.
Oscar didn’t shout. He didn’t throw anything. He simply sat, elbows on the desk, fingers steepled.
“So,” he said softly. “He didn’t come back to reconcile.”
Lando swallowed. “Osc—”
Oscar lifted a hand. “No. Let me finish.”
He leaned back, eyes distant. “He came back to replace me.”
That night, Oscar finally confronted Mae.
Not with anger. Not with accusations.
“With truth.
“You think he’s changed because he sounds smaller,” Oscar said quietly. “He sounds sorry. That’s not growth. That’s strategy.”
Mae looked torn, eyes glossy but defiant. “You don’t listen to anyone anymore.”
Oscar nodded once. “That’s because listening used to get people killed.”
She had no answer for that.
While the family fractured, Gabriel moved.
He didn’t attack Oscar directly. Instead, he tightened pressure around him—legal friction, slowed shipments, hesitant partners. He let Palou act as intermediary, watching to see whether Oscar would lash out or adapt.
Oscar chose neither.
He countered silently.
False routes. Deliberate leaks. A shipment designed to fail, carrying markers only Gabriel’s people would recognize. When it vanished exactly as predicted, Oscar finally had his confirmation.
Gabriel wasn’t just expanding.
He was preparing to absorb.
Lando felt it all tightening, like a rope drawn slowly around a chest.
“This is how wars start,” he said one night, voice low. “Quietly.”
Oscar reached for him—not dramatically, just grounding. “And this is how they’re won. By not being the loudest man in the room.”
The police pressure escalated anyway. Local politics began circling like carrion birds, sensing instability. It wasn’t good for Oscar. It wasn’t good for Gabriel.
That was what finally forced the confrontation.
They met without theatrics. No guns. No raised voices. Just two young kings pretending the world wasn’t watching.
“You’re destabilizing Europe,” Gabriel said flatly.
Oscar smiled thinly. “You’re doing it faster.”
Gabriel tilted his head. “Your family is bleeding.”
Oscar’s smile vanished. “Careful.”
Neither threatened the other outright. They didn’t need to. Both knew the math.
And while they measured each other, far from Monte Carlo and London, Carlos Sainz made his quiet re-entry—positioning himself as mediator, survivor, opportunist.
Peace, he said again.
Oscar didn’t believe in peace anymore.
Only timing.
And somewhere between betrayal and ambition, Mae stood at the center of it all—still deciding which future she wanted to inherit.
Carlos Sainz’s return did not arrive with noise or spectacle. It came quietly—almost politely—which, in Oscar’s world, was often far more dangerous.
The first message was handwritten. That alone made Oscar pause.
No threats.
No demands.
Just an apology that never quite said the word sorry.
Carlos wrote like a man who knew exactly how much space to take up and no more. He spoke of misaligned loyalties, of necessary distance, of how the Leclercs had offered “growth” when stability had looked like stagnation. He spoke, too, of regret—carefully measured, never bleeding into sentimentality.
Oscar read it twice. Then a third time.
“He hasn’t changed,” Oscar said flatly, folding the letter with precise creases. “He’s just learned better manners.”
Lando hovered nearby, arms crossed, weight shifting from foot to foot. “Still,” he said, cautiously, “cutting ties with the Leclerc operation isn’t nothing. That family doesn’t forgive easily.”
“No,” Oscar replied. “They survive. Forgiveness is irrelevant.”
---
Barcelona was chosen deliberately—neutral ground, bathed in sun, loud enough to swallow secrets.
The Sainz family arrived as a unit: Carlos, his father, two advisors Oscar didn’t recognize but immediately distrusted. They dressed like men who wanted to be perceived as legitimate, even if legitimacy was only ever a costume.
Oscar arrived with Lando and Max. No soldiers. No visible weapons. Power didn’t always need to announce itself.
Carlos smiled first.
“Oscar,” he said, extending a hand. “You look… well.”
Oscar took it, brief and firm. “So do you. I assume that means you want something.”
Carlos laughed softly. “Straight to business. I missed that about you.”
“You missed it when it stopped benefiting you,” Oscar replied calmly, already taking his seat.
There it was. The air shifted.
Carlos didn’t deny it.
“We made a mistake,” Carlos said instead. “Aligning ourselves with the Leclercs was… short-sighted.”
Max snorted under his breath. Lando shot him a warning look.
Carlos continued, undeterred. “Charles believed power was permanent. We believed him. That was our error.”
“And now?” Oscar asked.
“And now,” Carlos said carefully, “we want out. Completely. No shared operations. No mutual interests. No back channels. The Sainz family is done with them.”
Oscar leaned back, studying him.
“Why come to me?”
Carlos hesitated—just a fraction too long.
“Because,” he admitted, “you’re what’s left standing.”
---
Oscar did not answer immediately. Silence, when used correctly, was an interrogation all on its own.
Inside, the math was already running.
The Sainz family had resources. Logistics. Political insulation in places Oscar’s reach was still… developing. Cutting the Leclercs loose meant exposure—retaliation, instability, vulnerability.
But it also meant leverage.
“You understand,” Oscar said at last, voice even, “that trust isn’t something you buy back with words.”
“I know,” Carlos replied. “That’s why I brought terms.”
The deal was clean. Too clean.
Territory exchanges. Shared shipping corridors. Financial transparency—real transparency, not the curated kind. And one final clause that made Oscar’s fingers still.
A non-aggression pact. Binding. Immediate.
Lando glanced at Oscar, reading his face the way only he could. “This could stabilize things,” he said quietly. “At least for now.”
Max leaned forward. “Or it gives them time to regroup.”
Oscar nodded once. “Exactly.”
He looked back at Carlos. “You don’t get protection,” Oscar said. “Not yet. You get observation.”
Carlos accepted it without protest. That alone told Oscar more than the deal itself.
---
From across the continent, Gabriel Bortoleto watched the move unfold through fractured intelligence and half-confirmed reports. He didn’t smile.
The Sainz withdrawal shifted the board. It narrowed options. Forced consolidations.
Oscar was tightening his circle.
Interesting, Gabriel thought.
Not threatening. Not yet. But interesting.
He instructed his people to slow expansion in London, accelerate in Eastern Europe, and—most importantly—keep Oscar close enough to watch, but never close enough to predict.
---
Back in England, the announcement came quietly: the Sainz family had formally severed all ties with the Leclerc syndicate.
The underworld noticed.
The police noticed.
And Oscar noticed the subtle change in how phones rang—how conversations ended more quickly, how allies asked more questions than before.
At home, the tension didn’t ease.
Mae listened too carefully to Chris. Eddie watched from the margins. Hattie trusted no one.
And Oscar, standing at the center of it all, felt the familiar weight settle deeper into his chest.
Power, he had learned, was never about winning.
It was about surviving long enough for everyone else to lose.
The war with the Leclercs was over.
The war with the world, however—
That was just beginning.