Chapter Text
Oscar Piastri hadn’t expected to end up in jail tonight. He had never seen the inside of a jail, a fact that actually surprised him. Some near misses, sure, but a clean track record until now. His only companion in the holding cell was passed out on the opposite end of the cement bench, the smell of booze wafting off of him and turning Oscar’s empty stomach.
It wasn’t that Oscar hadn’t considered this possibility. When one makes a habit of light-fingered activity, the concept tends to cross your mind often, slipping into restless nightmares and intrusive, knee-jerk thoughts; handcuffs, cells, courtrooms, cells, barred doors, no air, handcuffs, cells-
But Oscar was good at what he did. He was good at everything he did, it was a point of pride with him. If a task was undertaken, he committed himself to it entirely. It’s the only way he had made it into the Formula Program, the only way he had snagged one of their incredibly rare scholarships. Formula was King’s College elite students, those who showed promise and talent beyond exception. Oscar had been working for such an opportunity since he was kid, since he had talked his parents into shipping him off to an English boarding school at only fourteen, powering through those cold, lonely years to early graduation at seventeen, and finally, finally, admittance into the Formula ranks. The program had been evaluating him throughout his initial years at King’s and granted him admission last fall. Their engineering program was brutal, with astronomically high standards that cut almost a quarter of its students every year. Oscar loved every second of it. Sure, he missed sleeping for more than five hours at a time. Sure, the hours required meant the only job he could accommodate is a shitty cater-waiter gig, due to its flexible event hours. Sure, he worried frequently about contracting scurvy from his bargain-bin diet of ramen and rice.
But something he had learned as a perpetual outsider was how to live in the peripheral, how to go unnoticed. Being invisible was a skill he had honed to a sharp edge. The catering gig helped, put him in the right crowds. Slipping unobtrusively around investment bankers, political donors, London’s elite with soft steps, one hand balancing a tray of champagne and the other hand free to slip into pockets and purses. He didn’t get greedy; a moneyclip here, a watch there. Things that wouldn’t be noticed till the chauffeured drive home, things that the loss of would only be a mild nuisance to their owner. A round of visits to pawnshops on the outskirts of London and Oscar’s student loans seemed slightly less ominous.
Tonight…had not gone according to plan. It was an art gala of some sort, a fundraiser for the King’s College deep-pocketed donors to write hefty checks and sleep peacefully knowing they had done their part in supporting London’s cultural scene. Theoretically, perfect for Oscar.
Rain had glazed the pavement outside the Parc Ferme Gallery into a slick sheet of black glass, each passing car throwing reflections up the marble steps in quick bursts of color. Oscar paused on the last step, letting the cold air sting his cheeks as he fixed the crooked bow tie at his throat. The gallery’s front doors, tall panes of crystal and chrome, offered him a warped glimpse of his own face. He hardly recognized himself in the formal uniform: starched collar, poorly tailored jacket, and the thin-soled shoes that pinched the bottoms of his heels. The whole ensemble felt like a costume borrowed from someone taller, wealthier, and far more at ease in the world.
London, in its autumn chill, pressed close around him. The city never quite allowed him to forget how temporary he was within its bounds, how easily it could swallow him whole if he missed even one scholarship deadline. It was a theme in his life, that constant dread in the back of his mind that the other shoe would drop, anything good could be wrenched from his hands at any second.
He exhaled slowly, trying to settle the exhaustion humming insistently at the base of his skull. Midterms had left him hollow-eyed and restless, each exam demanding precision and concentration while his body begged for sleep. In the brief hours when he returned to the university apartment, the problem grew worse. Lando Norris, his roommate whose privileged existence seemed to operate on the assumption that comfort was a constitutional right, had spent the week blasting music at absurd hours and cluttering every corner of the flat with discarded clothes and food containers. When the kitchen sink was full of dishes, Lando would simply start leaving dirtied forks and cups in the bathroom sink. Instead of doing his laundry in a semi-regular manner, Lando would simply buy new clothes. Once, in a fit of exasperation, Oscar had asked him why exactly Lando was deigning to live in shitty university housing when he clearly had an inexhaustible access to funds. Lando has sheepishly admitted that living in uni housing for the year was his punishment from his father, after Lando had managed to crash daddy’s sports car over the summer holiday.
Tonight, Oscar felt the fraying edge of his patience tugging at him like a loose thread. Perhaps it was the fatigue, or the roommate situation, or simply the undignified monotony of being just another anonymous cater worker in a room full of wealth, but there was a spiteful streak rising in him, quiet and controlled, yet unmistakably there, burning in the back of his throat.
He slipped through the entrance, hurrying through the Employees Only doors to dump his backpack and jacket in a locker outside the kitchen, muttering an apology to his supervisor who gave him a nasty look as he signed in. Minutes later and Oscar was circulating through the gallery, shining tray of some tiny, delicate hors d'oeuvres in hand.
The gallery was lovely, all stone and marble, archways leading into attaching rooms, displaying an array of abstract sculptures, framed paintings and all levels of artistic output. A string quartet played from one corner, the sharp melody carrying through the building. Newly installed lighting washed the room in a pale gold glow, giving every piece of art a sense of importance. Caterers drifted between finely-dressed guests with trays of champagne and canapés, orchestrated like silent footmen in a palace.
Oscar stepped among them seamlessly. Something in him always slipped into place during these events, an instinctual ability to become part of the scenery, to observe without being observed. His eyes tracked the mannerisms of those around him, the way expensive jewelry caught the light, the careless laughter of the wealthy, the subtle power plays unfolding between donors and curators.
Occasionally, his fingers moved of their own volition. A casual brush near a distracted man’s pocket loosened a silver card case. A shift of his tray toward a woman’s elbow allowed her tragically loose tennis bracelet clasp to slide free. Oscar never pocketed anything of great excess, only what would go unnoticed by those too rich for such trinkets to matter. He reminded himself that he did not do it out of malice. It was survival, as far as he was concerned. A scale karmically balanced.
As he entered one of the smaller gallery rooms further in, he noticed a change in the tone of the crowd. As one, they seemed to focus on a single guest, whom Oscar was surprised to recognize. Charles LeClerc was something of a legend at King’s College, an art student who had hit the Formula program like dynamite a few years before Oscar’s arrival. Charles had gone on to earn a Masters in Art History and was now supposedly languidly working his way through a PhD, though that process seemed to be mainly comprised of exhibiting his work at lavish events, being paid handsomely for guest speaking events, and very occasionally working on his thesis.
Oscar had never met him personally but had glimpsed him around campus, seen him posted in social media and school magazines, lauding their prodigy. The young artist moved with the serene confidence of someone who knew his presence drew attention. Tonight he wore an expertly tailored, midnight-colored suit that caught the light in elegant, understated ways, the jacket open to reveal a blousy silk shirt beneath and exposing a generous portion of tanned clavicle. Oscar watched from a distance, recalling the faint outlines of campus rumor that trailed after the man like a fragrance. Charles was said to be impossibly intelligent, absurdly talented, and effortlessly charming, the kind of student who spent mornings in ancient manuscript rooms and evenings at parties filled with critics twice his age. Their worlds touched at the edges but remained fundamentally incompatible. One of them lived among donors and curators; the other washed glassware after midnight to afford textbooks.
Even so, Oscar could not help studying Charles now, tracing the fluid ease with which he greeted guests, how naturally he seemed to inhabit this rarefied environment. There was something graceful in the way his hand rested on the small of a patron’s back as he guided her toward a painting, or how he leaned in slightly when someone spoke, giving them his full attention. Oscar felt the smallest tug of fascination, quickly tempered by resentment, though even that resentment was thin and weak, little more than a protective shell.
As if he could feel the weight of Oscar’s stare, Charles glanced up, meeting his gaze with eyes so green they seemed they could belong to one of the paintings on the wall. Oscar froze, as if caught in a compromising position. He expectedly Charles’s gaze to pass over him as if he didn’t exist, like so many of the others, or perhaps fix him with one of the bland, contemptible looks so often used upon the waitstaff at these sorts of things.
But he didn’t. Not even close, actually. Charles held Oscar’s gaze, his expression warm and seemingly amused as he raised his champagne flute in a small greeting, as if acknowledging an old friend. Oscar had the impulse to glance over his shoulder, check to see if Charles was communicating with some art critic or wealthy collector behind him.
Before he could fully register the greeting, a man in a velvet jacket beckoned him over with a short, impatient gesture.
“You,” the man snapped the moment Oscar was within reach. “This champagne is warm. Do you expect donors to drink this? It’s completely unacceptable.”
Oscar kept his expression carefully neutral. “I can bring you a fresher glass, sir.”
“That’s not the point,” the man scoffed, already turning away as if Oscar had personally committed an egregious offense against the arts. “Standards are frightfully low these days.”
Oscar bowed his head slightly, more out of habit than deference, and moved on. Irritation flared through him, swift and sharp. The room was a theater of entitlement, and he felt increasingly like a prop within it, to be abused and discarded at the whims of the players.
Oscar felt something inside him shift, brittle and immediate. Jealousy? Perhaps he wanted a win to carry him through the week. Perhaps he wanted to remind himself he was not entirely powerless among these gilded strangers. Or perhaps the exhaustion had simply worn away his restraint.
The thought formed before he could examine it too closely.
Just one more lift. Something clean. Something small. Something that lets him breathe.
He chose his target quickly, perhaps too quickly, a short man with the reddened cheeks of someone who had been overserved at the open bar in the foyer, the raucous laugh of sometime entirely focused on the sound of their own voice. The obvious square of a wallet pocketed in a loose pair of wool trousers.
Oscar approached with the silent confidence of someone who had done this hundreds of times before. His tray angled slightly forward, guiding the motion of his body. His fingertips brushed against the fabric at the man’s side, feather-light, almost imperceptible.
For a moment, it felt perfect. Until the man rocked back with the momentum of his own laughter, pushing suddenly into Oscar’s reaching touch that could no longer be mistaken for anything but theft.
A hand seized his wrist, sweaty but strong.
Oscar froze, his breath locking in his chest. The grip was strong, brutally so, fingers digging into tendons with deliberate malice.
Though shorter than him, the man seemed to loom at Oscar’s side, his purple-red expression twisted with vindictive pleasure. His suit was expensive in a gaudy sort of way, pinstripes stretched across a chest that suggested a life without consequences. His eyes were small, sharp, and gleaming.
“Well now,” the man barked, leaning in close enough for Oscar to smell the bitterness of his cologne. “Look what we have here. A little thief, eh?”
He tightened his hold, and Oscar felt pain shoot through his wrist.
“You picked the wrong pocket tonight,” the man continued. “People like me have ways of handling vermin.”
Before Oscar could reply, security was already converging. Guests nearby were gasping, whispering, shifting back, creating a widening circle of exposure, cruelty.
The walls of the holding cell were old concrete, a bleak and indifferent gray that seemed to absorb whatever warmth or dignity a person carried into it. Oscar sat on the narrow bench, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped as though prayer might somehow soften the moment. The fluorescent light overhead hummed faintly, like a mosquito buzzing in his ear. It flickered every few minutes, an unkind pulse that made his head ache even more if that were possible.
A million panicked thoughts ran through his head; expulsion, jail time, deportation back to Australia. God, the shame of telling his parents. Would he have to cough up bail money to even be allowed to go home and pack his things? If Oscar remembered correctly, he had maybe seventy-five pounds in his account. His growing headache pounded behind his eyes, outpaced only by his anxious heartbeat. This particular Metropolitan Police outpost served the King’s College campus and its surrounding wealthy enclaves. It smelled faintly of disinfectant and stale coffee. The rooms were built less for hardened criminals and more for drunken aristocrats who had stumbled out of Mayfair clubs, or undergraduates who had vandalized statues after losing debates about philosophy. Everything about the space suggested temporary mischief, followed by stern warnings and discreet phone calls to embarrassed parents.
Oscar did not belong among those offenders. Yet here he was, sitting alone on the cold bench in a cell meant for privileged mistakes.
His wrist throbbed where his mark had grabbed him. The bruises would bloom by morning. He pressed the heel of his hand against his aching eyes, trying to soothe the wave of shame rising inside him. It was strange, he thought, he rarely experienced a twinge of guilt after a successful lift, but the consequence of being caught brought guilt so strong he felt close to vomiting.
Best case, he told himself, was a fine he could not afford. Maybe the university disciplinary committee would handle it privately, though even that would be catastrophic. Expulsion loomed in his mind like a black curtain, heavy and unavoidable. The worst case left a taste of iron on his bitten tongue: a criminal record, jail time, a destruction of everything he had worked for.
He imagined the email he would send home. The way his mother might read it twice in disbelief. His father’s silence on the other end of a static-laced phone line from rural Australia. They had spent years shaping their lives around his potential, sacrificing steadily so he could attend school in London, then King’s. Every conversation carried the same quiet pride. They had told relatives that Oscar was destined for something remarkable.
A tremor of grief moved through him. Not for himself, but for the hope he had represented to his family. He recalled the way his mother squeezed his shoulder at the airport the day he left, the awe in his father’s expression when Oscar’s scholarship letter had arrived. They had believed in him with such certainty, as though he were a light meant to burn brightly, steadily.
Tonight, that light felt dim, flickering, almost extinguished.
He leaned back against the cold wall and closed his eyes. If he concentrated on the sound of distant footsteps and the soft hum of the fluorescent light, he could almost detach from the humiliation crushing his chest. Almost, but not quite.
Footsteps approached down the hall, sharp and deliberate. Oscar snapped open his eyes, expecting a bored officer with a clipboard or perhaps a curt reminder that the police would process him once the paperwork was complete.
Instead, the steps stopped directly in front of his cell, followed by a brief murmur of voices. A set of keys jingled. The lock buzzed open.
The door swung open, revealing a young constable who looked as though he had just been thoroughly scolded by every superior in the building. His posture was stiff, shoulders hunched in reluctant apology, and he avoided Oscar’s gaze with the furtive, avoidant air of a man praying the moment would pass quickly.
Behind him stepped a far more arresting figure.
A tall, slender man entered the cell with unhurried composure, as though this cramped concrete room were simply another inconvenient stop in a long evening of obligations. Oscar felt himself straighten instinctively. The stranger wore an impeccably tailored wool trench coat, the fabric falling cleanly over his sharp shoulders in a way that only bespoke construction could manage. A briefcase of dark, polished leather hung from his hand, and the glint of a very expensive watch (Oscar would know), glinted from beneath the cuff of his sleeve.
The man’s face was sharply elegant. High cheekbones, ice-blue eyes, hair neatly styled despite the late hour. He looked like someone pulled from a glossy magazine spread about European winter style or the best apres-ski in St. Moritz. He surveyed the holding cell with faint distaste before turning his attention to Oscar. His expression did not warm. It barely changed at all.
“Piastri?” he confirmed, his voice clipped and cool. “My name is George Russell. I am here as your legal representation.”
Oscar blinked. For a moment he wondered whether he had misheard. “My what?”
George exhaled, a single sigh that somehow managed to artfully convey annoyance, impatience, and a sense of being tragically inconvenienced by the universe.
“Your representation,” he repeated, slowly now as if addressing someone with limited mental faculties. “As in solicitor. As in the individual now responsible for extracting you from this unfortunate mess.” He lifted one brow with calm, aristocratic disapproval. “I assume that is something you want.”
Oscar stared, baffled. “I…um…I didn’t call anyone.”
“No. You did not.” George replied unconcernedly, checking his watch and simultaneously exposing a shirtsleeve with monogrammed initials embroidered into the fabric, “Someone else did. Someone who evidently believes you are worth the trouble.” He paused, offering Oscar a thin, unimpressed glance. “I suppose we’ll see if that is indeed the case.”
Oscar opened his mouth, then closed it again. His brain felt too fogged with exhaustion and white-hot adrenaline to form anything coherent, even to decide if he should be taking offense at the man’s snide effect or just desperately thanking him.
The constable beside him cleared his throat nervously. “Mr. Russell, sir, the paperwork you requested is-”
“Yes, yes,” George replied, brushing the comment aside with a flick of his fingers. “Now you will excuse us, I’m sure.”
The officer stepped aside and George beckoned Oscar impatiently, clearly eager to depart from this drab cell.
Oscar, not needing to be told twice, shoved his arms into his jacket and snatched up his backpack, hastily following the lawyer out as if the constable might change his mind if he tarried too long. Who was he to question such cosmic luck? Oscar felt fairly sure George Russell was terribly mistaken but he was not going to be the one to inform him of such, not if it meant he was busting out of jail scot-free as a result.
They swept out of the building in the flurry of paperwork, the MPS officers working the desk clearly glad to be rid of the mysterious George Russell, even if he meant he took their prisoner with him. Minutes later and the unusual duo were standing on the wet sidewalk, the harsh fluorescents of the police station illuminating the late night.
“Um,” Oscar announced eloquently.
“Never fear,” George sighed, sliding a ballpoint pen back into his briefcase’s side pocket, “Nothing on record, nothing to be reported back to the university. Can’t say the same for your job, I’m afraid. I’m an attorney, not a magician.”
Oscar swallowed. “I still don’t understand what is happening.”
“Then allow me to clarify.” George replied. “You were caught attempting to relieve a particularly unpleasant man of his wallet. Fortunately for you, our mutual friend had an interest and we made a few calls and exploited a few loopholes, that’s all that really matters.”
Oscar blinked again. “Uh…I’m sorry, I still don’t quite get it.”
George rewarded this honesty with a mildly withering look. “Obviously. Look, I’ve done my part. If Charles insists on adopting strays, that’s up to him.”
Oscar felt heat rise beneath his skin. “Charles? What do you-.”
Before he could manage to finish his sentence, a sleek black car was pulling up to the curb and George was shoving something into Oscar’s hand and swiftly climbing into the backseat.
“Goodnight Oscar. Try to be a bit more subtle next time, will you? And you’re welcome.”
The door slammed shut and the car peeled away into the night, splashing a puddle over Oscar’s sneakers with its departure.
The night air clung damp and metallic against Oscar’s skin as he drifted toward the nearest bus stop almost by instinct, his thoughts too scattered to consider anything else. No expulsion, no prison, not being deported. Mutual friend? Charles? Surely not-no. No way. The city glowed in its usual nocturnal splendor, streetlamps flickering across puddles, taxis nosing through the rain-slick dark. It all felt strangely distant, as though he had slipped one layer sideways from the world he knew.
When the number 11 bus finally wheezed to a halt, Oscar boarded with the slow, automatic motion of someone half-asleep. A handful of late-night stragglers occupied the seats: a woman in a cocktail dress fighting tears into her phone; an elderly man dozing, chin on his chest; a student in a hoodie scribbling frantically in a notebook. Oscar took a seat by the window, the cold glass pressing through his jacket into his shoulder.
Only then did he open his palm and see what George had thrust into his grasp before his dramatic exit.
He looked down. A card, heavy, matte paper and unmistakably expensive, charcoal grey. Embossed across the front in understated black lettering was a name, not George Russell’s as Oscar had expected.
Lewis Hamilton
No title. No firm name. No address.
Just the name.
On the back, in the same delicate, dark font was a phone number.
Oscar turned the card over again, feeling its weight between his fingers. It looked like the sort of thing given to billionaires at private dinners or to discreet intermediaries at silent auctions. He had no idea why he had been trusted with it. Or what it meant for his immediate future.
He pressed his thumb to the corner of the card, testing its sharpness. George had handed it to him with the offhandedness of someone passing a receipt. As though Oscar should already know the implication.
He didn’t.
His weary mind replayed the last hours in disjointed fragments: the security guards gripping his arms, the concrete cell, cold enough to seep into his bones, George Russell entering like some kind of admittedly disdainful angel, making vague statements that Oscar could make no sense of.
Now the card sat in his lap like a sealed fate.
Oscar let his head lean back against the seat and closed his eyes as the bus hissed forward. The night beyond the window blurred into streaks of orange and blue. London breathed around him, unbothered, immense, an eco-system of a city that he was a mere ant within.
Somewhere beneath his exhaustion, something uneasy began to take shape; a feeling not unlike anticipation. Or dread. Or both.
His fingers tightened around the card, holding it as if it might dissolve if he loosened his grip.
He had been saved tonight, plucked from disaster with unearned efficiency. But nobody did something like that for free. And he could not shake the sense that the number scrawled on the back of the card was less an invitation and more a summons. A debt unpaid.
He kept his eyes on the name.
Lewis Hamilton.
The hallway outside his apartment was already a warning. Light spilled through the gap beneath the door in an aggressive, fluorescent stripe, and the bass of some overmixed club track thudded faintly through the wood. Oscar paused, keys in hand, and felt a brief, hopeless wish that for once, he might open the door into silence.
He pushed inside. No such luck.
Noise crashed over him at once. Every lamp in the small living room blazed with the force of an interrogation chamber. Lando and three of his friends sprawled across the sofa and floor in loose heaps, controllers in hand, shouting over one another at the television. The screen flashed with the violent blur of a first-person shooter, neon colors exploding at random as someone yelled triumphantly about headshots.
Open pizza boxes covered the kitchen counter, their cardboard flaps wilted with grease. Half-finished sodas stood sweating on every surface. Someone had knocked over a potted plant, scattering soil across the rug. No one had bothered to pick it up.
Oscar stood there for a moment, too tired to even feel the familiar burn of anger in his chest. His bones ached with the weight of the evening, and the room’s chaos pressed against his skull like a migraine beginning to bloom. All he wanted was quiet. He needed to think. And he needed to sleep.
Lando noticed him belatedly, tipping his head back over the sofa with a sunny grin.
“Hey, mate, you worked tonight? The heater broke again, by the way. Also we’re out of paper towels.”
The greeting was oblivious, utterly unaware of the fact that Oscar was holding himself together by sheer will alone.
Oscar did not answer. He did not trust his voice. He slipped past the cluster of boys, stepping over an abandoned hoodie and an empty crisp packet without comment. Lando was already back to shouting instructions at the game, the moment forgotten.
The bathroom was mercifully empty. Oscar shut the door gently, leaning his forehead against it for a single breath before turning on the shower. Steam filled the room quickly. He peeled off the cater uniform piece by stiff piece, each item carrying the faint smell of anxious sweat and the holding cell’s disinfectant.
The hot water stung at first, then eased something in him. He scrubbed quickly, mechanically, trying not to replay the grip on his wrist or the cold humiliation of the gallery office. He rinsed the grime from his hair, then shut off the water before his thoughts could circle back to the card burning a quiet weight in his pocket where his pants lay crumpled on the floor. .
Within minutes he was in his tiny room, towel drying his hair, pulling on worn-soft sweats and a tee shirt, shutting out the noise of Lando’s living room with the soft click of his door. His bedroom was barely large enough to contain a narrow bed, a desk, and two crooked shelves. The air felt still. Clean. Safe.
He dropped onto the mattress and reached for his phone almost without conscious thought.
The card sat beside him on the blanket. Its gray surface seemed more intimidating here than it had on the bus, as though the simple embossed name carried weight even in the dimness of the room.
Oscar typed Lewis Hamilton into his search bar.
The results were almost insultingly vague. Articles on a philanthropist with no photos. Mentions in financial reports with no context. Rumors on forums about a private figure who funded educational initiatives. No social media. No interviews. No clear identity. Every mention seemed designed to obscure rather than reveal.
He googled the number next.
Nothing. No public listing. No associated names. No registered business. It sat in the digital void with silent self-assurance, a perfect ghost.
Oscar set the phone on his knee, staring at the card again. The lights from the living room still leaked faintly through the bottom of his door, broken by the shadows of people who had no idea his world had begun to tilt.
He touched the card’s embossed letters with the cautious reverence one might give an artifact.
He wouldn’t call it. Not tonight. Not when the evening’s events still smarted, the panic of a ruined life still thrumming in his veins. Tomorrow maybe, when he had righted himself, re-balanced his mind. One step at a time.
Oscar lay back against his thin pillow, pulling the blankets up to his chin and staring at the ceiling as the questions pressed in around him like fog. Sleep hovered somewhere beyond reach, blocked by the enormity of what he did not yet understand.
The card remained in his hand even as his eyes finally drifted shut.