My Formula 1 System

Chapter 695 695: Unaware Father

The Gulfstream was quiet in that expensive, closed-off way private jets always were. Soft leather, dim lights, the low rumble of the engines holding steady beneath the floor. Outside the windows, everything was dark blue and gone.Luca Rennick sat back in a seat that was bigger than he needed, staring at a tablet on the table in front of him. The screen was full of crucial data, but tonight it barely meant anything to him. He was looking at it, but not really seeing it.

He picked up his phone and watched the screen light up his face.

His last call with Isabella had lasted forty-two minutes. It somehow still felt short.

They had talked about London. Her dad's garden. Random little things. The kind of talk people use when they do not know what else to say anymore.

"How are you?"

"I'm fine."

That sort of thing.

Nothing wrong with it, exactly.

That was the problem.

Luca had been feeling it for a while before he could even put a name to it.

Isabella never came out and said anything was wrong. That would have been too easy.

They still talked.

That was the strange part.

Regularly, too, and enough to keep things alive.

Luca had started listening past her words, and that was where he kept finding it. Not anger. Not rejection. Just something held back. Like Isabella was standing right at the door and choosing not to come all the way in.

The biggest thing was where she was.

Dulwich.

He had put that together from their calls. University had already started back up weeks ago, and Isabella was supposed to be there, buried in lectures and books and complaining about her thesis like she always did.

But she was still at her father's place, not moving, not really coming forward. That sat wrong with him.

Isabella was not the type to drift for no reason.

If she was still there, there had to be something under it.

And that was what bothered him most.

Because the distance between them was not just miles.

The miles he could deal with. He could book a flight, clear a day, show up in front of her, hold her hand, look her in the eye.

That part had a fix.

But whatever was going on inside her?

That was harder.

And that was the part he kept running into.

It was an emotional distance, not physical.

Luca had too much running through his head at once.

Career. Contacts. The whole moving beast of Formula One, with its meetings, handshakes, politics, and little games nobody ever admitted to playing.

And then there was the other thing. The one he kept tucked away like a bruise he did not want anybody pressing on. The investigation. The questions. The threads he could not let go of, no matter how much they got in the way of everything else.

He was so busy fixing the world around him that he was becoming blind to the world within her.

That was the trouble.

When he tried to think about Isabella, really think about her, the rest of his life kept cutting in and stealing pieces of him.

Luca could feel it. How he was always almost there, focused, certain, and enough.

But Isabella deserved better than almost.

So he kept telling himself that he would sort it out soon. Not one day. Not after things got easier. Soon. As soon as he could get his mind to stop pulling in three directions at once.

He stared at the blank screen of his phone for a moment, then put it back down.

He would figure her out.

He just needed time.

"Luca? You've been staring at that thing for ten minutes."

Luca blinked and came back to the cabin.

Mallow was across from him, both hands wrapped in that therapy band like he was trying to keep them from falling apart.

Beside him, Vance was bent over a laptop, checking times and notes with that tired face people get when they have to keep everybody else moving.

Usually, the plane felt a bit more alive than this. More like home. Someone talking, somebody eating, maybe Laura somewhere in the mix, and baby Martin making noise for no reason at all.

But those two were absent for this round.

"It's just a business trip," Luca said, but his voice came out rough.

Mallow gave him a look. "Then why do you look like somebody died?"

Luca stared at the dark window for a second.

He had to admit he wasn't even thinking about the coming race anymore or any business trip. He was just thinking about Isabella.

Why was she still in Dulwich? Why did her voice keep sounding like she was standing just behind a door and not opening it? What was she not saying?

His jaw tightened as he looked down at the phone in his hand like it might give him an answer if he stared hard enough.

"Luca?"

"I'm fine. Relax."

"Beats me," Mallow snorted, leaning back.

Going to the Netherlands wasn't even weird. It actually felt like a dream Luca kept having over and over, maybe because he'd been there before.

The next stop on the list for Formula 1 was Zandvoort. It's basically just a really simple skinny road with lots of turns built right into the sand by the ocean. People call it a "giant's track" because of how grueling the corners were to navigate, multiple braking zones, with little chance to get away.

Luca looked out the airplane window at the dark ground. He knew he was headed toward the salty wind of the coast to meet the Orange Army, the nickname for Dutch fans, and he had a strong feeling the majority were Trampos fans as well. Hopefully.

It was going to be another weekend of adrenaline and danger.

But when the lights in the plane went low, he started thinking about Dulwich again.

Even though he was flying toward the future, he felt like his heart was still behind.

There is a big secret in London that Luca Rennick isn't ready for yet.

He closed his eyes, and the engine noise sounded like a clock ticking down.

Soon, his regular life and his feelings were going to crash into each other.

That would be the ultimate test for the Mazerunner.