Chapter 1: Prologue
Notes:
Alas, I finally relieved myself from this brainrot that is a Mafia au of F1.
Heavy inspiration from the John Wick franchise, so if you've watched that, you might catch on abit quicker! Though it's not necessary to do so if you're just here for gangsters and shooty-shooty bang bangs in the F1 2022 grid aesthetic.
Enjoy! Kudos, comments, & feedback are always appreciated!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The Devil of Monté Carlo likes milk with his coffee.
Or, atleast, you think so.
You wonder if it’s a mind game, really— the café au lait has been sitting between the both of you for a while now, untouched, wisps of steam curling into the air. It almost drowns out the smell of the blood drying on your parlour floor.
Almost.
“I apologise for the mess,” he finally says, reaching over to begin pouring the milk. “My brother Arthur is not usually this… careless. At least, not in such an uncommon hour.”
Careless. If careless was barging into your bakery at the dead of night just before lock-up and proceeding to bleed out on your floor screaming bloody murder— you can only imagine what complete recklessness would look like on him. Still, something had possessed you to jump into action regardless, and after you’d unceremoniously shoved the handle of a wooden spoon between his teeth to bite on, you’d managed to staunch out the bulletwound in his side before it could get any worse.
When you’d called for help, however, something had interrupted your line— and Arthur had smiled knowingly through the pain, chirping, “Ah! That would be my brother.”
That was 2 and a half hours ago.
The air still hangs metallic even after he’d been muscled away. If you focus hard enough, you can feel the way the edges of your apron have stiffened with dried blood and flour.
“Will he be okay?” you ask. It’s genuine. Arthur is a regular here, along with his so-called ‘Prema boys!’ They tend to rough-house and make your job just a tiny bit more difficult than it should be sometimes– but as far as you can tell, they’re the few reasons your business is still scraping by. They’re good kids, you reason. Rowdy and with Mafia ties, you realise now, but good kids nonetheless.
“Arthur’s had worse,” is all he says. “Thank you for the concern.”
You try not to dwell too long on what that means.
“My name is Charles Leclerc,” he introduces as he stirs his coffee. “And this is Pierre Gasly.”
He’s mild, almost. Cordial. Every bit the gentleman, but Christ alive, they’re something terrifying— Oozing stellar class in their pressed-suits, broad-shouldered and handsome down to their tipped noses; perfect predators of their kind. Charles is softer looking— not as boyish as his younger brother, no— but not as mean-looking as Pierre either. You note the hint of a cross tattoo peeking the corner of Pierre’s neck and suppose you can mull on the irony of it another day. That is, if you have another day.
“Mademoiselle, with the events that’s happened tonight, we’re inclined to ask you a question—”
“I know who you are.”
A pause. Charles doesn’t flinch, though. If anything, you’d caught his full attention.
“La Confrérie,” you continue. The Brotherhood. The men who govern the streets of Monaco behind-the-scenes, who pull at the strings through shadow networks in just about every big business they have in their pocket. The type of people who’d leave blood in their wake and have it cleared come morning. There’d been a time you thought of them as myths— bedtime stories and an old wives’ tale to scare children off the streets—
And yet here you are on a Tuesday night, sitting across the biggest name of their syndicate: the Leclerc’s, over coffee.
“Well,” Pierre smiles, all teeth and what you read into as faux good-nature. “That saves us time on introductions, then, because we know who you are.”
Something sickening crawls up your spine at the mention of your name. “If you want to buy my silence—”
“Please,” overrides Charles, and your mouth snaps shut. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Pierre here just likes scaring people. I assure you, my family is in your favour now. No harm will come to you.”
“Now, let’s start easy,” he begins, tone tight with business. “How long have you been running this café… Le Paradis, yes?”
Café and boulangerie, you want to correct. “For as long as I can remember,” you say, instead. It’s not much, admittedly, just a quaint little thing, starting itself off as a humble hole-in-a-wall bakery that had been a prime during your father’s time. Now tucked between a gelateria and a tiny park that’s bordered in wrought iron fences, you’re used to all strange sorts of demographics across the board, but the Mafia would be a first. “I basically grew up here.”
Charles eyes the place. It’s whimsical— retains the vintage charm of Monté Carlo back when Papa was still around. He can tell you must’ve changed very little in the interior; the traditional floorings have weathered, and the walls are still kept designed half-tiled and in colourful mosaics that would speak to the earlier locals near the residentials here.
Outside, the window boxes are tended with life and the vines creep up brick and lantern; while the cobblestone street cracks through with wildflowers that spill over from the neighbouring public garden. When the night air blows, he can hear the faint tinkle of the windchimes you’d hung on the branch of a flowering brush that’s overgrown into the arch above the front entrance.
Maman would love the place, surely.
It’s homely– a constant warmth, welcome, smell. It’s no surprise Arthur had spoken so fondly of your business, the place is something straight out of a fairytale.
So are you, too.
From the mismatched roll of your sleeves to the dash of white flour on your cheek, you’re an endearing sight, if Charles could speak candidly; you fit the role of the darling baker of this unravelling, fantastical story almost too well. He’s heard plenty from Arthur and his circular table of Prema miscreants, however: “She’s a quiet little thing, but fearless. Keeps her cards close, and whatnot,” they’d say in passing. “Fierce, too, but in a good way, you know? Respected. ”
Respected, yes. Fierce, maybe. He never had a reason to visit this place until now— he can see the determination in your eyes, the chin-up to keep yourself from looking small. Brave would be a better word to describe you. But fearless? No, Charles is sure you’re going to chew through your lip by the end of the conversation.
“How’s business faring?”
You know where this is going. “It’s seen better days.”
“Word goes that you might shut down soon.”
“Word is word,” comes your sharp reply, to which Pierre had raised his eyebrows from behind his cappuccino, impressed, though still as if to say, watch yourself. You pipe down. “But, yes. There’s competition. I just so happen to be.. losing.”
Charles shrugs. “Coffee is good. Your food is enjoyed by many. You have a beautiful shop. Arthur says you are a well-rounded owner, and I believe him. Why not you make a bigger menu? It would bring the crowd, no?”
You take a moment to answer him. “I would, but I don’t have enough manpower. There are 10 of us in total, half of which aren’t full-timers. Even then, it won’t guarantee customers. Business at this end of town runs naturally slow, if you compare it to the franchises you have at Monté Carlo.”
The subtle dig isn’t lost on them. If they noticed, though, they didn’t seem to act on it. “Allow me to return the favor, then.”
There it is.
“No, thank you. I don’t think it would be a good idea f—”
“I insist,” Charles re-emphasises tightly, shifting to lean close, and the air is suddenly charged with something that has you fighting back the urge to curl in on yourself. You’re given a heavy reminder that there’s no taking no for an answer with the likes of them. “…that you hear out my proposal. Consider it an act of good faith, especially after today.“
You don’t comment.
“So, it’s the people, then? Customers, staff. Perhaps equipment, as well.” It’s less of a question, more an assessment. He gazes at the door that leads into the back of the bakery where the kitchen and bread rooms are. “A baseline amount of legal tender to start you off with, too, and to chase away any interested investors that want to buy this plot, maybe. I’ll have Lorenzo look into it.”
You cut him off. “With all due respect, as much as help is good for me: If half of them are cri—” criminals, you’d wanted to say, “—your people, I’d be putting myself in danger for the rest of my life. I don’t want any part of that.”
“By all means, you’re free to handpick them yourselves if you want,” Charles motions with a non-committal wave. “And like I said, you’re protected, there is no danger.”
“Right, and protected from what, exactly? Or shall I say who?”
Pierre sets his cup down with a frustrated clink. You don’t realise you’ve been sitting upright until you’re shrinking back into your seat at the movement.
“So many questions. You know, the Sicilians have a saying: Cu e surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent'anni 'mpaci.” Pierre translates with ease, “He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years of peace.”
The threat is laid out plain as day. You don’t need to be told twice. And yet— And yet— Stubborn as always, you’re quick to counter him:
“Listen, I never asked for any of this. For protection, or money, or help. It’s your brother who came and barged into my shop. It’s you with the gun in your suit, and it’s you with all the power at the end of the day. This business is my life’s work at stake— my father’s. Now you’re coming here, serving everything to me on a silver platter, and expecting me not to question the deal?”
They blink. Fierce, Charles remembers. Respected.
“Please,” you huff, hating that you were remotely considering all of it in the first place. “I don’t need to know everything, but I deserve to know some things. I deserve to know what I’m getting myself into. Why here? It certainly can’t be convenience— Any businessman worth their salt would have chosen any other outlet on the Allée de la Toussaint, but you settle for the bakery café at the end of it. Why me? And don’t say it’s payment for today.”
“Arthur trusted you,” he says, simply. “I have reason to trust you, as well.”
“Don’t bullshit me.”
Pierre almost laughs.
“You’re right,” Charles admits. “I don’t trust you. But I trust my instinct, always.”
“I could be a spy, for all you know.”
“Believe me, mademoiselle,” Pierre smiles, “If you were, you’d make a terrible one.” But then he willingly continues, much to your surprise, back to the main topic. “The plan…” he slows, trying to find the words in English. “The plan is to consecrate Le Paradis into neutral ground. What that means is that none of La Confrérie, or any other existing gang for that matter, can… spill blood in here. If you understand.”
“Your establishment sits on territory that is advantageous to us. Consecrating it would mean there is complete safety within these walls for all of us.”
You look at Charles, then to the dried blood that’s stuck to your palm. So that’s the play. That’s— that’s the catch for all of this. It’s never just been for you. You’d expected.. God, what did you expect? “Are… You’re making my shop a safehouse for the Mafia? Sorry, not just the Mafia— every other gang that exists? Like the Yakuza?”
“Consecrated establishments exist in every other country, you’re not the first,” Pierre explains patiently.
“And I’m supposed to just, believe that these people— gangsters— follow the rules?”
An undefinable muscle ticked in his jaw. “We’re businessmen. It just so happens that crime is our business. And yes, we follow the rules because we all fall under the same set of code. We’re governed equally.”
“Wh—? Governed by who?”
“Next question.”
“What if someone violates neutral ground?”
“I kill them,” Pierre Gasly says with a horrific ease, and you turn to him only to realise he’s meant every word he’s said so far. “It’s quite literally my job. Technically, my name ranks higher than the Leclerc’s, or any other for that matter.”
Charles just rolls his eyes.
“Are there places in Monté Carlo consecrated?” you ask, though admittedly you’re still trying to wrap your head around the fact that there’s a literal underground society that controls crime syndicates of gangsters, hitmen, and assassins across the world.
“Plenty. Hôtel de Paris is historically the oldest consecrated area in Monaco.”
“And how does anyone know if someone’s broken the rules?” you prod, curious.
“We just do,” Pierre says, nodding to his phone resting on the table. “Trust me when I say this: Everyone will know. And they're dealt accordingly by yours truly.”
You don’t push further than that. Mostly because you couldn’t think of anymore questions, and you guess that the minor details are probably best left in stones unturned if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders. Hell, you probably know too much already.
“And in exchange, you want me to…” you trail off. They hadn’t mentioned any side-job of being an informant or even involving you in any of their, well, livelihood.
“…to bake bread and serve coffee to anyone that steps through your doors,” Charles shakes his head, “Nothing changes.”
“And to maybe ask lesser questions,” Pierre adds pointedly. “The less you know, the better.”
“Just my job. Nothing more, nothing less; ever?” you re-affirm.
Charles nods. “Vous avez ma parole, mademoiselle.”
You have my word, Madame.
You almost laugh. “La parole d’un assassin?”
The word of an assassin?
But it’s Pierre who laughs. “Touché.”
“Can you do it?” says Charles, sounding gentle of all things. It’s almost enough to dispel the anxiety that’s eating its way through your heart, but you know better than to hold onto it.
He’s watching you. Daring you. Waiting for the next piece you’ll move. The finality of the dealings— the resolution. There’s the louder part of you inside your head that tells you to turn tail and run, and then there’s the softer part of you that’s had enough of cutting down costs and laying off workers who had families and mouths to feed. Either way, you had an inkling he’d understand wholly regardless of the choice you made.
But, you’re here, now. The deal is to do your job as usual and to shut up. You can do that. Yeah, you can do that.
The chair shifts when you rise.
You take a breath to steel yourself with newfound determination.
As they stand, you don’t bother to wipe your hand on your apron when you offer it.
“There’s blood on your hands,” Charles says.
“Monsieur Leclerc, with your line of work, I’m sure so do yours.”
Well. That certainly startles a smile out of him.
The smell of blood has long since drifted.
The café au lait is empty.
Charles’ hand meets yours.
And so you settle that the Devil of Monté Carlo does, in-fact, like milk with his coffee.
Notes:
Additional info:
+ The Sicilian quote that Pierre recites is the Oath of Omertà; the code honors loyalty & silence, and is used in Mafia gangs across Southern Italy.
+ As far as I know, Charles doesn't actually like coffee that much; You can probably spin something poetic about that.
Chapter 2: Welcome to the Circu(it)s!
Summary:
Le Paradis is running smoothly. New names have entered the fray.
Meanwhile, a surprise visit to the shop reveals dark secrets between old friends.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Consecration comes in the form of a wax-sealed, silver-edged letter hand delivered by Pierre Gasly himself:
‘ THE EDELWEISS WELCOMES LE PARADIS WITH OPEN ARMS. ’
—reads the missive, and you run your thumb across the embossed floral symbol.
Under the early morning sun, you note that it’s a reflection of the flowers Pierre had brought along to be potted. “You weren’t lying when you said you people were civil ,” you say, confused, flipping the card back and forth. “The… Edelweiss?”
Pierre hums. “You asked who governs us. The Edelweiss are the people who do. If anyone violates any rules, these are the top dogs they’ll be running from.”
The dots of wool-white petals that now cluster your storefront stand out against the shade as you bent to observe them. “For an underground society I was expecting something more… uglier,” you say over your shoulder.
“Well, don’t let looks deceive, because we’re as ugly as they come.”
For the sake of conversation, you don’t comment.
Something buzzes in both of your pockets then. He doesn’t flinch. “That would be the official confirmation.”
It’s the burner phone Charles had given you the day you’d dealt with him. The green screen lights up in a series of numbers– coordinates, you figure, of your establishment– followed by a digital font of ‘...CONSECRATED TO NEUTRAL GROUNDS.’
Pierre is smiling, shark-like, when you look back at him. “Welcome to the Circus, mon amie .”
Arthur Leclerc returns the week later with a cast in his arm, flowers in the other, and a crooked smile with a mouthful of apologies.
“I’m sorry,” he’d rambled, watching you pot the pink carnations into a spare bucket you’d dug out the kitchen. “It’s not fair. I brought this mess to you, and I know how the… discovery of my, lifestyle, can be. If I can take it back, I would.”
“Don’t take it back now,” you’d half-joked, ducking back into the bakery with him. “My business might crumble again without you.”
It’s true. Le Paradis had begun its slow climb following your “mystery meet-cute incident,” as put eloquently by none other than Lando Norris, elbow-deep in the kitchen’s spiral mixer one early weekend. He’s the youngest of your new day shifters, doe-eyed and a quirk to his lips that seemed to attract the morning crowd. You let the comment slide, though— The Brotherhood’s involvement with your bakery had managed to slip past and only become somewhat of a rumour among staff, and you’d given them the chance to leave if they wished.
“I hope they didn’t scare you that night,” Arthur says, sliding into an open seat. “I know my brother is…”
Handsome , you think, instinctively. “Terrifying. Especially Pierre.”
His nose scrunches. “Pierre is a flirt.” Then, with more gentle honesty, “Mean too, but loyal. Pierre has been friends with my brother for as long as I can remember. If he’s behaving like an ass, it’s just his way of protecting people. Don’t mind it.”
“As for my brother,” he continues, tracing his red plaster cast. It’s been vandalised with inappropriate doodles and signatures you’re sure had come from the Prema boys. “He has his moments. But he’s good. Above all else, he’s good .”
You forget about the conversation until another week later, when the shop is brimming with life and the new apprentices bump shoulder-to-shoulder in the remodelled kitchens. Lando scrambles with the shops’ sudden stream of customers at the front counter for days after you’d hired a patissier and introduced a newly-written spring menu, and makes it his purpose to hound the chefs after every shift he has over the french jargon that come with the pastries.
“—honestly find it incredible how long you’ve— ‘scuse me, sorry — survived here in Monaco without a lick of French,” you hear someone say between the thrum of the ovens. It’s Daniel Ricciardo, brushing by fellow apprentices as he ambles over to rinse his hands over the sink. The laugh that bubbles out of you is sudden as you reach for the sieve. “You’re barely fluent yourself .”
“Yeah, but my charm makes up for it, so,” Daniel answers, quick-witted yet lovely— always — and you’re glad for the banter, it feels like you’re making up for lost time since he’d left for work all those years ago.
There had been a time you’d been afraid that he’d harden over the years he’ll spend travelling, but then he had arrived at your doorstep some years later, bright and shining, a personalised 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon in hand, and it was like seeing the sun again— because it was , when it comes to Daniel of all people— and everything had fallen perfectly back into place just as it used to when you were teenagers.
“Hold on, I thought Chef and Danny grew up together?” chimes Amelie, Le Paradis’ resident barista, from her spot at the staff meal table. “And Lando, what’re you doing back here?”
He has the grace to look sheepish as he shuffles to sit across her. “The newbie’s out front— don’t give me that look, Ame— It’s a slow day today. Besides, we’re closing soon to prep for afternoon service. Is that rice?”
“Bibingka ,” interjects pastry-chef Riel in fluent Filipino, who was the same person responsible for coming up with the seasonal menus, before pinching off a piece from Amelie’s lunchbox. “It’s glutinous rice; And also, yes, but Danny left for.. What was it again, Chef? Military?”
One of the prep-cooks gawk. “You’re a military man?”
“Well, I prefer decorated war-hero, but sure,” he jokes, drying his palms against his apron, and had it been anyone else but you, they wouldn’t have noticed the sudden tension in his hands— the same way no one had noticed the old scars he’d hidden under the myriad of tattoos and haunts that he’d brought along with him in his years of unnamed tours of duty. (Danny doesn’t talk about it, so you never ask. He’s glad.)
“Alright, back to work,” you instruct, if only to move the conversation elsewhere. “Riel, check on the madeleines for me, would you? Thanks— and Lando, back to the cashier, please. I don’t want us getting robbed in broad daylight.”
“I hardly believe the old lady would get that far in her Vespa,” he remarks off-handedly, “Besides, no one would rob a Mafioso.”
“Lando Norris ,” you hiss, just as the kitchen doors swing close behind him and someone cries, “Boss is a mafioso?!”
To which you’d huffed out a curt: “For the last time, no, I’m not.”
Enter Charles Leclerc with his impeccable timing.
Now, he’s not exactly sure what divine force had possessed him to come here, really. He could have easily found company by visiting Arthur at the academy, or sailed off the shores of Port Hercule with Lorenzo or Pierre. He’d had a rough day, to say the least; What with the other gangs beginning to creep back into Italy and France for talks , by which usually means: informal chit-chat and gossip on the upcoming Edelweiss Coronation over expensive champagne, all while they held semi-metaphorical pistols aimed at each other underneath the table, and skirted around the real topic of territory feuds and business settlements like a pack of wolves.
He had complained to Pierre, as usual, of the masquerading and filtering of words he’d had to do. In their society, truth and honesty are few and far inbetween.
Huh. Honesty .
Perhaps that’s the divine force that carried him to you.
A one-woman army who seems to have no qualms in baring her teeth and exposing her throat to the Devil of Monté Carlo, of all people. Someone who speaks their mind, despite their fear.
The shop door is stopped open by a bucket of droopy pink flowers when he gets there, in favour of the spring breeze, he supposes, to carry the scent of sugar and bread down the street just where he’d parked. When he enters, his eyes are quick to search for you, though they land on a boy who looked to be just a few years off Arthur, and greet him instead.
“Is the owner in?” Charles asks, and when he names you for good measure, there’d been a pause too quick for him to study.
“Yeah,” the boy says, shrugging, and disappears into the back. Charles couldn’t think much of it, though. The doors had swung, and he caught a glimpse of you inside, metal bowl sidled at your hip, waving a sieve pointedly at someone across the room— and his thoughts had dissolved into the air.
It takes a few minutes until you appear. Charles patiently watches you shoo off another worker at the other end of the counter in brief conversation before making your way towards him, eyes narrowing. “What are you doing here?”
The abrasiveness is fitting, considering it’s not just the two of you now. No, now you have your people to protect too, and Charles is certainly bright enough to understand his unannounced visit would be an invitation to get your claws out. “Well,” he says, “What do your customers come here for?”
You humour him. “Bread, usually. And rest.” Then, Charles watches you bump through the counter door with a squeak and begin closing up service, much to his amusement, and move around to cover the loaves displayed at the windows with linen cloth, acting as if you didn’t have a mob boss standing in wait just a few paces away.
“Then what else could I possibly be here for other than bread and rest?”
“Trouble,” comes your quick reply, and you’re half-glad you can’t witness his reaction to your answer. You have your hand against the doorframe as you toe the bucket of carnations away and turn the opening-times sign outwards. “Usually,” you mumble as a final afterthought, peering out the door before clicking it shut.
“You know,” he starts, conceding you with a tilt to his head, like he was piecing together a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. “Usually, not a lot of people are comfortable with turning their back towards me. Neither are they so… honest.”
When you turn to look at him, properly now, he’s settled back into a seat facing the shopdoor, legs crossed wide where his ankle rests on his left knee. He has a look on his face you can’t quite decipher. Curiosity, perhaps. The burn of his gaze feels like a permanent brand on your skin. It’s intimidating.
“Not to your face, I’m sure,” you say, before reeling back with, “Monsieur.”
“Please, Charles is fine,” he says, after you box a fresh batch of creme-filled choux pastries and set it to the table. It’s Arthur’s favourite. You take your seat across him, where you can see past the frontcounter and to the kitchen doors.
“Charles.” His name rolls off your tongue like honey, tastes sweeter than you’d wanted it to. “Rough day?”
“That obvious?”
“Terribly,” you say, even though he doesn’t look a hair out of place, and you’re sure he knows it too. He’s forgone his suit jacket, and left his white button-down tucked loose with neatly folded sleeves. Charles looks strikingly different under the afternoon sun. The light catches the blue-green of his eyes, and he looks… at ease. Content, almost. You try not to stare.
“Could say the same for you.”
That shoots a sudden, violent awareness of the state you must be in. Powdered sugar on your fingertips, strands sweeping loose from the usual tuck behind your ear, and a grease-stained apron to top it all off with. “I work hard,” you hum, trying to tamp down the barb of insecurity as you rub the dust of white off the corner of your nails.
“Are you implying I don’t?” he says.
“No, but you sure as hell have it easier than I do.”
For a moment, the whole bakery is suspended in a hush, frozen in glacial stillness; Nothing but the wind chimes pealing muffled outdoors, and the faint chatter coming from the bread rooms. You wonder if you’ve taken a step too far.
And then it’s broken with a quiet, huff of laughter. Charles smiles for the first time that day; the genuine kind, where it dimples deep into his cheeks, and he has to turn away to collect himself.
Christ, it sends your heart stumbling.
It’s hard to imagine that this is the Monté Carlo Devil. This is the head of Monaco’s most feared gangs to exist. That he battles with troubles and sought company like anybody else had strangely enough been overlooked by your… fear? Expectation? Whatever it is— the idea had seemed alien to you. It almost feels wrong to see, like you’ve peeked through the curtains of the stage play too early. Sitting here, radiant in the 2pm sun, Charles Leclerc suddenly looks so… human.
“Business is business,” he hums, and though the thread of laughter has faded in his voice, it still rings clear as day in your head. “You know how it can be.”
“I think our definitions of business are vastly different.”
He tilts his head in challenge, gaze shard-sharp. “Is it? We both wake up to earn a living and do it by getting our hands dirty. I’d say you and I are more similar than most.”
“Well, I enjoy my work here—”
“Who says I didn’t?”
There’s an implication there that sends a chill down your spine. The remark at the back of your throat dies down as quickly as it had come. It’s just as easy to forget that Charles is a crimeboss as much as it’s easy to forget he’s just a man. “Agree to disagree, then.”
His eyebrows raise.
You follow suit.
“You don’t seem the type to back down from a fight.”
“Sometimes I can compromise,” you counter. “Besides, I’d hardly call this—” Charles watches you gesture between the both of you, “—a fight.”
“And what would you call it then?”
“It’s…” you trail off, searching for the right word. “Banter, debate. A conversation between…”
Between... what, exactly? Business owners? Acquaintances? You’re hardly strangers nor friends— this is the second, proper time you’ve met Charles, and yet you find it’s the word that’s perched on the tip of your tongue, even if it isn’t fitting for whatever this fleeting interaction is you’re sharing with him.
Friends. With the Devil himself. And worse, according to local legend.
The conversation is cut short before you can even answer, however. With the wide swing of the kitchen doors, comes the quick slip of impassiveness back onto Charles— and the room simmers in tension again when everyone’s gazes meet.
You pause. Eyes dart between Charles, and–
“Daniel,” he says, a hint of surprise.
What the hell?
The Australian blinks. “…Well, long time no see, Charlie.”
And so you learn that your bakery apprentice Daniel Ricciardo, is also, in fact, a hitman.
“Are you fucking insane?!”
“Oh, no, no, no, don’t turn this on me, Danny!” you snap, once you’ve reached out of earshot from the pastry kitchens. “You told me you were in the military—”
“What’re you doing with Charles Leclerc!”
“—so how the hell are you connected with the Mafia?”
“How the hell is a baker?” he hisses, fingers pinching the high bridge of his nose into a deep-set frown. He’s practically worn a hole down the back-alley of the shop as he paces. “You— Listen. Listen to me.”
“This is stupid, so stupid, Danny. How long have you been lying to me?”
“Woah, hey!” he stops you short with a pointed hand, “I have never lied to you.”
“Never,” he repeats. “And I’m not about to start now. It’s just—”
He runs a hand down his face. The faded scars on his knuckles and arms have never been this much of a point of interest to you until now; had he worked for the mafia too? Or another gang? You think on the 2 spots of white scar tissue you’d caught once on his side— the entry and exit wound of a bullet— and wonder, maybe, if it had been Charles or Pierre, that had shot him.
“I was in the military,” he explains, “And when… when you get good, calls are made. Then they move you around. They put me under some, security detail, and it was.. it was for specific people, and they make you protect them, and..”
Kill for them. He doesn’t say. You connect the dots yourself.
“You said you were on some sabbatical .”
“I am!” he insists, when he hears the disbelief in your voice. “I… I found an out, and I—“ a pause. “I hid for as long as I could until I knew it was safe. Fuck, and now— now, you? With the Italian fucking Mafia? They’ve got a whole syndicate! They run in a society!”
“It was an accident,” you begin, white hot flame licking at your words. “Christ, I didn’t choose to meet them.”
He snaps your name so quickly you jerk away. “You think I chose back then?!”
“You know that’s not what I meant, Danny.”
Something distant clatters in the kitchen. It does little to distract the both of you from the heat of your argument.
“I lost friends getting out. I don’t want to—” he wavers, and lets out a frustrated sigh. “These people… especially Charles, he’s always ten steps, hell— a lap ahead in everything he does. Every word he says, every act he pulls, has its reasons. He’s got strings attached to every goddamn crime and force out there that’s enough to stage a fucking puppet show out of anyone he wishes. What makes you think meeting him of all people was an accident?
“Those stories you hear? They don’t call him that for nothing. They come from somewhere. It’s reputation. Calling him the Monté Carlo Devil is exactly who he is— He earned that title because he single-handedly ended an entire bloodline from Suzuka after someone crossed him. He murdered families. Innocents. Yeah, Charles is charming, and kind, and plays nicer than the others, but so can the fuckin’ Devil.”
Then, finally, “He isn’t good, alright? He isn’t.”
Arthur’s words suddenly taste like ash on your tongue. ‘— he’s good. Above all else, he’s good.’
It shouldn’t have been that damning to you. You’ve heard iterations of the stories yourself, but hearing it from Danny has you spiralling back from… wherever it is your head had gone. Charles had charmed you with the promise of good faith. He’d weaselled his way into your life in a matter of weeks, and now you’re neck-deep, terrified again, just like what had happened with Danny. Sooner or later you might be drowning in blood just like he did, too.
“I’m not trying to scare you, okay? But when you meet people out there, when you’ve seen what I’ve seen— what they do? They’re heartless. People can turn on you in an instant. And all it takes is a bullet .”
There’s a crack in his voice he shakes off. It slows you down considerably as you watch him sit down on the curb to collect himself. “Sorry,” he speaks after awhile, “Didn’t mean t’ shout.”
“I know.” Quarrels like these never lasted between you two anyways. “I’m sorry, too.” You settle down beside him and take his hand in yours. He would have picked right through his callouses if you hadn’t. “What were their names?”
It takes a minute for him to answer. “Their call-signs were Val, and K-Mag. They were the quietest, most stubborn, hard-headed assholes I’ve ever met.” There’s a laugh somewhere between. “K-Mag was considered the squad Viking. And Val had a pet reindeer at one point. Yeah. They were good people.”
Were.
“And yours?”
“It was Honey Badger,” Danny snorts. "Long story." He dips his head into a laugh, and now you’re smiling too. “Hey, does this mean I’m fired?”
“God, no. I’ll need a James Bond on my side.”
“Nah, I’m way cooler than him,” he says, then casts a serious glance your way. You're distant. “You know I’ll never let anything happen to you, right? What is it?”
“When you said they moved you around, that you didn’t have a choice. Was it with..?”
“No,” Danny shakes his head. “I was indentured. It’s Charles who got me out. I owe him.”
Daniel owes Charles. That sends another blood-chilling whirl of thoughts. “Indentured to who?”
“The Red Herd.” His tone is unexpectedly scathing. “They call themselves Red Bulls .”
Notes:
Max Verstappen makes his entrance first thing in the next chapter!
Do await for the LeStappen rivalry, folks.
Also, yes, subtle hints to RBR and their terrible treatment.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed <3
Chapter 3: The Wolves' Carnival
Summary:
The Schumacher Coronation is in full swing. Ofcourse, everything goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
You meet Max Verstappen on a slow Saturday morning.
The first thing that you notice is that he looks like trouble. He’s all hard edges and sharp lines, from the square of his jaw down to the croaking way he speaks as he seeks you out specifically to introduce himself— pointed, demanding, jagged.
You’d be lying if you said you weren’t intimidated.
Blue eyes flit around the shop. Accosting. Conceding. Hills, manning the cashier, is sent away by the time he approaches the counter.
“Lovely shop,” he smiles. It’s deceivingly civil. “Simply lovely.”
“Thank you.” Your lips are upturned thin. Had he been any other average customer, you would have taken the time of the day to entertain him. But this was the man who sat at the head of the RedBulls, almost as large as the Italian Mafia, alongside his tyrant father, controlling an army of members across the Netherlands responsible for taking the lives of almost anyone they desired and getting away with it by presence alone. “How may I help you?”
“A little birdie told me an old friend of mine works here.” If your blood hadn’t already been frozen, it is now.
“What’s his name?”
“Daniel,” he says, easily, then adds, “Ricciardo. Tall. Australian. Tends to stick his big nose in places where it shouldn’t be.”
“We don’t have a Daniel here.” You make a show of clicking a pen and pulling out a spare napkin to write on. “If he’s a regular customer, I could put in a word for you.”
Max cocks his head. You try not to recede. He knows you’re lying. You’re stretching your luck here, protecting Danny. But you’d do whatever it takes to protect the life he’d wanted for so long.
He scans you from the counter and down to the kitchen doors. “Would your staff say the same?”
His words are direct. But so are you. “Yes. You could search this place if you want, even, but you’d have to get a warrant.”
There’s a pause as Max takes you in. “I wouldn’t need one,” he chuckles. “And I think you know this. I think you know me.”
I know Mad Max, you hold back. I know you and the RedBulls indentured Danny and forced his hand to the trigger against hundreds. “Not enough to know what kind of coffee you take with your bread, unfortunately.”
He laughs. It sounds like roughstone. You want to reach for the burner phone that sits in your back pocket. Who would you contact anyway? Daniel is out of the question. Arthur? You’d put him in danger. Charles? Pierre? Would they bother? You stand in Consecrated grounds, after all— by default, you’re practically untouchable.
“I don’t like coffee.”
“Shame,” you say, trying to keep your customer-service voice still. “Would you like to try tea?”
He ignores you. “I heard there was a shooting in the area.”
That sharpens something in you. No harm should come to the Prema boys, so long as you stand. “Seems like you hear a lot from your little birds.”
“Well, in some ways I can say I’m a Prince. Just not the charming kind,” he hums, and you stand your ground as he inches closer over the counter. “Now answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask me anything, Sir.”
Max’s face twists. He makes a noise crossed between a huff and a scoff. “Don’t think th—”
The air practically shifts.
You’ve come to learn only one person has that effect.
Max doesn’t even turn over his shoulder. His gaze is still hawk-like on you. “Speak of the Monte-Carlo Devil.”
Some part of you feels relieved. You drown it out. The last time you had 2 gang members in your bakery, you’d been thrust into a world not meant for the likes of you.
Charles doesn’t acknowledge you even as he orders his coffee. “Take your business elsewhere, Verstappen.”
Max breaks into an unflinching smile. “So much for hospitality. You know, I came to see a familiar face, but he couldn’t make it today. I guess I have to settle for you.”
Charles’ gaze hardens ice-cold. “Daniel isn’t here. He left that life long ago.”
“Yes, unfortunately, thanks to you. But we of all people would know you can’t just step out this life once you’re in,” he turns to refer you with a nod, as if to remind you of how you’re not out of the woods with him yet, “I’m quite shocked the Brotherhood didn’t take him when they had the chance— Daniel’s a perfect shot in just about anything that shoots.”
“You should leave, Verstappen,” Charles bites, lightning-quick to pull the Dutchman’s attention from you. “Remember, you’re in Monaco.”
Max lets out a carefree laugh at the assertion. “Are you threatening me, on Consecrated grounds?”
“Depends. Are words all it takes to threaten you?”
Something passes between them. It’s almost familial. He’d shared the same look with Pierre, just more… hostile.
Another customer rings into the shop, thankfully, and you slide Charles’ coffee across the counter. “On the house,” you say, stiff and with new found sharpness as you turn to Max. “Now if you’re not going to order anything, Sir, you’re holding the line. Merci.”
Max doesn’t flinch, but Charles can see the narrow of his eyes. The Monégasque reaches for his cup and settles into his seat. “Godspeed.”
The Dutchman huffs in assent. “I’ll see you at the Coronation then, Charles. Godspeed.”
Then he steps out to the Spring season, away from sight.
And Charles stays.
He stays in his seat until the end of your shift. Until the afternoon sun had sunken and the breadrooms were stocked for tomorrow, and you were the last to close up shop. He’d stayed to make sure no one else had come to bother you, and paid his order with a tip he didn’t let you argue over.
“Why did you stay?” you ask, when you're ready to lock the doors.
“I wanted to keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t need protection," you insist.
He understands what you mean. “I know.”
“If anything, seeing you puts me on edge, sometimes.”
“Only sometimes? Should I take that as a compliment?”
You almost smile. Charles catches it.
You stop at the threshold of your bakery doors. Funny how one step across of it can dictate the rules of your life. You think back on Daniel, the hardness in his eyes when he’d told you that all of it— horror stories of the Monté-Carlo Devil— were true.
Charles glances to your feet at the doors, then back to you. You’ve hesitated. “No one will hurt you.”
“Maybe not just anyone. But, I’ve heard stories about Verstappen.” I’ve heard stories about you.
Charles laughs. “Max Verstappen won’t kill you.”
“How come?”
“Because then no one will be around to bake bread, mon ange,” he says, and the way he’d called you that had come so smoothly to him— as if it’s the most simplest truth alive. “And the Dutch are very fond of their bread.”
He opens his palm in invitation for you to take it.
It takes him another second to realise that you won’t.
You breathe out. The air is chilly.
“Goodnight, Charles.”
He blinks, slowly. Then he lets his hand drift back down to his side and into his pocket. Charles had known you were scared— he hadn’t realised you might truly be scared of him too. If Daniel had warned you of him, well. He could hardly blame the man.
“Bonne nuit,” he smiles. You notice his dimples don’t dig in.
Pierre comes with a proposition the next time you see him, and you nearly drop a tray-load of choquettes when you hear it.
“I need a date.”
You’re stunned into place. “First of all, that’s not how you ask someone,” and you must have sounded sharp, or perhaps he’d simply never been put in his place so blatantly before, because his brows had shot up to his hairline, “Second of all, no. Third of all: is this to that coronation?”
“It is,” he says, completely ignoring your second statement. “It’s not assassin-exclusive, if that’s what you’re wondering. There are your kind,” he jokes with emphasis.
“My kind.”
“Yes. Businessmen and families and civilians.”
“With ties to the mafia,” you finish with a clink of your tray down the counter. The room lights alive with the smell of warm sugar and crust as you begin to stock the empty glass display by the cashier.
“Exactly what I said,” he agrees, as he reaches for a pastry. You swat his hand away.
“No.”
“No to the date or no to the choquettes?”
Your disdain is evident. “Both. Why even pick me?”
“Would it be so wrong to treat a pretty lady like you?”
There’s dead silence.
Pierre has some… stare on his face, like he’s just said the most suave thing known to man.
Christ.
The laugh that punches out of you is sudden as a snap, and you watch as his face drops. “Sorry! Sorry— just, wow, does that work on all the girls you’ve charmed?”
He narrows his eyes in realisation. “Arthur. What did he say about me?”
“Mainly that you’re a flirt. You didn’t answer my question.”
“Well,” he snorts, “Usually.”
You’re laughing again. There’s an air to you that Pierre finally recognises is what Charles had been so hung up about. “Just come with me. You’ve been working your ass off for years. Don’t you want to spend time out this bakery?”
“You told me the less I know the better.”
“It’s just a formal event, as far as you know.”
He’d hit the nail on the head at that one. Not that you’re complaining— running this bakery was like second nature to you, and you enjoyed your lifestyle— but a break is nice every once in awhile. “I can’t just leave my staff—”
“By the end of the night, Le Paradis will receive an anonymous donation that’s enough to send your staff home over the weekend for a much needed break.”
An unimpressed snort. “You can’t just pay your way to everything.”
“You’re considering, though.”
“Because I’m a business woman in a capitalist world,” you counter, wiping your hands across your apron. “Also, I hate that it sounds like you’re… buying me.”
Pierre visibly scrunches his nose at that. “Mon dieu, non,” he says, dead-serious. “No one is buying anyone. This is a negotiation, that’s all.”
“You can’t buy time.”
“I beg to differ; I just did.”
“I didn’t agree.”
“Then agree,” he cocks his head. “Think of it as a business deal, and not a date. I pay the loss you’d incur over the weekend, and in return you spend time out of this place.”
A break sounds delicious. Staff would appreciate it too. “I don’t… dance.”
“That’s the least of your concerns.”
“Fine. I don’t have a dress.”
“I expected that,” he shrugs, and smiles at the affronted look on your face. “It’s handled.”
“I’ll settle on triple,” you bargain.
Pierre rolls his eyes. “Triple.”
You slide the tray close to him as some semblance of a closed deal. With a wink, he reaches for a piece, and just before he exits the threshold of Le Paradis’ door, says, with alarming nonchalance, “I’ll pick you up after your shift!”
“When a— wait, what?”
You’re in Paris by 9pm.
Paris. The City of Light. In France. On the same, exact day.
What the fuck?
He’d asked you to be ready— and really, you thought you were, but Pierre is a bag of cats you could never quite predict— and the next thing you know you’re being whisked away from Monaco, served an overpriced champagne in a private jet to his name over the cities of France, with nothing on you except your phone, wallet, and a sugar-coated apron, before being driven through the bustling cobblestone streets of the fucking Avenue Montaigne, and passing the Arc de Triomphe along the way as if it was just another Friday for him.
It probably is.
“Welcome, Madame,” someone says, and then, in higher regard, “Gasly. I hope I’m not in any trouble?”
Right. Pierre had sauntered you past wide-eyed Parisians and into what you could only guess was a highly prolific studio (“It’s not closed, mon amie. This business runs on a waiting list that reaches up to years, that’s why they’re staring. Now close your mouth, you’ll catch flies.”)— just before the both of you had entered the looming establishment, you’d spotted the familiar white of Edelweiss flowers potted by the marble portico entrance, bright against the night.
The foyer feels open but private, with the doors facing south of the Avenue. Around you, Haute-couture dresses and damask-silk clothing are draped and displayed in elaborate fashion on faceless mannequins, surrounded by ivory veneer floors, red-beamed walls and modern wood partition screens.
Behind the counter, a traditional chinese ink painting takes up the entire wall, vast; alongside scripture, there depicts the low prowl of a striped tiger amongst brushstroke blades of grass on a hill, teeth bared and eyes glaring as you enter. It watches wherever you go.
“Zhou,” Pierre greets in return, “You hardly ever get into trouble.”
He’s a regal thing. Zhou steps over a veil of fabric he’s fiddling with to meet you halfway; he has high shoulders in his even higher-fashion patterned clothing, tailors tape coiled around his wrist, peering at you with a curious gaze. He’s no Verstappen, though— Zhou’s presence is unexpectedly welcoming.
“You, however,” Pierre’s voice tightens, and for a moment you thought he’d been referring to you, but his sight had zeroed in on someone off to the right, exiting the changing room in a click of heels. “You are trouble itself.”
“Oh, don’t flirt,” she lilts. The woman is dressed in a floral sun-dress that ruffles at her heel-clasped ankles. “Pierre. Long time no see.”
“Not that fancy seeing you here, Lily. How is that prize on your head?”
“One million dollars and counting.” Pierre hears her laugh, because of course she does. Only Lily Muni He, head of one of the Triads, the leading Asian gangs of their syndicate that’s been controlling cartels, would find not fear at the prospect of being blacklisted to be hunted, but laugh at the face of it. “Think I’d hit four one day?”
“In your dreams, Ms. He.”
Their fond banter ends there. Lily has spotted you, now. “You must be the baker? I hope Pierre didn’t tarnish my reputation. I promise I’m nicer than what everyone makes me out to be. ”
Pierre goes out of his way to make a face, but doesn’t say anything. Despite her criminal connections, Lily is an honest worker (as honest as their industry gets, atleast), a better friend, and an even better businesswoman. He respected her leadership. Many do, and rightfully so. It’s no surprise no one has taken on the bounty. Only a fool would dare try.
You flounder as you introduce your name. “Yes, I’m.. new to all this, so no worries on impressions. Pierre left a terrible one and still I find myself here.”
“Here for a fitting before the coronation! You must be Pierre’s plus-one.” She’s clapping now, sleeves billowing in excitement as she spins on her heel to Zhou. They share a brief exchange in mandarin, before she looks back at you with kind eyes. “If you don’t mind, I’d love to help you out. I promise I won't bite.”
“I will not either, not unless I have to,” Zhou jokes. (Doesn’t feel like it, though. The burning glare of the painted tiger suddenly feels intentional.)
Pierre raises an eyebrow. “No one is biting anyone. And she’s not exactly my date, Lily.”
You blink in confusion. Before you can question him, however, he continues:
“Cavallino Rampante vous envoie ses salutations.”
The Prancing Horse sends its regards.
Lily seizes. Zhou’s eyes flit to you in surprise.
In the corner of the room, an incense burner coils sweet-scented wisps of Sandalwood into the quiet air.
“The Brotherhood,” Zhou assents, slowly piecing things together. There’s a thread of nerves in his voice. It’s been a while since the Leclerc’s have shown their face for functions like these. The last he’d seen Charles and his brothers, they’d been dressed in coal black, phantom-like and stone-faced amongst hordes of roses and hydrangeas. That had been Jules’ funeral, many years ago.
“Wait, where are you going?” you start, voice unsteady, when you see Pierre step away with his phone back in hand. Lily is already ushering you into a fitting room while Zhou trails ahead. “Godspeed,” they say to Pierre.
“I will be back soon. Don’t step out of this establishment, and if you do, take Lily with you.” Pierre’s halfway out the frosted doors, nose into his phone and typing quickly. He looks uncharacteristically concerned. “I’m just going to have a coffee break with a friend.”
The doors shut, and you’re left alone in Paris.
“That was your excuse?” says Nyck De Vries, upon meeting up with Pierre for said mentioned coffee-break-with-a-friend. “If you were gonna lie atleast make it convincing.”
”I don’t lie. Are we not having coffee right now?”
“You could have at least said best friend.”
“Like I said, I don’t lie.”
The Dutchman ignores the jab. “Yeah, which is why they sent me to do espionage,” he huffs. Playing spy for the Edelweiss on the Silver Arrows had been hard enough, but then they’d roped in the RedBulls, and told him to keep an ear out for other gangs too. Which leads them to their main problem.
Nyck inhales, deep, then exhales. “He’s missing.”
Fuck.
That’s Pierre’s instant thought. And then: how the fuck do you lose track of a killer like that? Before finally settling on something worthwhile: “Tell me the fucking RedBulls are aware.”
“Thankfully, yes,” Nyck answers, but it does little to dispel their dread. “Horner’s tried to keep it under wraps, says he’ll inform the Edelweiss only when absolutely necessary.”
It’s a logical move. The Redbulls wouldn’t have to answer to the Edelweiss if they catch their little fugitive in time before it’s revealed they’d basically mislaid one of the most deadliest assassins in history. Except Nyck has found out— because he’s the man for every job and penetratingly clever— and now so does Pierre. It’s quite possible there are other leaks already; information this fortuitous is hardly ever airtight in this line of work.
“When did you learn this?”
“Two days ago. I reckon Redbull’s been sitting on it for months, though.” There’s a pause. “You think he’ll be coming after Schumacher?”
“No,” says Pierre, confidently, alreadying fishing out his phone to sort out a meeting with a handful of Edelweiss representatives. “The Schumachers are like family to him. If anything, he’d come just to watch the Coronation.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’ll use it as cover to go after somebody else.”
Fuck, he thinks, again— though this time in the chilly Venetian air, when the day of the Coronation has finally rolled over, and he’s halfway up the ancient Italian steps of the Gran Teatro La Fenice, and he’d come face-to-face with his old friend. He hadn’t told Charles yet of what may transpire out of tonight’s events; he isn’t allowed to, is the right way to put it, but Pierre doesn’t like excuses.
He also hadn’t yet informed him that he’d brought you along to be Charles’ date, but Pierre has bigger fish to fry than a little tantrum— like making sure everybody comes out alive by the end of the night.
He hadn’t needed to introduce you, however. You sweep up just a few minutes behind, with Lily in tow.
You’re first out of the Ferrari Roma— a statuesque creature draped in red satin, ears crowned with diamonds and lips painted rouge, stepping out in heels and looking like you’re something out of a God-sent vision when the golden hour hits you just right. Somehow, someway, despite being completely out of your element, you carry yourself steadily as if you belong, like you aren’t just a rabbit in disguise, standing amongst old-money-wolves in this high-society carnevale they call a lifestyle.
Charles watches, from where he stands, thinks, Jesus, Mary and all the Saints; no human should be allowed to be this beautiful, and then, when he’d finally gathered himself, turned to Pierre with a glance that roughly translated to: What the ever-loving hell is she doing here?
(To which Pierre had promptly ignored him, which in hindsight had been a good decision, because Charles isn’t quite sure how he would have handled any remark from that damned Frenchman/Wingman he calls a friend.)
He calls your name, offers his hand.
You blink up at him through long lashes. For a moment, he thinks you’ll deny him, again.
But then he feels your touch, feather-light, and it feels a lot like the paper-thin nature of trust.
An indecipherable weight lifts from his shoulders as you take his hand, let him guide you up the stone stairs and into the foyer, tucked close to his side and standing tall as you weave through the curious, watchful gazes of aristocrats all the way up to the Sala Grande de Ballo.
“They’ll stare, so just keep your chin up,” Lily had advised you days ago during your fitting, and when you’d asked why, Zhou had been the one to answer mid-measurement over your shoulders. “Because Charles is always alone.”
“Well, what do I say?” you’d said, “If people talk to me.”
Lily, idly carding through the hangers of gowns, let’s out a laugh. “With him by your side, no one would dare come up to you.”
He tells you you're beautiful, when you both have drinks in hand.
The compliment settles warmly in your cheeks. You hide behind a sip of champagne. “I must look like a tourist.” You’ve been unable to stop staring at the display of centuries-old art crawling across the ceilings. “I thought there was only a theatre, here.”
“I can bring you there if you’d like,” he cants his head to the exit, but you shake your head.
Charles is handsome. The cut of his suit is fitting and severe, painting him in all kinds of angles that keep your eyes wandering from the top of his neatly-kempt hair down to the polished oxfords clicking against the tiled floor. The bright symbol of a prancing horse pinned to the lapel of his jacket matches his signet ring.
“I have no idea why I’m even here, if I’m being honest.”
Neither do I, he doesn’t say. Normally he wouldn’t think too much of it, but Pierre had gone out of his way to tell him to Keep her close, Calamar, and in uncharacteristic fashion, glided past him before Charles could press the matter. “I’m glad you came,” he says instead, because it’s the truth, and truth comes easily to him. “Is Lily your partner-in-crime, now?”
The choice of words don’t get lost on you as you smile. “She’s an angel.”
“She once beheaded a man to prove a point.”
“He was being racist,” you add, remembering Lily’s personal recount of the story. (It had to do with her heritage being questioned, and undermining her abilities as a woman. Lily had fortunately spared the gore from you.) “So my point still stands. She took the time to help me prepare for… all of this.”
“Prepare is a funny word,” Charles says, and when you turn to him, confused, you find he has a glint in his eye. “Is the 9-millimetre strapped to your thigh one of Zhou’s latest designs, then?”
Your mouth opens, then closes. You must have thought he wouldn’t notice. It makes Charles smile, which makes you smile. “I– She,” your words catch, and you let out a sheepish laugh. “It was Lily’s idea to hide one. Occupational hazard, she said.”
He places a glass on a passing waiter’s tray, grabs another. “Do you know how to shoot?” From the corner of his eye, Nyck De Vries trails by the Yakuza representatives with a weary smile, and disappears off to a stairwell. Yuki Tsunoda is nowhere to be found. Charles thinks it won’t be the last he’ll see the Japanese clans.
“Danny taught me the basics,” you answer. That had been a short, Melbourne-campfire sometime in January— one of the rarer times when the Australian was willing to open up on the darker details of his duty tours. “He said that shooting was the easiest part.”
“And the difficult part?”
“Bringing yourself to do it.”
Charles hums.
He finds himself antsy before the hour has even passed. Call it instinct.
Banter has carried into the evening, and the Prema! boys latch onto you like an elder sister the moment they’d spotted you in the crowd. There’s a lot less rough-housing now that they’re dressed in Italian suits, but the quips and yaps don’t end. It’s Ollie and Arthur who you seem most familiar with, though. Charles can see the anxiety roll away once you slip back into well-known territory as you converse, giving him another chance to admire you, and another to survey the ballroom. Pierre is still missing. Something doesn’t feel right.
“...nge in schedule, I heard.”
Charles blinks. “Change in the schedule?”
“Yeah,” says Dennis. He has a red bull insignia pinned to his jacket, “They’re rushing the coronation ahead. It’s why the food isn’t out yet. Dinner comes directly after.”
Strange. “Why?”
The boys shrug. Charles downs his champagne, pulls out his phone to send a text to Pierre.
But there’s still no sign of him 20 minutes later, even when the lights dim and the room falls silent to listen to Michael Schumacher’s speech in his accented English.
Common circles had shifted every now and then across the expanse of the room— Arthur had given you a general rundown on the families and figureheads: That’s the Flying Finn, and The Iceman— not a talker, apparently— and that’s Christian Horner, best known for his money-laundering and fraud, and those are the billionaire Strulovitch-es, and those are the Wolff’s— you even spot Lily amongst the crowd; halter-necked in a modernised black Chinese cheongsam, drink in laced-gloved hands and flanked by lackeys you can only assume are from the Triad, too.
“The coronation is simple,” you remember her say, clipping on her mother-of-pearl earrings, “It only ever happens when someone steps down from Cardinal position. It’s a short affair, really. A speech, then they’ll pin an Edelweiss flower to your chest, and pass on an heirloom as a symbol to carry the legacy.
By the end of tonight, Michael’s son will be crowned as new Cardinal, and he’ll run most of Edelweiss along with the others. Sweet guy. If you ever get the chance to meet him, I think you’ll like him.”
There’s a round of applause as said next-in-line, Mick Schumacher, walks onstage. You’re not surprised he looks like royalty incarnate; a bow-tied suited prince in honey-gold hair and noble, patrician features that radiate old wealth in a way most of the families here didn’t.
He speaks with a lesser accent than his father, but Charles isn’t paying attention. Something is growing deep in his chest. It feels like an animal pacing in its cage, waiting, waiting, waiting. He just can’t tell what for.
When a shadow passes somewhere on the second-floor, Charles is quick to spot it. It’s the price one pays in a world like his. It’s only later that he’ll realise, however, that the silhouette had been Pierre.
“Coronation is ongoing,” Pierre’s voice trills into Nyck’s earpiece. The Cardinals had been less than enthused when they had first brought up the prospect of moving the Coronation date entirely. As usual, they’d entrusted their lives to the rules of Consecrated Grounds. “North and East wings are quiet. Yours?”
There’s a pause on the other end. Nyck should be rounding the corner back to the corridor overlooking the stage, by now. “Nothing on my end. Maybe we’re overthinking th—”
There’s a thud. Then, radio silence.
Pierre’s breaking into a sprint before he even knows it. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Nyck?!” he repeats, recklessly shoving past the crowd around him. He presses against the balustrades, trying to peer towards the West wing. He’s nowhere to be seen. “Nyck, fucking talk to me.”
Onstage, the spotlights hover above the Schumacher’s. They’re clueless; everyone is. The ex-Cardinal smiles, all-teeth and crinkled eyes, as he speaks to his son quietly.
“I’m proud of you.”
Michael pins the ivory white Edelweiss insignia ontop his son’s heart.
There’s a pinprick red looming above his own, though, like the eye of a demon staring back at Mick.
It’s a laser sight.
Mick barely gets a horrified papa! out his mouth before a shot fires—
—and Michael Schumacher collapses in a spray of blood.
It all goes to shit in less than two minutes.
Because of course it does.
With Consecration now violated, and in a room full of an organised crime syndicate, no less—
Everything is fair game.
The crowd scatters in screams. Security detail rush the stage as the other Cardinals rush for cover.
And then. And then. The room echoes like a clap of thunder.
At the centre of the ballroom, Pierre has barrelled straight through a cocktail table from the second floor balustrades overhead.
You scream. The world descends into madness. Half the Prema! boys flank you, instinctively.
Get her out of here! Charles hisses between the chaos, spurred into action as he unbuttons his blazer. He produces a pistol from his shoulder holsters, before he turns to you. Charles looks like a different man altogether, now. “Stick with Arthur. I’ll come back for you.”
“Charles—” you start, frantic, fingers catching the end of his sleeve. Something in him haywires at the despair in your voice. If he could, he’d stay.
“I’ll come back for you,” he says, again, with the kind of conviction that could save a soul. “I promise.”
And then he’s slipping into the panicked crowd. “Pierre!” he calls, when he catches a glimpse of the Frenchman stumbling up. “What happened? Y—”
“Up!” Pierre jerks his head, one arm on his own left shoulder. It’s popped out of place, but it’s nothing he couldn’t handle. “Go!”
Above them, the eerie, serene look of a stranger in a Venetian Volto mask, stares, unblinking. The mask is gilded in gold and half-decorated in motley-pattern, a streak of fresh blood across the wide-cheeked, sly grin of its white face. Charles aims dead-on, but the figure dodges out of sight.
He’s quick to follow. Pierre will be fine. They’ve survived much worse.
Someone beside him crumples to a heap. The world lights alive in muzzle flashes. He doesn’t have time to mind. Beside him, Lily turns down a separate hallway.
She could trust no one, now. The price for her head has never felt heavier. She just manages to duck away into an empty corridor leading to… God knows, letting out a string of curses as she avoids a bullet by the hair and scrambles to shake her heels off.
This entire thing has been pre-planned, surely. She could only hope th— Someone’s following her. Fuck.
Bounty-hunters, probably. She’s had plenty throughout her reign. Now would be a perfect chance for their kind to begin picking off whoever’s on the open hit-list like flies. No doubt that must have been why the ballroom had transformed into a battlefield the moment Pierre had crashed to the floor. She turns into a dead-end; no choice but to press herself against the corner wall. It seems she’d have to get her hands dirty, afterall. Lily would’ve peeled the evening gloves off her arms if she could, but she didn’t have the time.
She unholsters her pistol, slides the magazine out to check it's loaded, before snapping it back with a click and bending to pick up her heels. Lily can manage firing a weapon in one-hand, anyway.
The sound of footfalls grow, and grow, until—
THWACK—!
She drives the back-end of her heels home as they round the corner.
The bounty-hunter flies to the floor with a yelp. A gun clatters. Lily almost laughs. How amateur. Then she takes him in, properly this time, standing above him splayed on his back with his arms up in defense.
He’s got a button-nose and red-tipped hair. Cute, admittedly. Perhaps if he isn’t her killer, she’d find him cuter.
“Hi,” he says, after a moment. He’s English, it seems, but doesn’t look like it. “You’re… beautiful.”
Lily scoffs, pulls the safety of her pistol with a click. “You’re gonna have to try harder than that. Tell me where the closest exit is.”
There’s blood in his teeth when he smiles. She'd gotten him good. “Sorry, uh, can’t do that, I’m afraid.”
Her eyes narrow. “You are awfully polite for someone who wants my head on a platter, Mister..?”
“Albon. Alex Albon. Huge fan of you, by the way,” he manages, and Lily rolls her eyes at the Bond reference.
An ill-timed move, in hindsight, because suddenly white-hot pain flares up her left knee, and she’s crumbling face-first into the tiles as he turns the tables against her. He’s alarmingly strong. Alex slams a shoe down to her elbow and she screams, fingers burning from where he kicks her handgun away. “Sorry!” he apologises.
Something clicks around her wrists.
“Cuffs? How charming,” she seethes, “Have some dignity.”
“This is as dignified as I can get, Ms. He.” He hauls the Triad leader up with ease, her shoulders searing in protest as he presses the barrel-end of his gun to her back and shoves her forward to move. It’s almost too easy.
“Okay, wait, wait, wait!” she hobbles, pointing one foot out to the side. “...Those are custom-made.”
Alex blinks to the heels. They’re suede, with the familiar tiger-prowl logo imprinted on its outsole. Zhou’s, he realises, and huffs out. “Fine, go.”
He loosens his grip as she bends on the knees— but then she’s springing back up before he can even register his mistake. The crown of her head connects with his nose at full speed. Alex’s vision tunnels, the wind knocking out from his lungs, and before he knows it, he’s teetering backwards, and the hope of his million-dollar prize (two, actually, if you bring her alive) slips away.
Lily practically swings onto him, long-legged and swift, and then she’s on his shoulders, and then they’re both hurtling back to the ground. She’s choking him out with her.. Thighs? Arms? He can’t tell, too busy scrambling for purchase on the cold floor for something, anything, to fight back with— but the world is darkening around him, and the blood is rushing to his head, and the last thing he hears before he fades is Lily’s crooning voice.
“Godspeed, rookie.”
In the distance, sirens blare and police tires squeal.
It’s nearly a crowd crush, downstairs. “Shoes off, please, I don’t want you to break an ankle,” says Arthur, still in that charming tone of his despite the growing chaos around him. You stumble as you slip them off, and let out a gasp when you watch him toss it over the stairwell railings. “He’ll buy you 10 more!” Ollie laughs, of all things, ushering you closer downstairs. They seem to relish in the midst of madness. “Arth—”
A bullet whizzes past you. It’s close enough you feel the breeze of it by your cheek. Paul yanks you further down the stairs in a rush of Estonian swears as you scream.
“Who the fuck is shooting?!” Dino snaps, flinching as the marble wall by his head bursts. You let out a yelp. “Fucking Yakuza,” Arthur growls, one hand tight around your wrist as he guides you behind him onto the landing. The last time he’d dealt with any of their clans, he’d been fourteen, watching the culmination of his brother’s Monte-Carlo Devil rep begin from the aftermath that was Suzuka. Now here they are, settling business by trying to take Arthur’s head off, and yours too.
“They’ve got balls to come after you,” Ollie huffs. “Ears, darling.”
You cover your ears, though you know it’d do little.
Someone collapses, in the distance.
Ollie is a perfect shot.
“Eye for an eye, eh?”
They continue to clear each other out one by one. They’re tactical, swift. They don’t look like teenagers anymore.
Behind the painful ringing, you can vaguely make out the frenzy of Japanese orders being flung around. One flight of stairs left to go, then a sharp right towards the foyer, then you’re out the door. You try to even out your breath, ignore the hammer of your heartbeat at your fingertips like the rest of the boys. You’ve never seen them all collectively like this, eyes alert, weapons drawn and ready to fire. They look frighteningly composed— in their element, almost. The Prema!boys are more a pack of wolves, if anything.
“Thought Tsunoda was good with the Italians?” Dennis hisses, sparing a peek over the other end of the foyer. It’s an even match, as far as he can tell. “Isn’t he buddies with Pierre?”
Frederik shakes his head. “I doubt this is Tsunoda’s work. He runs his own clan.”
“Everybody shut the hell up,” someone says. It’s Arthur. “Take her, Ollie,” he orders, and you find he sounds hauntingly like Charles, this way. “They want me more than they want her.”
“Don’t be a fuckin’ hero,” you chide, and for a moment it feels like they’re being idiots back at the bakery again— but your voice is wavering. You could never hide your worry, not when it came to them.
“Stay low,” he continues, before turning to face you. “And when I say run, I—”
His eyes widen.
Your heart drops.
Behind you, Paul is yelling for you to move, move, they’re ambushing from behind us!
“—RUN!”
You bolt. Ollie practically wrenches you off the landing and down the final flight of stairs. You nearly trip over your dress at the last few steps, one hand on your skirt and the other wound tight in his iron-grip as he keeps you to his side, away from the flurry of gunfire. The walls explode in bullet holes as you both careen around the corner of the foyer; it’s a final stretch out the exit. You can see the flash of reds and blues, the sound of distant militia. Salvation.
And then—
His grip vanishes.
You gasp. “Ollie!”
He hurtles to the ground like a bag of bricks, shoulder shot clean through.
“Don’t!” he barks, before you can even react— even hesitate. “Leave me! Go!”
Your feet stutter. It takes the sound of more firing to startle you back into action, and suddenly you’re running, running, running, down the steps of the theatre entrance and out to the street.
Hallways and floors litter with bullet-casings and smoke bombs. Soldiers have begun filing in, but they don’t don the Italian flag on their crests— these are private-hires. Mercenaries. If Schumacher had been their target, this is overkill.
People scramble amidst the fog, bumping shoulders and scattering as they scream their way towards exits. The room empties out relatively quickly, with the Silver Arrows choosing to remain behind, unsurprisingly. Somewhere between the smoke and its shadows, it’s Hamilton, Russell, and Rosberg, now, bouncing off each other in fluid performance as they take down gunman after gunman in rapid succession.
Pierre puts whoever comes to his path out of action just as effortlessly.
He’s blade-deep into the throat of one of the soldiers, and somewhere off in the distance, Kimi is dragging a hissing Lorenzo behind the bar after getting snagged by a bullet to the thigh. The Finnish man had the time to saunter over with a bottle of alcohol in hand as if the world around him wasn't just descending into chaos, before triaging the eldest Leclerc with alarming ease.
“Bullet is still in,” the Iceman shrugs, letting Lorenzo snatch a swig from his bottle with a grimace, “You’ll live.”
More gunfire resounds, and whiskey bottles atop the shelves burst apart. “What a waste,” Kimi drones. He’s lighting a cigarette, of all things. Lorenzo couldn’t be more aghast.
Somewhere upstairs, Nyck has a hand on his sidearm well before he’s swept from under his feet.
The masked man— this Jester lookalike— is lithe, and spry but not quick enough. Nyck levels his weapon as soon as he’d landed hard on his back, firing a barely-there shot too close for comfort. The Jester shouts off with a flinch, startled from the echo ripping through eardrums.
Male, Nyck profiles, stumbling back up. His vision is swimming— he’d been slammed hard enough to concuss. And not used to firearms, either.
“Who the fuck are you?” the Dutchman hisses. His skull is searing alight in pain, and he can feel the slow itch of blood trickling down the side of his head as he blinks hard. He’s slowing, and it’s noticeable. The Jester doesn’t give, takes the obvious chance with a roundhouse-kick that has the Dutchman rearing back. His heel connects with his wrist with a force strong enough that Nyck’s trigger finger fires off, again, and the ceiling cornice explodes with dust.
“Nyck!”
It’s a brief moment of distraction.
“Charles, no—!”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. Nyck feels the barrel-end of a pistol pressed to the side of his own temple, and his body seizes, arms raised.
“Charles, shoot him,” Nyck orders, without hesitation. He could care less if he went down as a hostage. As long as Schumacher’s killer is coming down with him. “Do it.”
Fuck. “Listen.” Charles starts, readjusts his grip on his weapon. “No one else has to die today.”
The Jester just tilts his head, silent, and digs his gun harder into Nyck. There is no other way around this, he implies. The Dutchman sucks in a breath, feels the strain in his neck as he resists. Charles wavers, mind going a millions miles a minute.
It’s too risky with their distance to tackle, and it wouldn’t do to duel like gunslingers and bet on who’s a quicker shot; Nyck would be brain-dead by the time Charles’ bullet travels fast enough to hit their assailant.
“Stop fucking thinking, Charles!” he snaps. “Take me down with him.”
“You’ll be fine, Nyck,” he answers, calm. Then he slides his finger away from the trigger of his Beretta, raises his hands, slow and steady. “He’ll let you go.”
“No, he fucking won’t."
“Yes he will,” he replies. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
The Jester doesn’t speak, just jerks his head to signal for Charles to drop his handgun. The Monegasque follows, resolute, and tosses it back down the stairwell he’d appeared from. No turning back now. This is a bad gamble, but he’ll take the slimmest of chances if he has to. Lesser evils. “Now let him go.”
A pause. For a harrowing moment, Charles thinks he’d played his hand wrong. In some ways, he technically did.
The Jester fires, and then he’s gone in a blur of white and gold and black, out of reach.
“NO!”
The Dutchman crumples into himself, and Charles leaps forward to catch him as he does. “Fuck!” he scrambles, grabbing Nyck to sit him up. There’s no time to chase after the Jester; it would’ve been a suicide mission to do so unarmed, anyway. They can count themselves lucky; Nyck had been shot through his side instead.
Lesser evils of the job. It’s pointless to search for the Jester. For now, Nyck is priority.
(“Told you he’d let you go,” Charles says, somewhere inbetween Nyck’s incoherent Dutch swearing.
But that was later, when the havoc had mellowed out to clear, and they’d fought their way out the theatre and re-convened at one of Lorenzo’s safehouses. A handful of the prema boys are here, but everyone idles in varying states of exhaustion; bloodied and on edge.)
Hidden in the crypt of a Venetian church, Charles calls for Arthur first, but doesn’t settle even after he’s ensured everyone’s okay. Safehouses are never consecrated because it’d put them on Edelweiss records, and they’ve also quite literally learned that having a building-full of assassins is the last thing to safety, much less a room.
But, you. You.
His heart slams to a halt.
Where are you?
If Ollie could pale even further from his bloodloss, he would. “She got out unharmed. I told her to run and she did. I… don't know where she is.”
“We don’t,” says Arthur. He’d given him an order, and Ollie had paid the price for it. He isn’t about to let him take all the blame. “But we have everyone in our pockets looking for her. We’ll find her.”
“Attendez, attendez, attendez—”
Wait, wait, wait.
The room tenses. Ollie picks nervously at a children’s plaster wrapped around his fingers.
“You lost her?” Charles snaps towards the prema boys. Arthur shifts to the forefront of them. He isn’t afraid of his brother. “You had one job, Arthur. If she’s—”
“You are going to argue with me about this?” Arthur scoffs. His arms uncross and he waves a pistol to Pierre. Nyck hopes the safety of it is on. “Who’s amazing idea was it to bring her to the fucking gala?”
Charles slows himself considerably. Takes a breath. Arthur is right, but they need to focus on finding you, not worthlessly arguing about who’s to blame.
“Why did you bring her, mate?” The boys watch carefully as Arthur talks, steps forward to where Pierre stands at attention. It’s rare to see this Leclerc aggravated to this extent. “I’m just saying it’s convenient, no?”
“What are you implying?” (He would have bitten back harder, but today’s assassination is a fair enough reason for knives to begin sharpening.) Pierre can stand for a lot of things, but to have his loyalty questioned is another.
“You work close with the Edelweiss. You must have known something.”
“You’re right, I did know something. And I know I shouldn't have brought her. But it was too late.” They’re long past apologies, so Pierre doesn’t say it.
Lorenzo shifts in his seat with warning,“Arthur, arrête.” Arthur cares deeply about you, and he understands the rage— but the young boy has a pistol and a close enough distance that he definitely wouldn’t miss.
“I should shoot you,” Arthur says.
They’re face to face, now.
“I won’t stop you.”
(Charles won’t stop him either— that much he knows, so Pierre just braces for the inevitable punch.)
A beat.
Pierre gets a pistol-whip instead, and the taste of blood-metal in his mouth.
Fair enough, he grimaces, struggling to find his footing after the strike. “Well. Can we get back to the fucking topic, now?” He rolls his jaw. It would only bruise. Arthur, as brash as he is, had the sense to hold back.
“Charles, would you like to have a turn? Anyone?” Nyck huffs from across the room. He’s shirtless, sitting back on a dusty loveseat with his entire stomach rolled in gauze. A bit of colour has returned to his face. “No? Okay. Then let’s finally start. Does anyone have any idea what the fuck just went down?”
Someone pipes. “Assassination attempt.”
“Attempt?” Paul scoffs. “The entire building was being gunned down.”
“The mercenaries were distractions, surely,” Lorenzo states. The eldest Leclerc has his leg propped up on a table— his pantleg is a deep crimson. (Last he remembers, Kimi had sailed off on a gondola with 2 bottles of stolen spirits in hand and not a scratch on his body sometime after he’d helped Lorenzo.)
“Ex-military men,” Arthur points out, hands on his hips. “Maybe Daniel had been the one?”
“Woah, Daniel’s back?” Dennis blinks.
Charles runs a hand down his face. Blood is rushing in his ears, and he tries to steady himself. He couldn’t think straight knowing you’re out there, probably terrified out of your wits. You can handle yourself, ofcourse— but you shouldn't have had to in the first place. They’d been the one who brought you into this mess. What if you’d been taken? What if you never even got out? What if—
He hopes your burner phone is with you.
The adrenaline is still riding out of him in waves as he paces around the room. He’s rolled his sleeves up, foregoing his blazer on an armrest, and props his palms to a desk edge. Charles drops his head, thinking, before disagreeing. “Ricciardo said it himself he’s done with this life. We gave him an out. It isn’t like him to waste it— much less to kill a Cardinal.”
“Times have changed, clearly,” Pierre comments.
There’s a pause as the youngest Leclerc concedes. “He could’ve been forced by the RedBulls, no?”
“Doesn’t change anything.”
Arthur frowns. “Why not?”
“Because Daniel Ricciardo wouldn’t have missed.”
It’s a fact. The Australian’s marksmanship is beyond this world. Schumacher, however, hadn’t suffered a headshot the Australian’s been known for.
“You said you knew something, Pierre,” Ollie says from the table. “What did the Edelweiss tell you?”
“Nothing that would help us right now.”
“Bullshit,” Dennis scoffs. “We were almost massacred today and you’re expecting us to let you keep your secrets?”
Pierre looks off to the stone walls by Nyck. They’ve had to keep his cards close, especially now— until Charles slides into his peripherals.
“Tell us.”
Something creeps across his skin. It’s been a long, long time since he’d heard that tone. It’s clear he isn’t asking.
Nyck, from his seat, just nods, as if giving in. “Redbull lost contact of someone dangerous—”
“We’re all dangerous.”
“He’s dangerous enough that the Cardinals are afraid of him.”
“So you’re saying,” Charles begins, “We might be dealing with Sebastian Vettel?”
Notes:
Horrifically slow update, but alas, hear it is! Apologies for the way I jumped straight into the action hsjhfd
Chapter 4: Man O' War
Summary:
Charles turns Venice upside down in search of you. The Honey Badger is forced back into the game. Meanwhile, Max’s enemies grow by the minute.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
There’s gravel in his shoes.
The Honey Badger is back in the grey.
They’re in a humvee, rolling back North towards base. Iraq, as sweltering as the heat gets in the mornings, drops in temperature late into its nights. He’d bummed a cigarette off of K-Mag, promising he’ll pay him next time— the heat of smoke in their lungs keeps them warm while they talk. K-Mag doesn’t smoke, ironically; just keeps some around as courtesy.
I love my daughter too much, he’d say, and pull out a folded picture of her from his vest to look at. I’ll get to see her next January. Val, between a drag, comments something about how the cold reminds him of home.
But, Daniel isn’t in the grey.
He isn’t in the cold of Iraq, but the streets of London. Humvees aren’t humvees, but modded supercars instead— and the smoke in his lungs are from the burnouts of rubber tyres on the asphalt. Val and K-Mag aren’t here, anymore. January never came for them.
“Boss’ll kill you if she finds out you’re into this,” Danny snorts, scanning through the mass of motorheads. “I never even knew London had a scene this big for illegal street-racing.”
Lando just gives a toothy grin as he counts through the wins in his hand. Nearly a couple thousand pounds, give or take. “London has a scene for everything if you look hard enough,” he says, and laughs at Daniel’s half-impressed reaction. “Just gotta know the right people.”
He’d raced a Mclaren Spider against another kid in a Lamborghini and won without breaking so much as a sweat— Danny hates to admit it, but he seemed to have a talent behind the wheel.
“You’re insane ,” he laughs. “Boss closes the bakery for a weekend and you jump into the first flight to London for… a street race?”
“They’ve been planning this event for months! And you’re the one who wanted to follow me all the way here. ‘Sides, it’s easy money for me, and you had fun.”
It’s true. He’d gotten somewhat of an adrenaline rush from watching Lando tear through the streets, but it’s not enough to smother the feeling of the grey in his body. He still confuses the distant sounds of popping exhausts for artillery and gunfire, sometimes.
“I’ll snitch when she comes back.”
“Nah, you won’t be snitching to her,” the Brit teases confidently. “C’mon,” He nudges, zipping his cash into his bag and shouldering it. “Let’s go before the feds smoke this place out.”
It wouldn’t take long. The LED-masked crowds look like something out of a Purge movie, and if that isn’t enough to attract attention, the noise would. “Ever been caught by ‘em before?”
Both of them manage to weave through everyone before they reach a set of dingy doors back up towards a carpark. It’s littered with graffiti. “Once, actually!” Lando laughs, passing by Danny who’d held the door open for him. “Hey, want one?”
The Australian waves him off. Operation Lotus had been the last time he’d picked up a cigarette.
“Good on you,” he lights, pausing to inhale between his teeth and flicking his zippo shut. There’s an inscription on it Danny can’t quite read, and a number 55 engraved ( “Oh, this? Belonged to a late friend of mine,” Lando had answered. There’s a shadowed look in the Brit’s eyes that Daniel can’t decipher. He lets it go . ) “But, yeah. I got caught in a police chase once, ev…”
Two flights up, Daniel’s phone buzzes. His phone reads 0244 in the morning exactly— he shouldn’t be getting any messages at this time of an hour from anybody.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
The world fizzes out like static as he reads the notification.
It’s Charles.
I’m calling in your IOU.
The gravel in Daniel’s shoes dig into the sole of his feet.
He wonders if it’s too late to bum that cigarette.
It seems, afterall, the Honeybadger is back in the grey.
It’s instinct that will keep you alive, here.
He knows he’s been followed since he’d first left the theatre, and nearly 24 hours later he’s killed about 13 men who've made an attempt on his life, thrown into the canals of Venice. Some had been familiar faces from the Red Herd, but most are unrecognisable; he can only guess are bounty-hunters.
Max stumbles into the doors of his safehouse— an old apartment closed out to the public for supposed renovation— careful not to trigger the last booby-trap he’d set as precaution. There are two more set up between the end of the corridor up to his room; if anyone happens to find him, he’ll at least have a heads-up. He hadn’t been careful in covering his tracks, but it doesn’t matter. He just needs a few hours break to patch himself up, and maybe even a shut-eye if he’s lucky enou—
Something shifts in the dark.
Max aims his gun before he even registers it— the near-silent steps of a stranger in the dark of the room.
He slaps a palm to the light switches, but they don’t respond. After what happened back at the theatre, he isn’t taking any chances. He waits for another shift— a rustle— then fires blind. He’s lost his only bullet left. The muzzle flash lights the room a tenth of a second, and he sees a shadow sink into the corner.
Tall. Fast.
He squints into the darkness, loosening his grip on his gun. “Daniel?”
A creak. He turns too slow, and the next thing he knows, his pistol has clattered onto the carpet floor, and his sleeve is being mauled.
It’s a dog.
There’s a fucking dog in his safehouse.
White-hot pain surges through his chest as he catches the kick too little too late. He plummets from the force, knocking a side-table down along the way and losing the dog in the process. Max snatches whatever he can the moment he lands on his back— a lamp, perhaps, and wrenches it forward until there’s contact. The bulb shatters. His attacker curses.
He recognises that voice. It’s—
The air is crushed out his lungs.
His windpipe closes in.
A cord tightens around Max’s neck, and he can see the moon-lit fur of a black shepherd dog appear at his feet, teeth bared. Fuck, fuck, no, no, no— he smacks his hand to the floor, hears the shards of the glass bulb crunch underfoot as he flails. It’s the lamp cord from before; if he could cut through the wire with the glass— if he could just reach to stab something, anything—
“H—ck—!” Another harsh yank has him gagging. He would’ve screamed if he could, but he needed to save his breath after being winded from the impact. The blood pools in his head. He grapples at the cord, desperate, tries to squeeze his fingers between it and his throat for a sliver of leverage.
“Ididn’t—” He chokes further. Feels the pressure building behind his eyes.
“I— didn’tkillyourfather—!”
A pause.
Then, release.
Max gasps for air.
“F— uck,” he wheezes out, coughing as he ripped the plug off his neck. He tries to orient himself, bent and on all fours. The tinker of broken glass slide off his back.
He hears a shuffle beside him, trailed with the pitter-patter of claws against wood flooring. “I know you didn’t.”
The world is spinning, and colour is slow to return as he blinks out the daze. “Fuck you, Mick,” he rasps, leaning himself into the toppled table. He should’ve guessed it was him instead of Danny.
A snort. “Yeah, yeah, get up,” Mick says, as if he hadn’t just tried to kill his own childhood friend, clasping a hand around his to lift him to his feet. “I didn’t mean to fight.”
“What the hell do you call that then, a fucking dance ? I could have killed you. Or Angie.”
“You shot first,” Mick counters, followed by a snap of his fingers. Angie scampers to grab said pistol from the ground. It’s a peace offering. Mick and Max have fought over toys and racecars as kids before— this is hardly really any different. He reluctantly takes it from her.
“You broke in first.”
Mick makes a face, but then it drops. “Max, is that..?”
Blood. Sticky and stringy and seeping down his elbow. “‘S fine,” Max dismisses, reaching down to plug the lamp. He sets the table back with his free hand and takes a seat as it flickers to life, then dies out. He sighs. The room is barely moon-lit from the two windows opposite him. Can his day get any worse?
“There’s a medkit under the sink. You mind?”
Mick disappears into the toilet. Max reaches below the sofa he’s sat on, feels under the wood for the other pistol he’d stashed. The wound hadn’t been from Mick’s ambush, it’d been from a fight on his way to his safehouse here; a stray blade from another fellow mafioso that tried their luck to take him down.
By the time he’s yanked the gun out, cocked it, and set it on the table, Mick re-appears, case in hand.
Max can trust very little, now— he would be lying if he didn’t have a slight apprehension towards Mick. Call him paranoid.
“How’s your dad?”
Mick watches the rag stain darker with blood with every wipe. The attempt on his Dad’s life was yesterday, but it still feels fresh in his mind— the pop of a gun, the spray of red, the weight of his gasping father in his arms. “Alive, fortunately.”
“Why aren’t you with him?”
For what exactly? It would be a waste of time. He’s here to get revenge, and he’ll stop at nothing. “People have already started pointing fingers, Max, and they all point to you.”
He pauses mid-unwrap of the gauze, and emphasises his words. “I didn’t shoot your father.” If Mick had caught the way Max’s fingers anxiously twitched closer to his gun, he didn’t comment.
“I know,” he assures. Mick himself had caught a glimpse of the Dutchman in the crowd the night he was onstage— there’s no way he could have pulled off a shot like that from where he’d been standing. “Do you know anyone who could betray you?”
Max laughs at that. He’s made over a hundred enemies over the course of his years— traitors would be a given. “No point starting there. But my best bet is Horner— he’s been turning the world upside down looking for Sebastian.”
Even Angie perks at the name.
“You think Sebastian shot my dad?” he frowns, incredulous. He barely has time to register the fact Sebastian Vettel might be back. “There’s no way. He would die before he let himself betray him.”
“I’m not saying that. Mick, think about it. It doesn’t matter who shot Michael. What matters is who can pay.”
The pieces would technically fall in place. What better time to distract the Edelweiss from a missing Sebastian than to accuse Max that he’d been responsible for an assassination attempt on a Cardinal? Horner would be killing two birds with one stone; More time bought, and one less problem to think about.
“But you’re Horner’s best assassin,” Mick questions. “His pride and joy, practically.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Max shrugs, tightening the bandage with a grunt. His body is aching all over and all he wants is to just go home. But the further this night goes, the less likely it seems possible. “We both have been falling out with the Mexicans recently.”
“How bad?”
“Perez family bad,” he deadpans, and watches as Mick winces.
Cartels have always been run ruthless; he’d witnessed the inner workings of how Lily rules her part of the Triad: merciless, brutal. The problem with dealing with people like the Perez, is that their family’s syndicate had roots that tangle deep with politics. A symbiotic relationship , he’d heard Lily describe it once. The narcs keep their noses clean by keeping their politicians’ noses dirty— if you catch my drift.
“Since when did you deal with narcos?”
“Not me,” he cants his head, gives him a raised brow.
Mick hums. “Burn scar wasn’t enough of a message to keep your dad away, hey?”
The jab doesn’t hurt. It’s an old joke long passed. His father has never been capable of quitting anything in his life— even if it meant half his face paid the price. “We accidentally interfered with one of the Guadalajara’s trafficking routes. Perez caught wind of it and he’s been going after people’s heads since.”
Mick doesn’t have to wonder if he’d meant it literally.
“I pissed Horner off, but I don’t know for sure if he’d kill me over it. It could still be anyone. I have a lot of enemies. I just—” he sighs, runs a hand down his face. “I just want to see my daughter.”
Mick’s eyes soften at that. “Someone openly tried to kill a Cardinal. This is an act of war, Max. If you’re smart enough, you’ll wait until all of this blows over.”
He knows he’s being irrational— but the words escape anyway. “I just need to see her. I need to know she’s safe.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Li—”
Angie’s head whips up to the door, ears pricked straight up. Mick and Max’s hands fly to their sidearms.
“Suppose you didn’t happen to invite someone over?”
“Fuck no,” the Dutchman hisses, finishing off the last tug on his bandage. Seems like his time is up already. “I’ve set traps. Should buy us 3 minutes, at best.”
Plenty of time. Mick stands, pulls up the sleeves of his black hoodie up to his elbows for more mobility. “You need to figure out who’s behind all of this. I’ll handle things in the Edelweiss.”
He slips a signet ring off his hand, and the amber light catches the family crest; a dragon symbol in its centre. “If enough people are convinced it’s you then there’s bound to be a decree on you soon. Take my Halo.”
Fuck, Max realises. He hadn’t thought about a decree being set on him. “No.” He pushes his hand away. “Give it to my daughter—”
Voices echo across the corridor. Angie leans into a creep, snout dipped low but pointed to the door, prepared to strike.
“Max, listen to me. You’re gonna need this more than she will. Even if I do give it to her, the Edelweiss and every consecrated ground’s credibility is down the drain, now. This Halo might not stop everybody, but it’s your best shot at protection if somebody does come after you. No one would cross the Schumacher name.”
“Exactly,” Max snaps, only to flinch at the tense of his wound. If the Halo could at least ward off some danger, better it be given to his daughter instead. “Just… give it to Penelope, Mick. Please. Please, she’s just a kid.”
It’s clear the Dutchman’s mind is made up, he can recognise it; the certainty— the type of resolve that takes root and never budges. Mick lets out a sigh, slips the ring back to his finger as they both back to the walls. There’s no time to waste arguing with him now. “You’ll need a plan.”
But he hadn’t needed to say that. Max’s eyes seem to be distant, unblinking yet focused. Somewhere in the storm grey of Max’s eyes, a plan is brewing.
“The whole of the underworld will be hunting for you, Verstappen.”
Max’s eyes clear. “Not all of them.”
Something sets off outside the apartment. A bang, at the end of the hall. Then another, closer. Max re-adjusts his grip on his gun, zeros back into reality.
“Angie,” Mick orders, once the footsteps grow closer. “Kill.”
The front door bursts open.
Dorsodoro Sestiere, Venezia
Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute
45°25′51″N 12°20′04″E
The Salute, in all its ecclesiastical glory, had been built in remembrance of the plague that had swept Italy in the 1500’s. The Istrian stones still stand strong since, the church façade carved with Evangelists and Saints of the like. On postcards, the crowning domes of the basilica are often pictured in the cityline. Pierre had come here once upon a time; stood at one of the bell towers and marvelled at the bird’s-eye panorama of Venice.
The co-ordinates mysteriously sent from your burner phone had led them here. The Salute is not consecrated under the Edelweiss, but it is under the eye of God.
For now, that will have to do.
Pierre dips his fingers in the entrance font, signs the Cross, and settles at a pew, by a man with golden hair and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. There is no service today, but few parishioners linger. Pierre did not come here alone. The man knows.
“You know, the architect of this church never saw it to fruition,” says the blond. His eyes are cast towards the high altar of Mother Mary before them, her palm open in semblance of her expelling the plague, surrounded by cherubim. “Died a year before he could see his work. What a shame.”
“Still, Baldassare will go down in history,” Pierre muses, but that isn’t what he’s here for today. “Just like you, no, Sebastian?”
The German laughs. He’s flattered. “Ah. I don’t care to be remembered.”
“You sure have a funny way of making people forget, then.”
Pierre had thought the accusation would have ticked him off, but Sebastian is relaxed all the same. “You know I didn’t shoot up the theatre,” he says, with the ease of an experienced retiree. “I have more class and respect for the arts than whoever planned that out. And, Schumacher is a friend. Is he okay?”
Pierre doesn’t have an answer to that. He’ll let him think he does, though. “Where is she?”
Sebastian turns, finally, to meet his gaze. His blue eyes are piercing but sincere; maybe that’s why he’d chosen to face him now— Sebastian had eyes deceivingly kind. “Safe, and unharmed, Charles.”
On a bench outside the church, Charles looks up from his seat, and fights the urge to break the in-ears that connect him with Pierre. He stares, hard, at the pigeons sitting on the marble-white steps into the basilica instead. “You know me,” he hears, “I don’t harm the innocent.”
Sebastian leans back into the pew. “I was hoping that by meeting in a place like this, it would make us more… honest.”
The Frenchman nods. “I’m always honest.”
“Are you?” Sebastian looks off to the other people in prayer. “Because I can practically smell their fear from here.”
A pause.
Across the room, disguised hired hands— civilians, parishioners, nuns, even— make eye-contact with Pierre for a nervous second. How they could have possibly been found out that quickly by Sebastian is beyond them. “They’re my… clean-up crew,” Pierre explains.
Sebastian smiles at the quiet implication. “You would kill a man in a church?”
Pierre doesn’t reply. He’s not sure what to answer, anyway.
“I always found it ironic that you’re a man of faith in a business like this. Maybe I should ask instead: Doesn’t God punish?”
Pierre thinks of the glass rosary his mother gave him as a child, and the verses in the book of Exodus, 21:24. He thinks of St. Leo’s Absolution, and of sins forgiven ahead of battle, feels the cross tattoo on his neck burn. “The only thing you should ask,” Pierre counters, “Is whether you believe you have something worth punishing for.”
Sebastian seems to concede him, before blinking back to the Baroque arrangement of statues ahead. For some reason, it feels like Pierre had just passed some unspoken test. “And Mick?” he asks, carefully. “Is Mick okay?”
“I don’t know,” is Pierre’s honest answer. “He will have to be, regardless.” They had not seen where the Schumacher’s had gone— the Edelweiss have been silent since yesterday’s shootout.
( They sit for a few moments longer, and Pierre wonders, in the silence, if Sebastian is praying— if Sebastian is even the type. Times change. Maybe he is. Judging from the ring on his left hand, he seems capable of it. )
“I’ll bring you and Charles, only,” Sebastian says, after taking a breath. “But first, I have to make a pitstop.”
“I’m not here to play games,” Pierre bites, and Sebastian can tell it’s Charles’ words leaving his mouth.
“Excellent, because neither am I.”
When they take a gondola back to the main square, Charles meets Sebastian with a heavy glare he burns into his head as the German pilots the ride through the Grand Canal. “Relax,” Sebastian says, barely looking over his shoulder. “I’m just going to buy more butter for your missus. She asked me.”
Charles’ skin crawls. Sebastian, as cold-blooded as he had been— is — in their business, had his own set of rules he followed, but you are still very well in danger. It isn’t rare to have morals in their world, but it is rare to keep to. With the right persuasion, any man would turn against their own honours for their own reasons. Or, should he say, for their own person.
The gold band on Sebastian’s fingers glints in the afternoon sun.
“Son or daughter?” Charles asks, when the gondola had been square-knotted on a post through the gunwale. Sebastian had a way he carried himself that oozed that of a tired father.
“Both,” he replies, moving into the quiet bustle of the main markets, and that was that. He knows why Charles had asked; understood the implications of it ( I know you have children, old man ), and Sebastian answered with just as much threat as he could ( I will slit your throat if you dare try, kid ) as veiled as humanly possible.
They buy baking ingredients— butter, sugar, and the like— before they finally make it down a bend and into a rusty-gated alleyway. Sebastian leads the both of them with reusable bags in hand ( “Eco-friendly,” he’d hummed, after Pierre had scrutinised him as he unfolded them out his pocket ), and with his back exposed to them the entirety of the journey.
It’d be so easy to kill him right here , Charles thinks, as they round up a flight of rickety stairs in what appears to be an old apartment block. He can think of a hundred ways to do it with his environment— a head into the wooden railing, thrown out the dusty windows into the Canal, a weapon out of the broken scone lamp— and a thousand more with his hands alone. But Sebastian had the leverage here, and that’s why he’s been perfectly comfortable with having them out his line of sight since the beginning.
“If you’re lying,” Charles trails off, when they slow to a stop at a door.
The German isn’t fazed in the slightest. He unlocks the door with his keys, toes it open, and opens his palm in welcome. “Please.”
They step in.
It’s not a ramshackle place, but it isn’t a hotel either. A two-bedroom house; drab enough to be unassuming, functional enough it kept a roof over their heads. In the living room there’s a grated, egress window with perfect access to the next building over or into the waters if they needed to escape, and Pierre is half-sure one of the creaking floorboards here houses an arsenal of weaponry if he looks carefully enough.
It smells like bread. Smells like Le Paradis back at the alleé de touissant. It smells like y—
“Sebastian?” Charles hears, from the kitchenette.
You appear like a dream, still dressed in Zhou’s red gown but barefooted now, and oh you’re as beautiful as he last saw you.
The relief that crashes into Charles is dizzying.
I’m here, he wants to say. But then you’re rounding the counter, and then you’re pulling at his sleeves, and then he’s wrapped in your arms— and the words die on his tongue. “Charles,” you speak, muffled into his jacket. “You came. You came.”
“Ofcourse,” he manages to breathe out. “I promised.” He hadn’t expected an embrace; he’d expected a fight, a slap or a punch, maybe. You’d been terrified last he saw you. He doesn’t deserve your kindness— he’d failed to protect you for fuck’s sake, left you cold and alone in a country by yourself, dragged you into his world and kidnapped — and still, still.
He curls into your touch, lets himself indulge the luxury, lets himself try to understand how you fit into his arms so perfectly. You’re okay. You’re okay. Then he’s pulling back to see you, to look at you, to—
The bruise on your cheek is an angry shade of purple.
The bandage on your shoulder is stained with dry blood.
Something demonic grips at him.
“No, no, no, hey—” You scramble to grab his wrist, but he’s resolute in drawing his gun. “Charles, stop!”
Pierre can’t decide if he should be impressed or horrified at how quickly you’re willing to stand between a gun for Sebastian. ( Maybe you did have what it takes to be in the business after all. )
The German just looks at him, impassive.
“It wasn’t him, Charles.”
“Then who?” he asks, plain and simple— dark . Pierre can see a flash of something sinister in the back of his eyes he hasn’t seen appear in a long time.
“Just rush and a bad bump. We were attacked by the Yakuza,” you ramble, “Ollie got me out, and then Sebastian came. He saved me—”
“He used you as bait to get us to speak with him,” Pierre overrides, blunt. “I’m guessing he didn’t tell you that part?”
“…you what?”
Sebastian just hums, drapes his overcoat over the antique loveseat he’s settled on that’s propped by the window. ( Something feels off about the sky outside, and he keeps a mental note as he lights a cigarette. ) “Pierre is right,” he says, after a puff of smoke, and your head whips toward him. “But to be fair, I never stopped you from leaving.”
“You kept me fucking hostage?!” you hiss, and Pierre hides his laugh in a snort.
“Bwoah , semantics,” Sebastian waves. Best way to keep a prisoner is to never let them know they’re in a prison, after all. “You’d be dead on the street had I not taken you.”
You huff at that. He’s right. After you’d escaped from the theatre he’d swept you away from the mess with a mix of accented-French that you’d recognised Pierre had spoken to Zhou the night he’d tailored you. The Prancing Horse sends its regards. You should’ve known better. Now you owe him.
But there’s no time for that. “The boys,” you say, searching for an answer in Charles’ eyes. “We were pinned. Arthur. Paul— Ollie got shot— tell me.”
“They’re okay,” he assures. The prema !boys have been sent off to stay in the clear for the time being while they’d hunted for you. Arthur had been less than enthused, but he’s the only one Charles could trust among them. “Right now, we need to get you out of here.”
“No.” All of you turn to Sebastian’s voice. “Right now, you need to pull the bread out of the oven before it burns this place down. Then, we sit.”
You hesitate. Sebastian has been nothing but courteous to you since you’d both met, though your impression’s changed now that you’ve realised it’s all been smoke and mirrors. It’s conflicting— if he’d wanted to kill you he would, but if he was truly a good man, he wouldn’t have kept the truth from you just to use you. Then again, it may have been a white lie done to protect you. Instinct tells you he still would.
( You decide, for the time being, Sebastian is as good as any man could get. )
“Talk,” Charles orders, once everyone is sitting in the living room. A table of croissants, cigarettes, and an unfinished board game of chess are the only thing separating Sebastian from the three of you.
“I’ll cut to the chase. The Edelweiss is compromised,” Sebastian begins, reaching forward to move a pawn. Pierre bites back on saying, Tell us something we don’t know. “Michael was shot for more than just petty revenge. Someone wants his seat with the Cardinals. My source points to the Red Herd.”
“You said you’re retired,” Charles frowns. He can’t resist from the game though, much to your amusement, and you watch as he moves a white knight forward. “Who the hell is your source? Also, do you mind?”
He gestures to the cigarette, then nods at Pierre to push open the window for the smoke to clear out. “Kimi,” Pierre figures. Those two have always been familiar— enough they’d take a bullet for each other.
You frown at him as he returns to stand by your side again. “Why would he attend the coronation if he knew it was gonna be a bust?”
“For the drinks,” Pierre answers easily, to which Sebastian had huffed a laugh in half-hearted agreement.
Kimi may have gone for the drinks, yes, but he had also gone to keep an eye out for the Schumacher’s. Contrary to popular belief, the Iceman isn’t heartless— though he’d lose his tongue by the Finn himself if he ever admitted it.
“Then why didn’t he tell anyone?”
“He didn’t think it would happen,” Sebastian says. Drawing steel on consecrated grounds has been unheard of for decades. “Neither did I, if I’m being honest.”
“Word has already spread that the Red Herd lost track of their deadliest, and that’s you, Sebastian. You’ve had one of the bloodiest track records in Edelweiss history. Forgive us if we find it difficult to trust information from you.”
“That’s rich, coming from a man willing to put a bullet in my head in a church,” Sebastian says, derisive, pausing mid-advance of a black rook. You don’t have time to absorb that information as he speaks again. “Do you really think I’d risk my life over some rot in the Edelweiss?”
Your eyes flit to Sebastian’s ring. You’d first caught it when he’d brought you here to the safehouse, and you’ve wondered ever since if it’s possible for people like him and Charles to truly ever retire; To be able to leave a past like theirs behind in favour of a new one.
…Yeah. He would risk it, you realise. He would risk his life and everyone else's— but only if it came down to protecting his family.
“You think they’re coming after you,” you say, and Pierre blinks away from the game upon the realisation. But then you shake your head and correct yourself. “No. They already did. Someone high up must have thought you’d come after them after what happened to the Schumachers.”
There’s an indecipherable look in Sebastian’s eyes as he concedes Charles’ move of defense. It seems you’ve hit the nail on the head. “I’ll tell you what you need to know. All you have to do is figure out who’s gunning for the seat, Charles.”
Sebastian captures a Bishop. He’s one move away from a potential checkmate. Charles understands the threat. “And if I don’t?”
A laugh. It’s mirthless. When Charles had lost you, it didn’t take long before he’d activated every single sleeper cell he had access to across the entire country just to search for you. No rock would’ve been left unturned. It had been a hassle for Sebastian to even figure out a good enough space to hide you. God knows what Charles could truly be capable of when he’s pushed to the limit.
“I took your girl and you were ready to raise hell on earth for her,” he says, slow and deliberate. It uneases you. “We’re alike, Charles. I’d do the same for the people I care about. I’d do anything.”
“Kill a man in church?” Pierre repeats, dry.
Sebastian’s eyes are sharp. “Anything.”
The German makes his final move. “Checkmate.”
“Yeah.” Charles agrees, but it doesn’t sound like he’d lost. “ Checkmate .”
The King piece bursts.
Sebastian rears his head back in a string of German curses.
It happens so quickly you can’t even get a scream out.
( Across the Grand Canal and another block away, a sniper rifle is propped steady at the parapet of an open rooftop. Its bolt is cocked for the next shot, and a bullet casing hisses as it pops out and clinks to the floor. )
Charles and Pierre hadn’t so much as blinked. They had expected it.
You hear the late echo of the shot in the sky; like struck lightning and late thunder. And then—
A laugh. Sebastian is… laughing.
You wonder if he’s lost his mind.
“Well, well,” he smiles, sounding more nostalgic than he is threatened. It’s a show of hand; a clear, blatant statement: neither Charles nor Pierre had ever been in any sort of danger since the Basilica.
There’s only one marksman he’s ever feared with accuracy enough to shoot a 3-inch chess piece through the narrow grates of a tiny Venetian window— and without blowing his fingers off no less.
“And here I thought the Honey Badger had left the party.”
You look at Sebastian like he’s grown two heads, before you piece together the splintered King on the board in your mind. Daniel. Daniel did this. No wonder Charles had asked to open the window— he didn’t want the glass shattering all over you.
“All this protection…” the German croons your way, an almost warm glint in his eyes. “…for a baker.” You’ve pressed yourself closer to Charles' side without realising, feel his hand ground you by the waist, your heart hammering at your chest and breath scurrying in fear— the sound of gunfire did strange things to those unused to hearing it.
“It’s good bread,” you manage to eke out, and you wonder if Daniel can hear you from here, wonder if he’d laugh at your stupid joke and add on something like, Enough to kill.
Sebastian dusts the remnants of the King in his hands, and reaches for a croissant. He got the message. He’ll make sure never to underestimate them again. “Right. Now that bullets are flying and everyone’s finally paying attention— let’s come up with a plan, yes? And bring Danny in. I’m sure he’s melting under that heat.”
The grey follows Daniel from Iraq’s deserts up to the Spanish Pyreneese’s snowy mountains.
It’s December; biting cold. They’re all camouflaged in white ghillie snowsuits, but it’s Val and K-Mag who are in their element the most. Nordic blood, they chuckle, when Daniel complains how his nose might fall off from frostbite. These temperatures are just another Tuesday for us. I bet even Laura will fare better than you.
Behind a bolt-action sniper rifle, Daniel lies vigil— still as a sentinel and dusted in snow. “Range?”
Val, designated spotter, squints through his range-finder. “Impossible. We’re practically a mile out. We’ll wait.”
“We’re burning daylight here.”
“Let it burn,” they hear. It’s Magnussen’s voice crackling through the team radio in response. “We can’t take this shot, Danny. You’re good, but not that good.”
The Australian chuffs out his nose. He needs to stay as still as possible to keep his target in relative sight, so no laughing, no harsh movements. Besides, he might scare away the beaver just a few metres away from them, scuttling downstream. ( “I know exactly by a millimetre the average peni—” Val had mentioned, to which Magnussen had smacked him upside the head. )
“I can do it,” he affirms. When it comes to counter-terrorism, they need to act on intel before anything sours. “Give me the range.”
“Negative, Danny. This isn’t a challenge. If you miss this shot, this whole operation goes to shit. It’s too risky.”
Val reads out the estimated range, anyway, and tells a frustrated K-Mag to quiet down ( In which the Dane affectionately answered, “Suck my balls, mate.” ) before he might break Daniel’s concentration. They both make changes accordingly— measuring the wind, referencing Daniel’s chicken-scratch writing in his D.O.P.E, and adjusts the scope of his sniper rifle with his left hand as he counts the mil-dots over his target— a prick of a figure shifting about in his sights.
1600 metres. A mile out. Roughly 15 blocks.
It’s ambitious; furthest shot he’d have recorded with a gun like this. Few have been able to pull it off. He’ll be one of them, now.
Inhale deep.
Empty the mind.
Exhale slow.
Hold steady.
He waits for the mist of his breath to pass until—
BANG.
The shot drawls an echo across the snowy plateau they’ve hunkered down in, swallowed by the suppressor and the woodland beyond. He cocks the bolt, hears the bullet casing fly, waits for the familiar:
Ping!
But there’s nothing.
There isn’t, because he’s not in Spain. The grey has followed him into the twisted, crooked canals of Venice.
There’s a bullet in his grasp. He must have auto-piloted; caught it after he’d cocked his sniper rifle to unload and disassemble it. Venice, he reminds himself. He’s not equipped with a custom-modded sniper rifle in hand, but a standard issue SR-25 he’d long forgotten about, dug out from the basement of his home. Not in Baghdad. Not in Afghanistan. Not in the Pyreneese. You’re out, Danny. You’re not fighting anymore.
“Have you taken your meds?”
He blinks. Turns around to look at you. You’re swallowed by a tacky souvenir shirt and pants he’d bought on his way down to convene with the rest of you in Sebastian’s apartment. Ciao Venezia! the shirt print reads. He hadn’t had the time to apologise for it at the time— you’d jumped into his arms for a hug the moment the both of you reunited.
“I’m fine.” He posits his rifle down. After he’d arrived, they’d gone over what could be done with the Edelweiss. The plan is weak— barely even considered a plan— strung together with assumptions and limited intel, where half of it is just them waiting for more concrete information to come through. You’re a sharpshooter, Sebastian had griped. Shouldn't patience be your strongest suit?
There’s a difference between waiting and being sitting ducks, Daniel had answered.
He watches you cross the space between the doorframe you’re leaned on to the rickety bed he’s sat beside. All his equipment is laid out on the mattress, combat knives, scopes, detachable bits and bobs you aren’t familiar with.
He’d left his anti-anxiety pills on the wooden vanity. He gets tremors sometimes, when it’s at its worst. You’d only ever heard about it.
“Turns out I didn’t need the meds to get rid of the shakes,” he laughs, humourless. “Just needed another war.”
The military dogtags he always keeps tucked in his shirt are now out for the world to see. The planes of his features appear more rugged; his body alert, on edge, like the shadows are out to get him at any second, taut to the touch when you offer a comforting hand on his shoulder— a rubber band ready to snap at a moment’s notice.
You don’t know what to do other than apologise.
“It was my choice,” he says first. Even if he didn’t owe Charles anything, he would have come for you without hesitation. “Besides, I couldn’t run forever.”
“Well,” you try, going for a smile. “Now that we’re here I was gonna invite you for a game of chess but...”
Daniel shakes his head and huffs a laugh.
“That was an impressive shot, you know?”
“Oh, that?” He rolls his eyes, pretends to dust his shoulder. “You haven’t seen nothin’, Boss,” he laughs, all gums and cheeks, but there’s an ache in the way he speaks or tries to joke now. The cheer feels artificial. It prompts you to edge the pills back to him.
“Come on. If you take your meds I’ll even read you a bedtime story.”
“Fuck off,” he laughs, and reaches for it. They rattle as he stands, and he gives you a reassuring squeeze as he rounds you. You would have followed him out to the kitchen, but Charles has entered the room, standing where you had been at the doorway.
As they pass, Charles nods at Daniel. The look they share is cordial, maybe even fond. There’s a measure of trust between them you hadn’t noticed from before.
“You look… beautiful,” Charles teases, once it’s just the two of you. He’s fidgeting with his finger, the signet ring in hand. Twist, twist, twist. It’s endearingly human . You’re so used to seeing Charles with some level of his guard up to everyone— borne from the need to protect his family, his friends— and now it looks as if he’s let it all down for you.
Disarmed. All for you.
He sure does know how to make a lady feel special.
“Danny has great fashion taste,” you joke, pretending to smooth out the wrinkles on your dowdy shirt. Charles looks flawless, as usual, but more dressed down. It’s the first time you’ve seen him out of his usual suits— now in a dark cashmere-knit sweater and fitted pants to match; the kind of outfits old-money families wear back at Monté Carlo.
Twist, twist, twist. Charles sets his jaw as you look at him, feels like he’s melting under your gaze. You tip back onto the vanity, pick on the chiselled edges of the worn wood. His eyes hang onto the movement, trails up from your fingers, to your elbow, to the peek of the white bandage peeking out from your folded sleeves.
“I shouldn’t have left you,” he says, after a beat.
“Sure,” you admit; not because it would have guaranteed your safety, no— it would have guaranteed it for the Prema!boys. “But you found me, anyway. That’s all that matters.”
There is too much goodness in you, he wants to say. “It should never have come down to that.”
“Maybe,” you shrug. “But should-have’s and could-have’s are the easiest way to drive yourself insane, Charles.”
It’s a chide, a reminder, but you’re smiling at him as you do so, and it prompts a smile to his face too— sheepish, dimpled. He doesn’t look like the fearless man he was the night at the gala, anymore. He’s just a man.
Twist, twist, twist.
He finally tugs the signet ring off. “I have something for you.”
Charles takes a few steps closer from where he’s leaned, all the way to you, just enough that if he wanted to, he could reach out to touch you. ( He wants to. Wants to stroke the bruise on your cheek and will it away. But he can’t. He shouldn’t. God knows what his black touch could do to someone with as much grace as you. )
He reaches for your hand instead, runs a thumb to your ring finger. His touch isn’t as callous as you’d expected— the infamous Monté-Carlo Devil has always been surprisingly gentle.
The ring is adjustable. Gold, and in pristine condition. He slides it to your finger, presses the edges until it fits. It’s not a prancing horse this time, but a profile of a wolf’s head, teeth bared. Elegantly carved around it, an encircled, indented text reads: ‘Les loups ne se mangent pas entre eux’.
“We call it a Halo,” he begins, allowing himself the chance of lingering close in your presence. “Families must earn this. It's exactly what it sounds like. Protection. So long as you have a Halo, you’re untouchable.”
Arthur , is your immediate thought. Give it to him. “I can’t take this—”
“Halos can only be given to someone outside the family,” he replies, as if reading your mind. Charles knows you well enough. “Few of these exist, and only one is granted per family. It’s yours now. Only the original family or the Edelweiss can revoke it.”
Charles says your name. You look up from the ring. The green of his eyes burn into yours. “I cannot promise this will protect you from everyone, especially now—” If he had sensed any apprehension from you, he didn’t comment, “—but know that many would think twice before going against La Confrérie. You’re one of us now.”
One of them. Part of The Brotherhood; their Syndicate. A notorious scion of the Italian Mafia. Had you always been part of them the day you’d saved Arthur’s life back at your bakery? The pad of your index runs across the thick face of the ring.
“Wolves do not eat each other,” you recite the text. It sends a rush of power through you, as much as you try to deny it. You think of Charles extending an olive branch the day you first met him, of Pierre inviting you to the Coronation, how Arthur and Lorenzo had flanked you the moment everything went south— protected you as one of their own since the beginning. A pack of wolves.
“And if someone does break the Edelweiss’ rule on Halos… If anyone tries to hurt you,” he trails off, and for a second he isn’t present. “It is the right of the family to clear the entire bloodline of whoever attacked.”
You freeze. You think of Daniel, the wild look in his eyes that day outside the kitchen— what he’d said about Charles. How Charles single-handedly annihilated an entire bloodline in Japan and left no one alive; How his macabre devil-rep had come to be born. Had this Halo belonged to someone else, once? Had he wiped out entire families for them? Innocents included?
“It’s taboo now, though, even if it’s still allowed,” Charles continues, and you snap back to reality. “Brutality is considered… old-school. Nowadays, the business is more forgiving. ”
The question slips out before you can stop yourself. “Are you?”
He looks at you questioningly. “Forgiving?”
“A traditionalist.”
His gaze drops to the ring and back up to you so quickly that you would have missed it at an ill-timed blink. That… Well, that could be an answer in itself, but you needed to hear it from Charles. Did you kill innocent people for breaking a rule? Will you do it again? How far can you go? What kind of man are you? Are the stories true?
The answer is quiet, but not timid. Charles had given you his truth like he always has been.
“Only when it calls for it.”
There’s a shadow in his eyes; the type that comes with men like him. Danger.
Yet somehow, entirely soft, still.
With a brush over your knuckles— reverent, almost— he speaks again. “When you call for it.”
Something takes flight in your stomach. The admission is as delicate as glass. Anything, anything, anything for you.
Your chest locks up. Heart seizing. It’s difficult to look at Charles, but even more difficult to look away. “Ch—”
A knock.
Pierre watches the both of you pull back from each other and snap towards him, taking in a breath as if to steady yourselves. Well. He supposes he can apologise to either of you for interrupting… whatever that was, another day. For now, they’ve got bigger news. “There’s been a decree.”
Charles clears his throat, composure seeping back into his bones as he fishes his phone out his pocket.
ORDER 0001
WORLDWIDE.
ANY CONNECTION, SERVICE, OR PROVIDER OF THE EDELWEISS ARE NOW CLOSED TO:
NAME: MAX EMILIAN VERSTAPPEN
STATUS: EXCOMMUNICADO
COMMENCEMENT IN T-24 HOURS
He inhales sharp, brows tightening in concern. You may not entirely understand the gravity of the situation— but anything to do with Max, or the Red Herd in general, is never good news.
“What now?” you ask, tentative. It’s no secret you’re practically deadweight— you’ve been nothing but a mishap caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. You want to go back, truth be told. Go back to your mosaic-tiled bakery and listen to the tingle of the chimes out the door; to knead dough and pretend you’re safe, that you’re not caught in the slow prelude to a war you can’t even begin to understand.
“We’ll have to speak with some people,” Charles says. You can feel his hand brush by yours, and it sends static from your pinky up beneath your ribs. “Keep an eye on you.”
“You won’t stay?” The words come out more afraid than you’d wanted. It tastes bitter, to have to rely on someone else for safety, to have to rely on a ring.
“I can’t. Not for long.” For Charles to be near you is your death sentence; to be too far from you is his.
But he has to.
“And I,” Pierre starts, and uncrosses his arms, “Need to drop a visit to an old friend.” Something passes between them both. It’s familiar; the kind of language you have with Daniel, untranslatable to outsiders.
“He won’t be welcoming,” Charles warns.
Pierre lets out a laugh. It’s confident, and you narrow your eyes at him as he tilts his head at you. “This is why I need your help, little miss boulangère.”
“To do what?”
“What you do best, ofcourse. Bake,” he chimes, leading the way back to the kitchenette. “My… little brother, Guiseppe, is just like any other man— What is the way to their heart?”
“Through the stomach.”
The smirk that splits his face is sly. “Exactly.”
Notes:
Mind the military inaccuracies, I am no soldier 💔 All my knowledge of war comes from COD campaigns and Simon Riley's snatched waist. Thank you for your consideration.
Also, Angie cameo! She may appear again, we’ll see. And also, I think we all know the next mafioso to be introduced 🫣As always, do leave feedback!
Find me on tumblr @schuvries ✨
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