Chapter Text
The boardroom of Norris-Piastri Dynamics was silent, a sleek, glass and steel monument to success that held its breath. At the head of the titanium table, Lando Norris, CEO, looked like he’d just finished a three day bender in the best possible way. His hair was a chaotic masterpiece, his sleeves were pushed up past his elbows, and his eyes held the frenetic, brilliant energy of a man who had just rewritten the laws of physics in his head over breakfast.
“So,” he said, slapping a palm onto the holographic display projected in the centre of the table. The 3D model of their new quantum computing lattice shimmered. “The problem isn’t the processing speed. The problem is you lot thinking like it’s 2024.”
A dozen senior engineers, dressed in uniforms of tasteful grey and black, didn’t dare flinch. Across from Lando, seated with perfect, relaxed posture, Oscar Piastri, COO, took a slow sip of his water. He didn’t look at the engineers. He watched Lando. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips the one that only appeared when Lando was about to be insufferably, world changingly right.
“The bottleneck,” Lando continued, pacing like a caged leopard, “is here. In the data reconciliation layer. You’re treating it like a motorway junction. I’m telling you it needs to be a… a ballet. A synchronized bloody swimming team. Oscar?”
He didn’t even turn his head. He just threw the word into the space between them, a perfectly timed pass.
Oscar set his glass down. His voice, when he spoke, was a study in calm contrast to Lando’s lightning storm. It was clear, measured, with the faint, grounding trace of an Australian accent. “What Lando is poetically trying to say is that our current architecture creates micro-delays in parallel processing. His ‘ballet’ is a proposed rewrite of the scheduling algorithm. We’ve run the simulations.” He tapped his tablet, and a cascade of flawless data streamed across every screen in the room. “It yields a 40% efficiency gain with a 5% reduction in power consumption.”
The room exhaled. The lead engineer, a woman who had once famously told a venture capitalist to sod off, leaned forward, eyes wide. “That’s… that’s not incremental. That’s a paradigm shift.”
“Told you,” Lando said, grinning now, a bright, unrestrained thing that transformed his face. He finally dropped into his chair, spinning it lazily. “Oscar’s got the pretty graphs that prove I’m not just a pretty face with mad ideas.”
“Debatable on both counts,” Oscar said dryly, not looking up from his tablet. The engineers chuckled, the tension broken. This was the dance. Lando set the world on fire. Oscar calmly provided the fire extinguisher, the safety permits, and the insurance policy, all while making sure the fire lit the way to a billion-pound profit.
The meeting dissolved into a buzz of excited technical chatter. Lando tuned it out, his energy deflating now that the conquest was over. His knee bounced under the table. Oscar watched the bounce for a three count, then slid a discreet folder across the glass surface.
“The final draft for the Singapore merger. Needs your signature before 5 PM. Page seven, clause 4b, they tried to sneak in a non-compete that would hamstring our Melbourne R&D. I’ve redlined it.”
Lando opened the folder, scrawling his name on the highlighted tabs without reading. “You read it?”
“Obviously.”
“And it’s good?”
“It’s now excellent. Because I fixed it.”
Lando’s grin returned, softer this time. Private. “My backbone.”
“Your legal department,” Oscar corrected, but there was no heat in it. He gathered his things as the engineers filed out. “You have a 1 PM with the sustainability board. Try not to call carbon credits a ‘box-ticking wank.’ At least not to the minister’s face.”
“No promises,” Lando sing songed, slouching further in his chair, staring at the now-idle hologram. “My head is buzzing. That was a good one, wasn’t it? The ballet thing.”
“It was adequate.” Oscar stood, straightening his cufflinks. “The swimming team analogy was weak. Mixed metaphor.”
“You loved it.”
“I tolerated it because the math was beautiful.” Oscar paused by Lando’s chair. His gaze fell on the empty coffee cup and the discarded, crumbled energy bar wrapper next to it. The faint smile vanished. “You skipped lunch again.”
Lando waved a dismissive hand. “Was on a roll. Didn’t want to lose it.”
“Your 7 AM ECG results came back.”
“And?”
“And your resting heart rate is that of a startled gazelle. Your cortisol levels are laughable. You can’t run a global empire on panic and pastries, Lando.”
The change in the room’s atmosphere was subtle but absolute. The afterglow of shared triumph evaporated. Lando’s playful slouch stiffened. “I’m fine, mum. Christ. We just cracked quantum lattice theory, and you’re nagging about my cholesterol?”
“It’s not nagging. It’s a factual operational risk. You collapsing in a boardroom is bad for business.” Oscar’s tone was still even, but it had cooled, hardened into the voice he used for incompetent suppliers.
“I’m not going to collapse!” Lando snapped, swivelling to face him. The exhaustion he’d been fighting since 3 AM was now plain in the shadows under his eyes. “Why is this always the song? The project is never enough. The win is never enough. It’s always ‘you didn’t sleep, you didn’t eat, your vitals are sub-optimal.’ I’m not one of your fucking spreadsheets, Oscar!”
Oscar didn’t back up. He never did. He just went still, a glacier meeting a volcano. “If you were a spreadsheet, I could at least force a recalculation. You’re a person making consistently poor inputs and expecting a miraculous output. It’s not sustainable.”
“What’s not sustainable,” Lando said, voice dropping low and dangerous, “is you treating me like I’m a liability instead of your partner. I’m the one who sees the ‘ballet.’ You just… you just tidy up after me.”
The words hung in the air, sharp and ugly.
Oscar’s expression didn’t fracture. It just went perfectly, utterly blank. It was the most terrifying expression Lando knew. It meant he’d struck bone.
“I see,” Oscar said, his voice now devoid of any trace of warmth or dry humour. It was flat. Final. “Tidying up. That’s what you think the last eight years have been.”
“That’s not what I–”
“No. I think it is.” Oscar picked up his leather folio, his movements precise and economical. “You’re right. The win should be enough. My mistake for expecting the man who built this company to have a passing interest in keeping it and himself functioning.”
“Oscar–”
“You have your meeting at 1 PM. The files are on your desktop. The minister does like carbon credits, so maybe bite your tongue.” He was at the door, a silhouette against the bright London skyline.
“Where are you going?” Lando asked, the anger bleeding out, replaced by a cold trickle of dread.
Oscar stopped. He didn’t turn around. His shoulders were a straight, tense line under his impeccably tailored suit.
“Since my contributions are apparently just… tidying,” he said, the word laced with a quiet, devastating venom, “I’ll get out of your way. Fine. I’ll fucking leave you to it.”
The door hissed shut behind him with a sound of absolute finality.
Lando was left alone in the silent, sunlit boardroom. The ghost of the quantum ballet shimmered uselessly above the table. The win tasted like ashes. He stared at the space where Oscar had been, the echo of the slammed door still ringing in his bones, and for the first time in a very long time, he had no idea what to do next.