Chapter Text
Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc crouched in the shadows behind the manicured hedges of one of Monte Carlo’s most prestigious buildings. The city around them buzzed softly—opulence humming through the cobbled streets and soft jazz drifting from a yacht party far below. But here, in the hush of the garden, there was only tension.
“Charlie,” Lando whispered, breath tight, “you sure about this?”
Charles didn’t answer right away. His eyes were locked on the rear entrance they’d spent weeks studying. A single security camera angled just slightly too high—thanks to Lando’s impromptu job with a ladder two nights ago. Inside, behind that glass and marble, was a life they’d never had. A way out of the endless loop of barely scraping by.
“We’ve got one shot,” Charles murmured. “You still in?”
Lando exhaled slowly. “Let’s make it count.”
They slipped through the entrance like shadows, the door giving with a muted click. Inside, the air shifted. It smelled faintly of cedar and old money—cool, still, and heavy with silence. Floor-to-ceiling windows reflected their silhouettes as they stepped through the open-plan living room, lit only by the dim shimmer of city lights.
The mansion was less a home and more a museum. Marble floors, curated art, untouched surfaces. It felt like the place had been staged for someone else's life entirely.
“This guy must wipe his ass with silk,” Lando muttered under his breath, peering at a crystal vase that looked older than Monaco itself.
Charles didn’t smile. “Focus. Study’s on the east side.”
Their target was a safe—an antique thing rumored to be more fortress than furniture. It wasn’t just a payday. It was the kind of legend that people whispered about in alleys and corner bars. No one knew exactly what was inside, just that whoever cracked it would never have to lift a finger again.
In the study, the quiet felt louder. Charles knelt before the ornate cabinet, fingers already working the dial. Lando stood by the door, agitated. His nerves were bouncing off the walls.
“How long’s this gonna take?” he hissed.
Charles kept his eyes on the lock, trying to ignore the sweat gathering at his brow. “Would you rather I guess and blow the damn thing?”
Lando shut up, though his pacing didn’t.
Minutes dragged. Click. Click. Nothing.
“Shit,” Charles muttered, reaching for a crowbar from his bag. “We’re out of time.”
The first bang echoed like a gunshot.
“You sure no one’s home?” Lando asked, voice tight.
“One hundred percent.”
Bang.
Two more hits and the safe creaked open like an old coffin. What waited inside made them both freeze.
Stacks of bills. Velvet boxes heavy with gemstones. Bundled bonds. Heirlooms. It looked like a dragon’s hoard, glimmering in the shadows.
Lando grinned, wide-eyed. “Holy shit, Charles. You actually did it.”
But the moment shattered.
From behind them came a voice—low, calm, and cutting.
“Well. Isn’t this a charming little surprise.”
They spun around.
There, leaning in the doorway like he’d been watching a play unfold, stood a man neither of them had expected. Tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in black with a gun in one hand and an unreadable expression on his face.
Charles's stomach dropped.
Max Verstappen.
The name alone was legend, a ghost-story for the upper echelons of Monaco’s elite. Supposedly dead. Son of Jos Verstappen—the man who ruled the principality's underground with an iron grip and no conscience. Rumor had it Jos had killed his own son in a fit of rage. But the man standing in front of them was very much alive.
And pointing a gun straight at Lando’s head.
Max’s piercing blue eyes, sharp as broken glass, didn’t waver. But strangely, his focus wasn’t on the Brit with the gun to his temple. It was on Charles.
“What are you?” he asked, tone like ice wrapped in velvet. “Some kind of amateur hour?”
Lando’s hands went up instinctively. “Woah, woah, look, man—no need to go full action hero on us—”
Max didn’t blink.
Charles stepped forward slightly. “We thought the place was empty.”
“That’s your first mistake,” Max murmured, cocking the gun. “You thought.”
He raised his phone without looking away from Charles and spoke into it in rapid-fire Dutch. Orders, maybe. Or just a status update. Hard to tell.
Charles, meanwhile, felt like he was standing in a dream—or a nightmare. He couldn’t stop looking at Max. The man’s presence was magnetic in the most terrifying way. Cold, lethal, mesmerizing. His jaw clenched, eyes still hollow. Not dead, but not exactly alive either. It was like staring into the eye of a storm.
Max lowered his phone and slowly—calmly—walked toward them. His gun still aimed at Lando.
“I’ll ask once,” he said. “Who are you?”
Charles opened his mouth, but Max’s eyes cut toward him with a warning so sharp he closed it again.
Lando swallowed. “Lando Norris. This is Charles Leclerc.”
Max nodded slightly. “And why exactly are Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc robbing my house?”
The question wasn’t rhetorical, but it wasn’t angry either. It was…curious.
Charles spoke, quietly. “We’re broke. No jobs. No chances. We heard a story about a safe that could change things. Didn’t know it was yours.”
“Now you do,” Max said, still calm. He studied them for a long moment. The kind of silence that made every second feel like it stretched on forever.
And then—he lowered the gun.
Lando exhaled like he’d just resurfaced from a dive.
“You’re letting us go?” Charles asked, incredulous.
Max shrugged. “You’re not dead. That’s enough generosity for tonight.”
Then he turned, almost bored, and walked to the desk. Sat. Looked at them like they were insects he’d grown tired of watching.
“Well?” he said. “Take it and get out.”
They hesitated. It felt too easy. Too…off.
“Last chance,” Max added without looking up. “Before I change my mind.”
They didn’t wait for another warning.
The sound of the engine purred beneath Carlos Sainz as he guided the matte-black Aston Martin up the winding hills toward Max’s estate. He hadn't even had time to loosen his tie after dinner when the call came in: Max needed him. No explanation, just coordinates and a clipped, "Now."
Carlos hated that tone. It was the one Max used when something had gone wrong—horribly wrong—or when something strange had crawled out of the shadows and into his very calculated world. He parked beside Max’s personal garage, noting the faint light spilling from the windows of the upper floor office.
He took the back entrance. Not out of habit. Out of necessity.
Max was a man who didn’t like to be surprised. And Max hated it when people used the front door.
Inside, the mansion was as quiet as ever—eerily so. But Carlos didn’t need to ask where Max was. He could hear the soft clink of glass and the faint, deliberate creak of leather as he stepped into the study.
Max was there, of course. Perched behind his desk, legs crossed at the ankle, sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, a glass of something expensive in one hand and a look on his face that Carlos couldn't read.
That alone was enough to set off alarm bells.
“You called,” Carlos said simply, stepping into the room.
Max didn’t look up. He was staring at the open safe in the wall, now completely empty.
“They took everything,” he said after a beat.
Carlos blinked. “They? What—wait, what happened?”
Max leaned back in the chair, finally meeting his friend’s gaze. “We had visitors tonight. Two boys.”
Carlos raised an eyebrow. “Thieves?”
“Apparently.”
“You caught them?”
Max took a sip. “Naturally.”
Carlos’s eyes narrowed. “And yet… the safe is empty.”
Max said nothing.
Carlos stared at him for a second longer, then walked to the safe. He ran a hand along the empty velvet-lined interior. Dustless. Spotless. Sacred.
“This was the one, wasn’t it?” he asked softly. “The first haul. You and Jos. Berlin, right?”
Max gave a small nod. “I’ve never touched a cent of it.”
“You said you’d never would. That was the pact.”
“I still haven’t.”
Carlos turned slowly. “Then they did. And you let them.”
Max’s jaw twitched. A flicker of something passed through his face, gone before it had formed into emotion. He swirled the liquor in his glass, watching the amber liquid catch the low light.
“They needed it more than I did.”
Carlos blinked, stunned. “You’re telling me you let two petty thieves walk away with the most priceless stash in this house—hell, maybe in this whole goddamn region—because they ‘needed it’?”
Max stood.
And when Max stood, people listened.
“They weren’t amateurs,” he said, voice low, measured. “They didn’t run in waving guns or masks. They were careful. Nervous. Desperate, yes—but not stupid. They didn’t come to kill or threaten. They came because they had nothing else.”
Carlos frowned. “And that’s your soft spot now? Desperate little orphans?”
“No,” Max replied. “But I know what it’s like to stand in someone else’s palace and wonder why they get a throne and you get scraps.”
Carlos folded his arms. “Did you at least get names?”
Max’s mouth curved into a slight smile. “They offered them. Lando Norris. Charles Leclerc.”
Silence fell for a moment. Max crossed to the window and leaned against the edge of it, gazing out into the dark, starlit sprawl of Monte Carlo.
Carlos followed, leaning beside him. “So? Why didn’t you stop them? Or, hell, why not keep the money and throw them out? They didn’t exactly earn it.”
Max didn’t look at him. “One of them—Charles—he had this look in his eyes.”
Carlos rolled his own. “Oh no. Don’t say it.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re thinking it.”
Max smirked faintly. “He was interesting.”
“Interesting,” Carlos repeated flatly. “Interesting like ‘potential asset’ or interesting like ‘gonna stare at him in my dreams’?”
Max ignored the jab. “He wasn’t afraid the way most people are. He was aware, not panicked. Calculating. But there was something else. Something quiet.”
Carlos watched his friend for a moment, then said, “You’ve always had a thing for strays.”
“I was a stray,” Max murmured, more to the window than to Carlos.
For a moment, neither of them said anything.
Then, Carlos ran a hand through his hair. “You should’ve told me. We could’ve traced them. Stopped them before they left the city.”
Max turned to him. “And then what? Drag them into this world? Make them pay back what they stole with blood?”
Carlos held his gaze. “That’s how it works, Max. You don’t get to pick and choose now.”
But Max just stepped past him, glass in hand, as he crossed the room. He stopped by the empty safe, staring at the ghost of his past.
“I am choosing.”
Carlos watched him, warily. “You’re getting soft.”
Max turned back, something icy sharp flickering behind his eyes. “No. I’m just done pretending that fear makes me strong.”
Carlos opened his mouth to argue, but stopped. Something in Max’s tone didn’t invite disagreement—it invited a reckoning.
Instead, he tried a different route. “So what happens now?”
Max set his glass down with a quiet clink. “Nothing. They’re gone. Let it be.”
“And if they come back?”
Max smiled—a dangerous, knowing smile.
“Then they’d better be ready for a very different kind of welcome.”
Charles sat hunched over in the back of a beat-up Fiat Lando had hotwired earlier, his fingers turning the bracelet over and over again in his hands. The night air was still warm, but the chill hadn’t left his bones since they fled the mansion.
Lando glanced over at him. “You alright, man?”
Charles nodded slowly. “Yeah. Just… thinking.”
“You think he’s gonna come after us?”
Charles didn’t answer immediately. His mind was still back in that study. With those eyes. That voice. That impossible man who should’ve been dead.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.”
Lando chuckled dryly. “What, you think he’s gonna show up with flowers and a box of chocolates?”
Charles looked out the window, his voice barely above a whisper.
“No. But something tells me… that wasn’t goodbye.”