Cyrus was born into legacy, not love.

The son of world champion Jamie Sinclair, he took his first steps in pit lanes, not playgrounds. He learned to read telemetry before bedtime stories. His childhood smelled of rubber, gasoline, and podium champagne. His father taught him how to brake before he was tall enough to ride, how to smile for cameras, how to wear a name like a crown.

But he never taught him what to do when that crown became a noose.

Cyrus was called a prodigy before he even had a chance to be a person. A ghost of his father’s greatness in a younger, cleaner shell. He won because he had to. He trained because it was expected. Perfection was not a goal—it was the price of survival.

And no one ever asked if he loved racing.

They only asked when he’d win next.

His world was regimented and precise. Tutors. Trainers. Engineers. No room for mistakes, no time for weakness. Emotions were a liability. The press adored his cold edge. The public saw him as unshakable. That was the trick—if he looked untouchable long enough, maybe he wouldn’t have to admit how much everything touched him.

He didn’t have friends. He didn’t date. He didn’t trust anyone with the cracks he worked so hard to hide.

Then came the crash.

It was supposed to be another celebration. His father’s comeback race. Cyrus had flown in to watch, standing just off pit lane when the camera feeds cut to static.

Turn 7. A miscalculation. A split-second shift.

He ran faster than the marshals. He was the first one there. And he knew.

The silence in Jamie’s eyes told him everything. There was no miracle. No last words. Just metal and blood and the end of everything Cyrus had ever built his life around.

He didn’t cry. Not then. Not at the funeral. Not when the press called it a tragic legacy. He returned to the track within the month, colder than before. Smoother. Untouchable.

But something in him had fractured.

Every race since had been a war between instinct and fear. His body remembered how to win. But his mind—his heart—remained frozen in that turn, in that moment, waiting to lose everything again.

He trained harder. Slept less. Kept breathing through the panic attacks that clutched his chest in the hours before each race. No one saw. No one could see. He wouldn’t let them.

Because if they saw... They’d know the truth.

That beneath the leather and the legend, Cyrus Sinclair was not a machine. He was a son still trying to outrun a ghost.

And today—on the anniversary of that crash—he won the race.

He crossed Turn 7 and survived it.

But the moment the cameras disappeared, the silence closed in. The suit felt like a shroud. The air refused to stay in his lungs.

And for the first time in his life, Cyrus Sinclair—champion, legacy, ice prince of the track—collapsed in a hallway behind the stadium where no one was meant to see him.

No one but the one person he least expected.