[Nico’s POV]
My father emerges from arrivals at Malpensa—weathered hands gripping a duffel bag older than my racing career, a São Paulo FC cap pulled low.
Three days since the linen closet—since Soren shoved me through a service door and fucked me against industrial shelving—and neither of us has acknowledged it. Polite in public, silent in the suite, the bruises fading faster than whatever shifted that night, and it made me nearly forget the fact that my father was coming to visit.
"Meu filho!" The duffel hits the floor and his arms crush me. He smells like machine oil and my mother's lavender detergent, and the combination dismantles something I did not realise I had been holding together.
"Tá magro demais." He pulls back, gripping my shoulders. "You are too thin. Your mother will have something to say about this."
"I am at racing weight, Pai." I flex one arm for emphasis, which he ignores entirely.
"You are at skeleton weight. We are fixing this immediately."
Once we get in the car, he barely waits for the engine. "Dona Helena finally won the tax dispute—three years of fighting, and she celebrated by giving free pastéis to the entire street. And the Ferreira twins, the skinny ones who stole mangoes from Seu Carlos? Both accepted into USP. Engineering. Their mother cried for two days."
I merge onto the motorway toward Monza. "How is Mamãe?"
"Busy. She found a new moqueca recipe." He says this with the resigned gravity of a weather warning. "Requires a specific redfish. Only one vendor, at Pinheiros market."
"Let me guess." I change lanes. "You drive."
"Forty minutes. Each Saturday. So your mother can argue with the fishmonger about which fillet has the right colour. Six weeks of this, Nico. Six weeks."
"You could shop somewhere closer," I offer, knowing the suggestion is suicide.
"I suggested this once." He gives me a look that conveys the magnitude of his error. "Once."
I almost smile. He argues about redfish. I argue about downforce with engineers who monitor my heart rate. Different scales of domestic warfare, equally unwinnable.
He insists on seeing the garage before the hotel. My father has been a mechanic in lower formula categories for thirty years—putting him within fifty metres of a Formula 1 car without letting him touch it would be like asking a surgeon to observe an operation through glass.
At the track, he transforms. His hands find the bodywork, fingers tracing carbon fibre seams, tapping the front wing endplate with two knuckle-raps.
"Stiffness is good," he murmurs, already crouching beside the rear suspension. "But this wishbone angle… you are running more camber than I expected."
David, my lead engineer, leans in. "We adjusted for Monza's high-speed corners. Rear tyres degrade fast here."
"Sim, sim, but compliance suffers under braking." He taps the wishbone. "You lose feel through the pedal."
David glances at me and I shrug—my father has been reading suspension geometry since before I could walk.
"I have physio in ten minutes," I tell him. "I will come back for you after."
He waves me off without looking up. "Take your time. I want to talk to your engineer about this rear setup—you have the degradation data from Friday?" This last part to David. "Go to your physio, filho. I will be here."
When I return an hour later, he has migrated to the centre of a semicircle of mechanics, phone out, swiping through photos. "Fourteen years old. Karts held together with zip ties and hope. But fast—meu Deus, you should see them through the chicane."
I clap his shoulder, trying not to blush, and steer him away before he reaches the photo of me crying after my first DNF. I guide him across the paddock, the late Monza light turning the tarmac gold, his voice filling the walk with stories about a gearbox he rebuilt from scavenged parts, and drive him to the restaurant.
It’s quiet Italian, the restaraunt—white tablecloths, no menus, the owner selects for you.
"Your mother started a fourth volume of the scrapbook," Pai says over ossobuco, tearing bread. "Every result, every photo. Little notes in the margins—strategy opinions." He smiles. "She watches qualifying at three in the morning. Sits in the kitchen with her coffee and talks to the television like you can hear her. Tells you to brake later. Every single time."
The image lands with unexpected weight. My mother in the dark kitchen, whispering advice to a screen.
Pai sets down his bread and his posture shifts—shoulders squaring. "I want to ask you something, and I want you to actually answer me."
I take a drink of wine. "That depends on the question."
"Soren Lindqvist." He says the name like placing a chess piece.
I keep my expression neutral. "What about him?"
"I watched you two race for years. The crashes, the arguments, the way your jaw locks every time a journalist says his name." He pauses. "I remember the blond Swedish boy who used to video-call our house. Who was inseparable from my son and then suddenly was not. What actually happened?"
"Teenage drama." The deflection is automatic. "We grew apart."
"Filho." Gentle reproach. "Boys who grow apart do not spend eleven years trying to destroy each other on international television. I did not pry then. But now you are teammates—same garage, same hotel suite. How is it?"
"We have a professional relationship." The flatness of my own voice betrays everything. Pai studies me—a father who recognises a lie but chooses not to dismantle it. He nods, accepting the boundary, and shifts gears.
"Your mother remembers the sweet Swedish boy from Italy—the one who called you irmão with that terrible accent. She was thrilled when the team announcement came. Kept saying it was destino, the two of you back together."
Something cold moves through my stomach. "Pai…"
"The Brazilian Grand Prix is in a few weeks. Mid-season break falls right after." Studied casualness—the kind that means the important part is coming. "Your mother wants to host properly. Show Soren São Paulo, feed him real food. She has been planning menus."
"You did not." My fork stops halfway to my mouth.
"I ran into him in the paddock this afternoon. He remembered me, Nico. Immediately. Called me Senhor Almeida and corrected himself to Tomás like I taught him. So I invited him to stay with us during the break."
The restaurant contracts around me. "You invited him to our house without asking me?"
"It would mean so much to your mother." He deploys this with the precision of a man who knows exactly which weapon to reach for.
"This is not about Mamãe." My voice stays level but the control costs me—the terror of Soren in the kitchen where my mother sings, the living room where my father watches old races. I built that separation deliberately—a firewall between the person I perform and the person I am.
"He is my competitor, Pai. My…" I stop before the word enemy reaches air, because it has not been accurate for weeks. "It is complicated."
He reaches across the table and covers my hand—rough palm, grease embedded in fingerprint whorls despite decades of scrubbing. "He already accepted."
I pull my hand away. "O quê?"
"He said yes." Pai picks up his wine glass. "And his expression… meu filho, it was the same face he used to make on those video calls. When you would invite him somewhere and he would try not to look too eager. Hopeful, nervous. Like a boy who wants to belong somewhere and is not sure he is allowed."
The restaurant noise fills the silence. Soren Lindqvist is coming to my home in São Paulo—will sit at my mother's table and exist in the one space I have kept separate from whatever this thing between us has become. And he said yes with the face of a twelve-year-old boy who just wanted a friend.