The billionaire's forbidden pit stop

Episode 7: Haunted Bloodlines

The silence in the bedroom was heavy, suffocating, and absolute. Adrian stood over the bed like a towering shadow of death, his scary black eyes completely unblinking. The air felt freezing, yet Asaliya could feel the suffocating heat of his quiet fury pressing down on her chest.

"I am going to ask you one more time," Adrian whispered, his voice dropping into a dangerously low, gravelly register that vibrated right through the floorboards. "What the f**k are you doing, Asaliya? Why the f**k are you hunting me?"

Asaliya pressed her back hard against the headboard, clutching her sprained wrist against her ribs. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps. She squeezed her jaw shut, her stubborn ego fighting a losing battle against the raw terror paralyzing her limbs. She shook her head, refusing to speak.

"Answer me!" Adrian roared.

With a sudden, explosive burst of violence, Adrian lunged sideways. He grabbed the heavy wooden chair sitting by the desk, lifted it effortlessly above his head, and violently shattered it against the slate-gray floor.

*CRASH!*

Splintered wood and broken metal brackets exploded across the room, pieces violently ricocheting off the walls.

Asaliya flinched violently, covering her head as a sharp sob tore from her throat. She scrambled off the bed, completely ignoring the blinding flash of agony in her sprained ankle, and collapsed onto the hard floor, pulling her knees tightly to her chest. She was shaking uncontrollably, weeping over and over.

It wasn't just the shattered chair. It was the terrifying familiarity of the violence. Her mind instantly flashed back to her childhood—to the dark, cramped kitchen where her own father would smash plates and shatter furniture onto the floor whenever her mother hadn't cooked a perfect meal. The absolute terror of being helpless, trapped in a room with an angry, unpredictable monster, shattered her remaining defenses.

"Stop it! Adrian, please, just f*****g stop it!" Asaliya screamed, her voice cracking as tears streamed down her pale cheeks. She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed helplessly on the floor. "Don't do this... please..."

Adrian froze. His chest heaved beneath his black shirt, his large hands still clenched into tight fists. Seeing her curled into a trembling ball on the floor, completely broken and weeping, the monstrous rage in his eyes flickered, settling into a cold, rigid stillness.

He took a slow, heavy step forward, his boots stopping mere inches from her trembling frame.

"One last time, Asaliya," Adrian commanded, his voice dead and empty of emotion. "Why?"

Asaliya snapped her head up, her messy hair sticking to the tears on her face. The raw terror in her chest suddenly twisted into an overwhelming, toxic wave of grief and pure hatred. She glared up at him, screaming through her tears, the words tearing out of her throat like broken glass.

"Because your f*****g father took everything from me!" she yelled, her voice echoing violently against the dark walls. "Everything! Our house, our lives—it was all destroyed because Arthur Novak wanted the goddamn land we lived on! He wanted his tech parks and his corporate buildings!"

Adrian’s jaw tightened, his black eyes widening by a fraction, but Asaliya didn't stop. She choked on a sob, her uninjured hand clawing at the floorboards.

"My mom tried to fight him! She tried to save our home!" Asaliya wept, her voice breaking completely. "And he took her, Adrian! He took her away when she protested, and he f*****g killed her! She was the only person I had left in this miserable world who actually loved me! The only one! And your family slaughtered her like she was nothing!"

She buried her face in her knees again, her body wracked with deep, agonizing sobs, yelling over and over into the empty space. "I hate you... I hate your name, I hate your blood, I hate everything you touch!"

Adrian stood perfectly still, the words crashing into him like a physical blow. He knew exactly who his father was. He knew Arthur Novak was a cold, calculating, and genuinely evil man who had stepped on countless bodies to build the Novak legacy. And the bitter, terrifying truth was that Adrian knew he carried that exact same dark, ruthless blood in his own veins. He had never done something so monstrous to an innocent person, but that didn't mean he lacked the capacity to do it. If pushed, he knew he could be just as ruthless.

Slowly, Adrian dropped to his knees, lowering his massive frame until he was eye-level with the weeping girl.

"I have nothing to do with my father's business, Asaliya," Adrian spoke, his voice unusually quiet, though it carried an intense, absolute weight. "I don't take a single dime from him. Everything you see—the tech empire, the racing contracts, the wealth—I built every single piece of it on my own. I left his shadow years ago."

Asaliya slowly lifted her tear-stained face, her eyes red, her gaze dripping with bitter sarcasm. "Oh, brilliant. So I'm just supposed to forget it? How the f**k do I just move on, Adrian? I will never stop. I will never lay down my camera until that old man regrets the day he breathed!"

Adrian’s dark eyes flashed with a sudden, dark finality. Without a word, he lunged forward, his fist violently punching the solid stone wall right beside her head.

*BAM!*

The heavy impact echoed through the room, missing her ear by mere inches. Asaliya flinched, her breath catching as she shivered violently beneath his shadow.

Adrian stood up smoothly, his face returning to a mask of absolute, icy stone. "Then stay here and rot," he whispered coldly. He turned his back on her, his long strides carrying him out of the room, leaving Asaliya crying helplessly on the cold floor in the dark.

The chaotic energy of the paddock was reaching a fever pitch as the official qualifying session drew closer. Inside the Novak Racing garage, mechanics were performing final electronic checks on the cars, the air thick with the smell of fresh rubber and high-octane fuel.

Adrian stood near the rear wing of his black *Novak-GTI*, watching the engineers calibrate the tire pressures. His mind was an absolute mess—dark, heavy, and completely haunted by Asaliya's tearful screams and the ghost of his father’s sins. He knew he couldn't enter a high-speed track with a compromised mind; a single split-second distraction at 200text{ mph} could cost him his life.

Seeking an escape from his own thoughts, Adrian walked out of the garage and headed down the narrow paddock corridor toward the shared hospitality driver cabins. He needed to find Ren and Felix. He needed his brothers to clear the heavy fog in his head.

The moment he pushed open the heavy door to the drivers' cabin, he realized their space was an absolute, chaotic mess—perhaps even messier than his own mind.

"You are a disgrace to the entire European continent! *Putain de merde!*" Felix’s voice shrieked the moment Adrian stepped inside.

Felix, still dressed in his bright purple Arseni racing suit, was standing on top of a leather sofa, wildly brandishing a plastic fork like a sword. On the other side of the low coffee table stood Ren, holding a greasy cardboard pizza box like a shield, a stubborn, mocking grin on his face.

"Oh, cry me a river, you dramatic baguette!" Ren shouted back, dodging a swipe from Felix’s fork. "It’s just a standard topping! The garage catering supplied it, I didn't cultivate the fruit myself!"

"It is an abomination!" Felix yelled, his heavy French accent flaring as he pointed dramatically at the remaining slices inside the box. "Yesterday night, you deliberately put pineapples on a traditional wood-fired pizza! I am defending the entire structural integrity of Italian culture right now, you uncultured swine!"

Ren rolled his eyes, taking a massive bite out of a pineapple-laden slice just to spite him. "You're a Frenchman, Felix! Why the f**k do you care so much about Italian pizza? Go eat a croissant and leave my lunch alone!"

"Because it is a crime against humanity, *imbécile*!" Felix barked, hopping off the sofa and stomping his foot. "Pineapple does not belong on cheese! It is warm, it is wet, it is fundamentally wrong!"

Adrian stepped fully into the room, shutting the door behind him. The sudden silence caught their attention, and both Ren and Felix instantly stopped fighting, turning their heads toward the towering billionaire.

Felix immediately sprinted over, grabbing Adrian by the sleeve of his black racing suit and dragging him toward the table. "Adrian! Thank God you are here. Settle this right now. You are a man of logic, a man of taste. Tell this i***t right now—was that pineapple pizza thing right, or is he a literal sociopath?"

Adrian looked down at the greasy box, then looked at Ren’s smug face, and finally down at Felix’s wide, pleading eyes.

A tiny, faint glimmer of light returned to Adrian’s scary black eyes. "It's fundamentally wrong," Adrian muttered flatly. "You're a disgusting animal, Ren."

"Yes! I knew it!" Felix shrieked in victory, throwing his hands in the air. "Hear that, you pineapple-loving piece of trash? The world champion has spoken!"

"Oh, f**k off, both of you!" Ren laughed loudly, tossing a crumpled napkin straight at Adrian’s chest. "You two have absolutely zero joy in your lives. I hope my pineapple juice clogs your fuel lines tomorrow!"

"If you touch my car, I will feed you a raw frog, Ren, I swear to God!" Felix fired back, lunging over the table to grab the rest of the pizza.

Listening to their loud, profane bickering and watching them wrestle over a ridiculous cardboard box, the suffocating weight in Adrian’s chest slowly began to lift. The dark, haunting memories of his father and the broken girl in his condo receded into the background, his mind healing just enough to prepare for the violent speed of the track ahead.