Fast & Hard (The Fast 1)

Pulling out of the parking lot and swerving around Dickhead’s Small-Dick-Mobile because sometimes testosterone wins the battle and because today I’m not in an F1 car my team has crippled, I drive us the hour into London. Mallory’s so tired she sleeps most of the time, her time awake spent doing god knows what social media duties on her phone and sighing.

“Ok, so you need to schmooze the founders, Chase Hintz and Bernie Hegmann,” Mallory rattles off as we head inside a snooty bar and restaurant that’s marked as closed for a private event. “All the company exec’s will be there, but those two are your targets.”

I mm-hmm and roll my eyes and let her out of the car. Another day, another bullshit glad-handing.

“Sandra wants me to take extra photos and stuff today. So, just so you know,” she fidgets with her purse strap and looks at the ground as we walk, “I’ll be floating around the whole event, you may not see me much.”

“Ok,” I mumble. “Are you ok? You’re acting weird.”

“Yeah, just tired.” She squeezes my hand then lets it go before anyone sees us. “They’re a really important potential sponsor.”

Sure enough, I don’t see much of Mallory during the event. I spotted her by the bar a bit ago, standing with one of the H founders and Dickhead and my blood pressure rose but she tapped her iPad and mouthed the word “photos” to me before disappearing. I forced myself calm and wished I was drinking something stronger than club soda but I’m driving her home and probably don’t need alcohol clouding my judgment in this close proximity to Dickhead.

Another hour later, I still don’t know what reinventing real-time functionalities means but I have been perfectly polite nodding my head and charming the employees and two founders. Whatever real-time functionalities are, they’re a definite fit for the F1 target audience, I agreed.

Even the Dragon Lady would be pleased and hopefully, she’ll lay off Mallory. The club sodas are running through me and I excuse myself from the thrilling conversation about eco-centric middleware. Two employees stop me on the way to the bathroom for selfies. I smile. I deserve some kind of phony-fuck trophy for this. Eh, on second thought, no, I don’t want that tarnishing the real trophies in my garage.

And then the smile is gone as I open the bathroom door. Dickhead is tucking himself back into his pants in front of a urinal and Mallory is standing inside the men’s room clutching her iPad, her back turned and looking up at the ceiling. Seeing me, her jaw drops and her eyes go huge.

“Lennox,” she gasps.

“The fuck?” I look between her and Dickhead who is wearing a smug grin as he strolls to the sink.

Mallory stands in front of me and puts her hand on my arm, “Lennox, please…”

“Get in the car,” I growl at her, staring at Dickhead, my whole body getting twitchy.

“Aw, don’t be a poor sport, chap,” Digby gloats, shaking his hands off over the sink.

“Lennox please, let’s just go, come on, please,” she begs and pushes against my chest urging me out of the room.

Every cell in my body wants to give Dickhead something to gloat about and it takes every ounce of self-control to let Mallory pull me out of the room by my arm. I do, but I’m livid even as she gets into the car and I slam the door down, fire the car up, and tear out of the parking lot.

She’s looking at her knees and clutching the iPad to her chest. “It’s not what it looks like,” she finally mutters.

“Yeah? Why don’t you tell me what it was, then?” This goddamn Ferrari cannot go fast enough no matter how much I mash the pedal down and snap the paddle shifter.

“Please slow down,” she grabs the door handle as I swerve between two cars and the car rocks back and forth.

Her shoulder seat belt strap is loose so I reach over with my right hand and jerk it down with one quick pull, squealing us around a corner with my left hand on the wheel. “Thought you liked when I drive, love, or was that a lie, too?”

“Not like this! And I didn’t lie!”

“What the bloody hell were you doing? I asked you to stay away from him!”

“I told you, I had to get some extra collateral. For Sandra.”

“Really, Sandra wanted dick pics, or what?” What possible excuse could there be for being in a men’s room with the devil incarnate with his dick out? I asked her to do one fucking thing, stay away from him. The car lowers to the asphalt and the wing opens as soon as we hit the M1 in seventh gear.

“You’re scaring me,” she whimpers and clenches her eyes shut.

I take a deep breath and back off the throttle, somehow made to feel like I am the asshole in this situation. “How could you?”

“I swear to you, nothing happened. I just, I needed a quote and he made me follow him in there to get it.” She’s still staring at her knees. If everything were Kosher she’d be looking at me, yelling at me, arguing back.

“After everything I told you? I told you who he is. I fucking told you everything, Mallory! He’s the dangerous one and you’re scared of me? I asked you to stay away from him, just stay the hell away! Why can’t you do that?”

“Nothing happened! Please just let it go! You can’t act like a madman or Celeritas is going to fire you!”