Faded Love - Charles Leclerc

Chapter 15: Million Dollar Girl

🎶 Lay Low — Tiësto 🎶

Charles had told me to be at the Brignoles track next Wednesday and I was just getting ready to meet him, his brother, little Emmanuel and his family there. In my head, I was still debating with myself if investing Bobby's insurance money in that boy was a good idea: not because he didn't deserve it, but because I was unsure if putting the money into something that in some way, led to his death was the right thing.

With those thoughts still circling around my head, I got into my car and drove off. I arrived on time and Charles was already standing in the parking lot, apparently looking for me. He didn't care about me parking my car, he hadn't recognised me and was still looking out.
"Earth to Charles, I'm here!" I said as soon as I had gotten out.
"A Range Rover? I expected you to show up in a Mini!" he chuckled when he recognised me.
"Yeah, well' I'm not 25 anymore, I'm 30 now" I replied.
"Right. Let's get inside." he said and we walked together. "Did you have a big bash for your 30th?" he asked and grinned.
"No, I was too occupied losing weight to fit into my wedding dress. Looking back I probably should have had the party" I said. He was way too chaotic and putting me into a bad mood with his stupid questions. Hopefully, he got the memo and would shut up.

"Hello, Mary! This is Emmanuel and his parents" Lorenzo greeted me and I shook hands with the three people he had just introduced to me. The mother was holding a baby on her arm.
"I have four other siblings" Emmanuel told me proudly and jealousy stung me a bit. I always wanted to have a big family but with my age now, the possibilities of that were getting slimmer every day.
"Would you show off your driving for me today?" I asked him sweetly, trying to shake off my constantly worsening mood.
He nodded ecstatically and walked towards one of the karts. Lorenzo, Charles and I took seats at a small grandstand, if you could even call it that. It was more like some plastic chairs assembled behind a barrier.

"Did you bring what I asked you?" I said, turning to Lorenzo and he nodded, giving me a small folder, with lots of crumpled papers inside.
"We wrote down the times set mostly ourselves, there wasn't a computer yet to save all the data, but it's 100% accurate" he explained.
As I had no clue about karting, I had asked Lorenzo to dig out all of his, Charles', Jules' and Arthur's karting records of when they were around Emmanuel's age. I needed something to compare the boy's times set on this track. After a warm-up lap he started going and drove five laps, setting a better time in each one of them.

56:31 was his time set on his fastest lap. He was definitely quicker than Lorenzo and Arthur, but Jules had set a 56:25 and Charles a 56:19 at that age.
"How long has he been karting?" I asked.
"Two years" Charles replied.
Jules had been karting since he was a baby practically and Charles told me that he had first sat down in a kart at mere four years old.

"Ok, I'll take him up, but on my conditions, shall we speak to the parents?" I said, turning to the two brothers. Lorenzo smiled and nodded and Charles looked as if he wanted to jump to the moon out of ecstasy.
We walked inside again where Emmanuel was taking off his racing suits and his parents were talking to him.
"You are one little beast in that thing" I said and gave him a smile.
"Thank you, Miss" he replied.
"Shall we go upstairs and have a little chat?" I asked the three/four of them and the parent's eyes lit up and they quickly nodded.

Upstairs, there was a sort of office/conference room and we sat down at a round table.
"Ok. So, I am ready to sponsor Emmanuel with 50 000€ for this season" I started and the eyes of everyone at the table popped out. The entry in the French junior karting championship cost 19 000€ alone and they still needed money for the actual kart and all the expenses around it, travelling, accommodations and so on.
"The season is five months long. If you aren't in the top four by half of the season, I am going to drop you. If you manage that, I expect a top three finish at the end of the season and no DNF in any of the races in order for me to give you the option of sponsoring you for a next season." I explained calmly. I knew that those conditions were hard.
Everyone was silent at the table, until Charles stood up and took my arm to drag me outside.
"Lorenzo, will you join us? - We just need a minute" he said and smiled at the others.

"Are you completely crazy?! That boy is just 12, that's way too much pressure you're putting on him, he'll be one of the youngest competing, against guys who are three years older than him!" he almost shouted when we stood outside of that room.
"If I remember well, you won this championship at the same age" I said sternly. "I'm actually being generous by not putting a championship win as a condition for further sponsoring, since you had much more experience than him at that time." I replied.
"You have no idea about racing or whatsoever. The competition nowadays is much more than it was at my time" he said angrily.
"Then he needs to prove himself even more. Look, you told me he has no other options. So it's either me with my conditions or he says goodbye to his dream!" I said, now also starting to get angry.
"He will break under the pressure!!!" he now shouted.
"Or show that he has a champion's mentality" Lorenzo said and with that, the discussion was pretty much over.

We returned to the room and the three people were looking at us terrified, they must have heard our shouting.
"Sorry for the interruption" I said and smiled as we took our seats again.
"Miss Wright has set her conditions, what do you say?" Lorenzo asked.
The parents looked at each other and the father said: "It's your decision Emmanuel..."
The little boy looked deep in thought, I did feel sorry for putting that much pressure on him, but as Charles said, there was a lot of competition and you needed to separate the wheat from the chaff.
"I'll do it. I hope I can make you proud, Miss Wright" the little boy said.
"It's Mary from now on" I said and walked over to hug him.
"Welcome to All Time Management" Lorenzo said and shook the parents' hands, as did Charles.

When we were finished, the boys and I walked back to the parking lot and Charles asked us: "Shall we go out for lunch?"
"Sorry, but no. You've pissed me off all morning, I don't have any more energy for you left." I said angrily, got into my SUV and slammed the door shut in front of the boy's noses.