Roads of Redemption | F1 | Toto Wolff

12 | The Bottom Line.

I held her close, feeling her body tremble against mine, her hot, ragged breath brushing against my cheek. She seemed so small there, so fragile in my arms—a painful contradiction to the fierce image she had displayed minutes earlier when she left that room, determined to push me away in every way possible.

I could feel the weight of everything she was carrying, so vivid I could almost see it hanging between us—the anger, the pain, the exhaustion. And somewhere deep in my thoughts, a voice insisted that I was to blame. The guilt for every broken piece, every line of exhaustion on her face, every gaze lost in the void. I hated being the reason she was falling apart like this, why she seemed so... defeated.

I wanted to say something, anything, but the words felt ridiculous, small in the face of what lay between us. And perhaps it was too late to fix anything. I just wanted her to know I was here, that I would hold her tight, even if that was all I had left.

Alejandro's absence had become a constant presence, like a shadow hanging over her, a persistent echo that never quieted. I could see it in her eyes, feel it in the way she spoke, in the words she chose, and even more in the ones she chose to swallow.

It was an invisible weight she carried, a burden that kept her trapped in this endless cycle of pain, of searching for meaning. And I wondered if she even knew she was trapped.

When I heard Valentina had plunged into technical studies on tire dynamics and car behavior, I understood once and for all that she was still stuck in that day.

She wasn't trying to move on. She was trying to understand. Understand what happened on that damn curve. How something seemingly so simple, so ordinary, could end in a senseless tragedy.

Every graph she analyzed, every detail of data she dissected... it was her desperate attempt to reconstruct that day, to piece together a reality that had crumbled before her. She searched in the variables, in the temperatures and pressures, for some solace that the real world had not offered. That no one had offered. Not even me.

She stepped away from me, leaning against the opposite wall in the bathroom, as if she needed that solid contact to keep from collapsing. She tilted her head back slowly, letting it hang, her eyes closing for a brief moment, as if seeking refuge in a place no one could reach.

I moved closer, my hand touching hers, a hesitant gesture, trying to bridge the chasm that had formed between us.

"Liebling," I murmured, my voice a thread, the sound almost swallowed by the silence around us.

She opened her eyes and stared at me, her expression a mixture of pain and distrust.

"Can I come closer?" I asked, seeking permission in the tense lines of her face.

There was a second of hesitation, but she didn't pull away. Her eyes remained on mine, challenging but curious.

I moved closer, invading the space she had built to protect herself, and wrapped her hand in mine, feeling the slight tremor in her fingers.

"Look at me," I requested, my voice low, almost a whisper, as if the sound could break something fragile. "Focus on me."

She released my hand and began tracing my face delicately. From my eyebrow to my chin. My hair. Massaging.

Her fingers began to trace the contour of my face with an almost hesitant softness, but deliberate. They traced the line of my eyebrow, slowly descending to my chin, as if she wanted to memorize every detail. They moved up to my hair, diving between the strands, massaging gently.

"You know," she began, her voice low, almost as if she were sharing a secret. "I remember the first time I saw you in person."

She paused, her eyes lost in a distant memory. "It wasn't at the Nano test," she continued, with a brief, nostalgic smile. "I thought: Oh, hello, handsome."