Take This Life / Daniel Ricciardo

Prologue

8th of May, 2014

"He was a brilliant man, father, husband. His work at Red Bull as the car engineer was deeply appreciated by everyone. He tought me about life, love, he showed me what I really wanted to do in my future. I have always loved him and will continue to love him till my very last days. Thank you father, you will be deeply missed and I will never forget you" I finished calmly reading my letter standing next to the dad's grave and the group of people surrounding me - my mother Patricia, my cousins Amelie and Nathaniel, dad's friends from work including Christian Horner, the Red Bull's team principal, and Mark and James, two other race engineers. We stood in silence for a minute to celebrate his life and decided to head back to home.

It was a cold May evening in Germany. The sun was hid behind dark clouds like if the weather was sad about the funeral and saying goodbye to a family member. Since it was May, the grass, trees were green, looking alive even though the weather wasn't as happy as them.

The ride to home with my mother was quite silent, no one of us were saying any words. It actually gave me time to think about what happened. Yes, I lost my dad who died from an unexpected heart attack, but it just couldn't get to me. I was feeling numb, strange, but not sad. I felt like I wasn't there and none of these things were real. I wasn't exactly sure since when I started to feel this way neither why I felt this, but I decided to shrug it off since I could see our house from the window.

The house was a simple, average one with two floors and small garden at the front. It was made of bricks, it looked quite old and it actually was coz the house had belonged to my grandparents before they decided to give it to my parents when they got married. At the front you could see a small garden that hasn't been used in some time and it actually became a garage-like thing where our cars were parked. You could see that the flowers, grass, trees was also quite sad or upset because of that day.

After we had gotten to our house, the first thing I did was to go to my room. It was a quite small room with a big window next to my bed. On walls various posters were hanging - some of them were mine favourite drivers and some of them were my favourite bands. Besides the bed there was also a small, old, wooden wardrobe and a little desk next to it. I actually quite liked the room coz it was simple, plain and had only the most important things in it.

I opened the wooden doors to the room and quietly entered it. I remember that there was an envelope from my dad laying on my desk, so I decided to grab it.

The envelope was a white simple one, it had hand written "to Johnny, my daughter - read at your birthday". I took a deep breath and took out a small white paper with a lot of text. My mind was absolutely racing after reading the letter. It said that the Red Bull team would sign me at my dad's place and I'd become the race engineer for Daniel Ricciardo's side, as him before he died, since I have done an engineering degree at the university and my dad was saying good things about me.

I was absolutely overwhelmed and decided to go down to tell the news to my mother. When I got there, she was sitting in front of the tv on our leather couch watching some news channel.

Patricia Doth was a quite tall, skinny woman. She worked as writer in the fashion magazine. Even though she was 53, she did look quite younger. She had a pale skin, deep brown eyes and ginger long hair. You could see on her face some freckles and wrinkles on the forehead. I won't say I had the best relationship with her but also I won't say that I had bad. We both had different opinions about things and liked different things.

"Have you known about dad's letter to me and getting the job at Red Bull's?" I asked her calmly while sitting next to her. She looked at me not surprised and answered me after the moment.

"Yeah, he told me about it few days before he passed out. He wanted to keep it as a secret and tell you about it at your birthday. Sadly we know how it ended." I was looking at the tv with a blank face while couldn't be able to concentrate and think. Only the nudge from mother woke me from the trance.

"Hey Johnny, are you listening to me?" She asked and after a moment she forced me to look at her. "Are you alright?" She asked once again. I nodded my head and continued to listen shrugging off my weird state.

"Alright, do you know when you start your work?" she sighted and asked me once again. I told her that the next. The team found a replacement for this one and he will only be there for this season but I needed to go for few last racers to look how my future job would have to look like. We chatted for a moment about news and people and then I decided to come back to my room and prepare myself for sleep coz it was already 11PM and I got quite tired.

After a quite short shower I looked into the mirror with my soaked wet black hair. My pale skin was looking tired and refreshed at the same time - I should be eating more vegetables to be honest. My baby blue eyes were looking at their reflection and then moved to my long hair who needed to be brushed. After brushing it, I decided to get to bed and try to sleep.

I got to the bed in my hanging loose t-shit and a pair of leggins and closed my eyes. I started thinking about the day and what exactly happened. I'd be working in Red Bull in few months and meet my heroes, but there was something still wrong. The feeling in my gut. The weird feeling of nothing, emptiness. Like there was something growing inside of me and starting to eat me alive.

Then I didn't know that this feeling would make my life being a living hell and take me to the places I wish I hadn't ever been to.

-------------------- author's note time woop--------------------------

ok sooo, i'm a quite new here and this is kinda my first story. i'm not an english native speaker so i can write kinda shitty there and there so bear with me if even anyone reads it lol and also i'm quite bad at writting overall BUT i'm trying so.... and probably it won't be 100% true and based on real moments coz i'm too lazy to google every single little thing etc

i'm pretty much writting this to occupy myself with something and kinda let the shit out soooooo. idk, if anyone's reading this stuff then hey and thanks for struggling with reading those 1100+ words lol

also i appreciate any feedback, hate, kind words etc