THE ALCHEMY || Max Verstappen

"We are not made for the speed at which the world runs, but sometimes we find peace right at the center of the chaos."

Carla Elena Leclerc is a phantom who sings. After years spent hiding from the weight of her surname, the violence of a past that tore her mother away from her, and the devastating grief of losing Jules Bianchi, her first, immortal love, Carla decides to return to where it all began.

To the music world, Carla Elena Leclerc is an enigma. An incredible voice, a heavy surname, and a years-long absence from social media that led gossip magazines to bet on the wildest theories. Nobody knows what drives her to disappear for months, nor what demons she has been dragging behind her since she was just a child.

When Carla decides to step back into the world in 2021 and join her cousin Charles, even if they act like siblings, in the Formula 1 paddocks, she is simply looking for a place that feels like home, far away from the wrong people who tore her apart in the past.

However, she hasn't factored in the fiercest season motorsport history can remember. And above all, she hasn't factored in Max Verstappen.

Max is a hungry lion: icy, unfiltered, and laser-focused on a single goal he has been chasing since childhood. He has no time for the spotlight, zero tolerance for fake people, and is the last person on earth Carla would expect to understand her. Yet, amid the garage smoke and the suffocating media pressure, Max is the only one who looks at her without pity or pitying eyes. The only one who seems to notice the details Carla hides from everyone else. Including that number 17 on her collarbone... and the other secrets carved into her skin.

Between a world tour on the biggest stages and high-tension F1 weekends in the paddock, Carla and Max find themselves trapped in a dangerous attraction. But how close can you get to the fire before you get burned? And how much of your past can you really hide from someone who has learned to read you from the inside?