The sun was barely up when Marco slipped out of the house Sunday morning. He'd left a note on the kitchen table—Gone for a run—which was technically true. He would be running. Just not on foot.
The mountain air bit cold as he pedaled his ancient Bianchi bicycle up the winding road toward Montebello. His backpack held his helmet, gloves, and the lucky shirt he'd worn for every race since he was fourteen. The shirt was faded now, the original blue gone to a dusty gray, but Marco couldn't bring himself to race without it.
Twenty-three kilometers. He'd made this ride dozens of times, always before dawn, always in secret. The route climbed steadily, his legs burning with the effort, his breath coming in clouds. But the pain felt good. It felt like something.
Luca was waiting at the track entrance when Marco arrived, leaning against his father's Alfa Romeo with two espressos in hand.
"You're late," Luca said, offering one of the cups. "I was starting to think you'd actually gone running."
"Traffic." Marco took the coffee gratefully, his hands still numb from gripping the handlebars.
"Right. Heavy bicycle traffic on a Sunday at 6 AM." Luca grinned. "Come on. I got us two hours of practice before the championship round starts. My dad pulled some strings."
The Montebello Karting Circuit was nothing special—a 1.2-kilometer ribbon of cracked asphalt that wound through an old quarry. The barriers were ancient tires stacked three high and held together with optimism. The timing system was a laptop and some homemade sensors. But to Marco, it might as well have been Monaco.
They walked through the paddock area, past rows of gleaming karts with factory support and professional mechanics. The Rossi family had three karts, each with a dedicated technician. The Battaglia twins showed up in a converted Mercedes Sprinter that looked like a rolling racing team headquarters.
Luca's kart was decent—a two-year-old chassis with a well-maintained engine. Marco's was whatever he could scrounge together. Today it was kart number 34, a rental unit that had seen better decades.
"She's all yours for two hours," Luca said. "I already checked the engine. Sounds okay, little rough on the top end, but she'll hold together."
Marco ran his hands over the steering wheel, checking the responsiveness. The kart smelled like fuel and old rubber and possibility. He pulled on his helmet—a hand-me-down from Luca's older brother, with a crack in the visor they'd repaired with tape—and settled into the seat.
"Remember," Luca called out as Marco fired up the engine. "Championship qualifying starts at nine. You need to be consistent. Fast, but consistent."
Marco nodded and rolled out onto the track.
The first lap was a re-introduction. His body remembered every corner, every camber change, every bump that could unsettle the kart if you hit it wrong. The engine screamed behind his head, a raw two-stroke howl that drowned out everything else—all the doubts, all the complications, all the reasons this was impossible.
By the third lap, he'd found his rhythm. The kart was terrible, no other word for it. The steering had play in it, the rear end was nervous, and the engine had a flat spot in the powerband that hit right where you needed acceleration most. But Marco had been driving terrible karts his entire racing career. He knew how to work with what he had.
He smoothed his inputs, working around the kart's weaknesses. Where other drivers would force the machine to comply, Marco adapted. It was the difference between fighting a car and dancing with it—something his father had taught him about engine repair that translated perfectly to driving.
Lap times started dropping. From the pitlane, Luca was watching the timer, and even from inside the helmet, Marco could see his friend's expression change from casual to focused to something else else entirely.
After twenty minutes, Luca waved him in.
"What's wrong?" Marco asked, pulling off his helmet. Sweat soaked his hair despite the cold morning air.
"Nothing's wrong. I just wanted to make sure the timing system wasn't broken." Luca showed him the laptop screen. "You just ran a 47.2."
Marco blinked. The track record was 46.8, set by Alessandro Bruni, who now raced in Formula Regional and had a factory sponsorship deal that probably cost more than Marco's house.
"The kart's working better than I thought," Marco said.
"The kart is a piece of shit, Marco. I've driven that thing. It shouldn't be capable of a 47.2." Luca was staring at him with an odd expression. "How are you doing this?"
Marco shrugged. He didn't know how to explain it. When he was in the kart, everything just made sense. He could feel what the machine wanted to do, where the grip was, where the limit lived. It was like reading a language everyone else had to translate while he was already fluent.
"Go back out," Luca said. "Do it again."
The next session was faster. 47.1, then 46.9, then 46.7.
The track record fell on lap eighteen.
Marco came into the pits and found Luca on his phone, pacing.
"Who are you calling?"
"Nobody. Everybody. I don't know." Luca looked slightly unhinged. "Do you understand what you just did? You broke the track record. In a rental kart. A rental kart that I'm pretty sure is held together by rust and prayer."
"It's just practice."
"It's not just practice!" Luca grabbed his shoulders. "Marco, I've been racing here for six years. My dad raced here. I know what fast looks like. This isn't just fast. This is—" He struggled for the word. "This is different."
Marco wanted to feel the excitement, wanted to let himself believe that this meant something. But he'd learned not to hope too hard. Hope was expensive, and he couldn't afford it.
"The championship qualifying starts in an hour," he said instead. "I should save the tires."
But he didn't save the tires. He went back out and pushed harder, finding tenths of a second in places he didn't know existed. The kart was at its limit, the engine screaming in protest, but Marco was somewhere beyond limits—in that space where instinct took over and thinking became a liability.
When he finally came in, there were people watching. Not many, just a few of the early arrivals for the championship, but they were watching with the kind of attention that made the back of Marco's neck prickle.
One of them was a woman with a camera, professional-looking with a telephoto lens. She was talking to an older man in an expensive jacket, gesturing toward the track.
"Who's that?" Marco asked Luca.
"The woman? That's Elena Marchesi. She writes for Gazzetta dello Sport, covers local racing. The guy—" Luca squinted. "No idea. But his jacket costs more than my car."
Marco pulled off his helmet and tried to catch his breath. His hands were shaking, adrenaline and exhaustion and something else mixing together.
Elena Marchesi was walking toward them.
She was maybe twenty-five, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and sharp eyes that seemed to catalog everything at once. Her jeans had motor oil stains on them—a journalist who actually got close to the action.
"Excuse me," she said. "Are you the one driving kart 34?"
Marco nodded, suddenly very aware of how he must look—sweaty, exhausted, wearing coveralls that had Venturi Auto Repair embroidered on the chest because they were the only racing suit he owned.
"Elena Marchesi, Gazzetta dello Sport." She offered her hand. "I've been covering this championship all season. That was the most interesting driving I've seen in a very long time."
"It's just practice," Marco said automatically.
"Practice where you broke the track record by three-tenths in a rental kart." She smiled, but her eyes were calculating. "Either you're very good, or that kart is illegal. I'm guessing it's the first one."
The man in the expensive jacket had walked over too, now. Up close, Marco could see he was probably sixty, with silver hair and the kind of casual confidence that came from never having to worry about money.
"Giancarlo Tedesco," the man said, not offering his hand. "I used to race here, many years ago."
The name meant nothing to Marco, but Luca made a small choking sound beside him.
"You're—you drove for Ferrari in the nineties—"
"I drove for many teams in the nineties," Tedesco said with a thin smile. "Now I look for talent. And I'm curious about you." He turned to Marco. "What's your name?"
"Marco Venturi."
"And you race here regularly?"
"When I can."
"Which is?"
Marco hesitated. "Not as much as I'd like."
Tedesco's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or pity. "Money?"
"Time. Work. My father—" Marco stopped. He didn't owe this stranger his life story.
But Tedesco nodded as if Marco had explained everything. "I see. Well, Marco Venturi, the championship qualifying starts in forty-five minutes. Are you entered?"
"Good. I'll be watching. If you drive in the race like you drove in practice—" He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. "Let's just say we'll talk again."
He walked away, Elena Marchesi following after a moment, though she glanced back once with an expression Marco couldn't read.
Luca waited until they were out of earshot, then exploded. "Do you know who that was? Giancarlo Tedesco raced in F1 for twelve years! He's a talent scout now, works with the Ferrari Driver Academy, finds young drivers—"
"I know," Marco interrupted, though he hadn't known, not really.
"This could be it, man. This could be your chance."
Marco looked at the kart, at the rental number still on the side, at his taped-together helmet resting on the seat. Then he looked at the other karts in the paddock, the factory machines with their professional support, the drivers with their matching team gear and confident parents and futures already mapped out.
"It's one practice session," he said quietly. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
But even as he said it, even as he tried to keep his expectations in check, something had changed. Someone had seen him drive. Not just someone—the right someone.
And in forty-five minutes, he'd have to prove it wasn't a fluke.
The morning sun had burned off the cold now, warming the asphalt. Around the paddock, engines were firing up. The championship was about to begin.
Marco pulled his helmet back on and tried to ignore the way his hands were shaking.
This time, it wasn't from the cold.