That is All I Ask For: Chapter 12: Smoke in the Mirror

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The morning air clung to the garage like mist—thick, quiet, uncertain. Tools lay untouched on workbenches. Tires lined the far wall like sentries. The place felt hollow, like it was holding its breath.

Dante stood near the entrance, arms crossed, waiting.

He didn't know what he was waiting for. Or maybe he did.

The footsteps came long before he saw him. Sharp, even. Familiar in a way that made something crack deep in his chest.

Micah.

He looked exactly the same—except colder.

Clad in black, sunglasses pushed into his hair, he strode in with the command of someone who still knew every inch of this place better than anyone else. He didn't greet anyone. Didn't nod. His eyes found Dante, and the rest of the world ceased to matter.

"Walk with me." Micah said flatly.

Dante didn't ask where. He followed without question.

They moved through the back hallway, past the tire room, and into the secondary tuning bay—the one no one used anymore. The one where Dante had once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Micah, tweaking air pressure for a test run that didn't matter but had felt like the start of everything.

Now it felt like the grave of it.

Micah didn't turn to face him. "Meredith told me."

Dante swallowed. "About the call."

Silence.

"Was it really him?" Micah asked.

Dante nodded. "Adam. He wants to meet."

Micah finally turned. His face was unreadable, but his eyes... they burned.

"You're not going." He said.

Dante stiffened. "You don't get to decide that."

"I do when the man you're walking toward already has his fingers in this sport again." Micah shot back. "When he's the reason Vex showed up, the reason you and Daniel nearly died. When he's playing a game you don't know the rules to."

Dante's voice faltered. "I didn't know he was involved."

"And that's the point." Micah said. "He waited until you were vulnerable. Until I was gone. Until this team had no anchor."

Dante looked down. "Why would he come back now?"

"Because you're finally useful again." Micah said bitterly. "Because he knows he can still break you, if he bends the right part first."

The words sliced clean through him.

"I'm not a kid anymore." Dante whispered.

"No." Micah said softly. "But you're still his son. And that matters more than you want it to."

Dante's jaw tightened. "He's not my real father."

"That doesn't make him any less dangerous."

A beat of silence passed between them.

"I didn't come here to fix anything." Micah said at last. "But I still care what happens to you. That's why I came."

Dante looked up, searching his face for something he couldn't name. "So what now?"

Micah shook his head. "You figure out if you want to be free of him. And if you do... you stop giving him chances to pull you back in."

He turned, walking toward the exit.

But then he paused—just for a second.

"I didn't leave because I stopped caring." He said, voice low. "I left because caring didn't matter when no one trusted me."

And then he was gone.

Micah didn't drive straight back to Eclipse HQ.

Instead, he took the long route—looping through the city's old districts, where cracked asphalt bled into forgotten corners and whispers traveled faster than light.

He pulled into a quiet lot behind a storage unit that had once doubled as a tuning lab for Eclipse prototypes. Only a few trusted engineers had access. Most had moved on. Only Meredith still checked in.

Micah stepped inside and powered up the system. The room flickered to life, monitors humming, bringing up encrypted data caches and security feeds he'd silently reactivated two days ago.

He'd already begun investigating the moment Meredith told him about Adam's call.

Dante might still be unsure. But Micah knew better.

Adam Shade was the kind of man who never acted on impulse. He orchestrated his moves years in advance. If he was reappearing now, it meant the game had been underway for a long time—and Micah was late to the board.

He plugged in the surveillance chip Alastor had handed him.

The video loaded. Zurich. Two weeks before the last race.

Vex. And Adam.

Micah watched the silent exchange play out. It was brief. Tense. A folded envelope. A handshake that wasn't friendly. Then Vex walking away with a bitter grin.

Micah narrowed his eyes.

He scrubbed through frame-by-frame and caught it: a microchip in the envelope. A tiny, nearly invisible Eclipse insignia on Vex's glove. And Adam looking—not at Vex—but directly at the camera.

He knew.

Micah leaned back in his chair, exhaling sharply. "You wanted me to see this." He muttered. "You're inviting me in."

But to what?

Back at the garage, Dante stood in the tuning bay long after Micah had gone.

His hands were shaking. Not from anger. From the weight.

He'd looked Micah in the eyes and seen the hurt that still lingered there—raw, sharp, and buried deep under layers of silence. And yet, Micah had still come. Still warned him.

Still cared.

He didn't deserve it.

Not after ignoring Micah's warning about Vex. Not after pushing him away in the worst possible way.

But even now... Micah hadn't closed the door completely.

"I didn't leave because I stopped caring. I left because caring didn't matter when no one trusted me."

Dante sat on the edge of the workbench, staring at the ground.

His phone buzzed again.

Another message.
Adam.

"You've grown, son. But you still have miles to go. Meet me tomorrow—10 a.m. Neutral ground."

Attached was an address: a rooftop garden atop a luxury hotel downtown.

Dante's thumb hovered over the reply button.

He didn't know if he wanted closure... or just answers.

Behind him, Meredith entered quietly. She looked at his posture, then the phone in his hand.

"You told him." She said softly.

Dante nodded.

Meredith walked over and sat beside him. "I hope you realize what it meant for him to come here."

"I do." Dante whispered.

"He's not coming back, not fully. Not yet. But he's watching. He'll step in if he has to."

Dante finally looked up. "But for how long?"

Meredith smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Until you stop needing to be saved."

The rooftop garden looked like something out of a luxury ad—sleek marble tiles, perfectly manicured hedges, and soft classical music drifting from unseen speakers. But all of it felt hollow to Dante.

He stood by the railing, jaw tense, arms folded as he waited.

A few minutes later, Adam Shade stepped out from the far side of the terrace, dressed in charcoal grey with a black pocket square, his hair perfectly in place. He still looked every bit the strategist—the kind who could talk a man into standing on a ledge... and then convince him to jump.

"Dante." Adam greeted, voice smooth as lacquer. "Still punctual. I taught you well."

Dante didn't move to shake his hand.

Adam raised a brow but didn't push. "Very well. We'll skip the pleasantries."

He gestured to a small table under a canopy. On it sat a sleek tablet.

"I came today to give you a gift." Adam said. "Something you deserve to see before you make any further mistakes."

Dante didn't sit. "About Vex?"

Adam smiled. "About Micah."

He tapped the screen. The footage began to play.

It showed Micah and Vex in a dim-lit corridor. Voices filtered through the speakers—edited, crackling, but clear enough to suggest betrayal.

Micah's voice, clipped and calm: "Just make sure the brake line holds long enough to make it look clean."
Vex: "And if he doesn't survive?"
Micah: "Then no one asks questions."

Dante's chest tightened.

The video ended.

"You see." Adam said gently, "He's not the man you thought he was."

But Dante didn't answer right away. He just stared at the screen.

Micah's warning echoed in his head. So did Meredith's voice—"He'll step in if he has to."

For a long, silent moment, Dante weighed his past against his present.

Then he looked up, eyes sharp.

"Where did you get this?" he asked.

Adam tilted his head, pleased. "I have my sources."

"I want a copy."

That surprised him. "You want to spread it?"

"No." Dante said. "I want to verify it."

He turned without waiting for a reply.

And for the first time in his life, Dante left Adam Shade standing in silence.

Micah sat in his office, the lights low. He knew the meeting was happening. Knew exactly what footage Adam would try to pass off. He even knew the moment Dante would return.

So when the knock came, Micah didn't even look up. "Come in."

Dante entered, face unreadable.

"Adam showed me a clip." He said, cutting straight to it. "Of you and Vex. Planning sabotage."

Micah finally looked up, calm and unsurprised. "And?"

"I want to know the truth."

Micah nodded. "Sit."

Dante obeyed, hands clasped tightly in his lap.

Micah pulled up a secure folder on his console and mirrored it to the room's projector. Footage filled the wall—grainy, time-stamped, raw.

It showed the actual incident.
Vex switching brake lines.
Micah discovering the tampering too late.
The crash.
Micah pulling himself from the wreckage, bloodied.
And another car—teammate Julian's—careening into the barrier and not walking away.

Micah paused the footage. His voice, when it came, was low. Steady.

"That's the truth."

Dante stared at the screen. "I... I didn't know."

"No one did." Micah said. "Because I buried it. I didn't want the press turning Julian's death into a scandal. I didn't want to become a martyr."

"But why would Adam twist it?"

Micah stood, walking to the window.

"Because you're valuable again. Because you're visible. He doesn't need to break you to control you. He just needs to make you question the people who actually care."

Dante didn't speak.

Micah turned back. "You wanted to know if I was telling the truth? Now you do."

A soft buzz came from Micah's phone. He glanced at it. "I have a meeting in twenty minutes."

Dante stood too.

But before he could leave, Micah added quietly, "Don't meet him again."

Dante frowned. "Why?"

Micah's eyes locked onto his.

"Because now that Vex failed, Adam has found a new tool. And this time... it's you."

The office felt colder once Micah was gone.

Dante remained standing in the silence, watching the now-dark projector wall where the truth had played out like a knife to the chest. He wasn't sure what cut deeper—Micah's betrayal being a lie, or the knowledge that he'd doubted him in the first place.

He sank into the chair, elbows on knees, hands buried in his hair.

Micah had survived that.

And no one had known. No one had asked.

Not even him.

The knock on the door broke his spiral.

Meredith peeked in. "He left?"

Dante nodded.

She stepped in, sat across from him, and didn't speak for a long moment.

Then she said, softly, "He still won't stay, will he?"

Dante shook his head. "He doesn't trust us."

"Do you blame him?"

"...No."

Meredith exhaled. "Micah carries too much alone. But so do you. You're not that boy he abandoned anymore."

Dante looked up. "He didn't abandon me."

Meredith arched an eyebrow. "You sure?"

He flinched. "He warned me. I didn't listen."

She gave a small, sad smile. "You both did what you thought would protect yourselves. And now you're both bleeding in different corners of the same war."

Dante swallowed hard.

Meredith stood. "So what are you going to do now?"

Dante's jaw tightened. "I'm going to race. I'm going to keep this team alive. And I'm going to make sure Adam Shade never gets another inch of ground."

The hotel penthouse was bathed in orange twilight.

Adam Shade stood in front of a glass wall, swirling a glass of wine, the skyline reflected in the windows like flame.

Behind him, a man in a navy suit adjusted a holographic display. A digital blueprint of the upcoming race circuit hovered in the air.

"Vex failed." The man said. "Dante's loyalty is bending. Not breaking."

Adam didn't react. "He always was too sentimental."

"You want to send someone else?"

Adam turned slowly. "No. Not yet."

He walked to the table, picked up a sleek black folder, and opened it.

Inside: dossiers. Photos. Data.

One picture sat on top—Dante, walking beside Micah.

"He's rebuilding." Adam said, voice sharp. "Piece by piece. If we're going to stop that..."

He tapped the folder once.

"We hit him where it still hurts."

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