Chapter Text
The first thing they noticed was that George had stopped talking.
It wasn’t new. He’d always been quiet, distant. His smile was polite but too perfectly placed, his jokes light but never warm. People called him cold—aloof, difficult to connect with. In meetings, Toto often snapped at him to speak up, dammit, to show some fire for once in your life. The engineers rolled their eyes behind his back, and the media laughed about the “robotic Brit with zero charisma.” He didn’t correct them. He didn’t argue.
He simply... existed.
At first, it had been subtle. He’d started coming into the garage later and later. Left earlier. Ate his meals alone. Avoided eye contact. When asked questions directly, he answered in the shortest way possible. No one cared to dig deeper.
Toto was the worst. Once, after a particularly awful qualifying where George had gone radio silent for the final three laps, he’d stormed into the debrief room and slammed his hand on the table.
“Are you even fucking trying anymore? You think this team is your therapy space? Jesus, Russell. Grow the fuck up.”
George hadn’t flinched. He didn’t argue. He just nodded.
“Sorry.”
Two syllables. Fragile. Like a balloon about to burst.
George had perfected the art of hiding. He had been doing it for twenty years.
From the moment it started—he was six, and it was supposed to be just a babysitter—he learned to shut off. Dissociate. Hide the part of himself that cried and screamed and begged for someone to help.
No one ever did.
The abuse stopped for a few years. Then came back at sixteen. At eighteen. At twenty one. A familiar pattern. Different faces, same darkness. Each time, George got better at pretending it hadn’t happened.
By twenty six, it happened again. In the motorsport world this time. Someone who held power over his future. Someone he couldn’t say no to, not if he wanted to keep his seat.
And he said nothing. Again.
He got up. Went to press conferences. Shook hands with fans. Let the cameras love him.
But every night, he’d sit on the floor of his apartment, lights off, just sitting. Feeling the weight of all those years press onto his ribs like a car had parked on his chest.
He had no one. No family he trusted anymore. No friends he could lean on without feeling like a burden. His therapist had died in a car accident last year, and he hadn’t found the strength to find a new one.
The world thought George Russell had everything.
But George Russell had absolutely nothing.
The leak happened on a Monday.
He was in the simulator room when he heard the first whispers. Laughter from a junior engineer. A muttered, “is that really him?” and then someone else saying “nah, must be fake—right?” But the look on their faces when George entered the room—it was like the floor had dropped.
He didn’t know yet.
Not until he opened his phone.
He didn’t even have to click the link. He saw his own face in the thumbnail.
His body. Struggling. Shaking. Bleeding. Exposed.
He didn’t remember much after that. He walked out of the simulator, handed his badge to someone without saying anything, and drove. No one noticed he was gone. No one called. For 13 hours, no one even realized George Russell—their lead driver, also their scapegoat, the one they belittled and ignored and insulted—had vanished.
He had retreated to a hotel room outside Brackley.
He’d checked in under a fake name.
The receptionist couldn’t get the boy’s eyes out of her head.
He’d come in with a hoodie pulled low, sunglasses hiding half his face despite the clouds. He didn’t carry much—just a duffel bag, limp in one hand. No conversation, no smile. He hadn’t even signed the check in form properly. Just scribbled something that looked like initials and walked away like his body was hollow.
At first, she let it go. It wasn’t uncommon. People came and went, often sad, sometimes drunk.
But then… the internet exploded.
It was the desk clerk’s phone that lit up first. Then the pings kept coming. Numerous pins from all types of socials and news channels. “Is this who I think it is?” one read. Followed by a shaky, grainy video.
She’d watched it without fully processing what it was.
Then she realized—oh God. It’s him.
The man in the footage. In the videos. In those horrific, cruel, shameful clips that should never have existed.
It was the boy who just checked in. Who hadn’t come out of his room for nearly ten hours.
She called housekeeping and asked if they’d seen him. They hadn’t.
She knocked on the door herself. No answer.
And something deep in her gut turned cold.
She wasn’t supposed to call emergency contacts. Not unless there was a real threat. But something about the silence... the way he had looked through her earlier. That awful empty stare.
She couldn’t ignore it.
She found a Mercedes F1 contact number online. Not PR. Not marketing.
She called the emergency logistics line and prayed someone would pick up.
Toto was in a meeting with Brad and the sponsors when his phone rang.
He ignored the first call.
The second one buzzed again. Unknown number.
He rolled his eyes and picked it up, walking a few steps away. “Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Wolff?” The voice was unsure. Young. German. Clearly nervous.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“I—I work at Hotel Lindenhof. There’s a guest here. He used another name but... I believe it’s George Russell.”
Toto frowned. “He left hours ago. Where is he?”
“That’s why I’m calling. I think something’s wrong. He’s not answering the door, and...” A pause. Then, shakier: “...I saw the videos. I think he saw them too. He looked... like he was in shock. And now he’s not responding. No sounds from inside the room. I’m sorry. I just—I didn’t know who else to call.”
There was a silence on Toto’s end. Sharp. Cold.
“What room?” he asked, voice tight.
“217.”
Toto wasn’t alone. He left the meeting without a word and barked out orders to security and the nearest team physician. It became a chain reaction—two Mercedes security officers and one of their team medics were dispatched within minutes, heading straight to the hotel.
They didn’t wait for the receptionist to lead them. They ran.
When they broke open the door, the first thing they saw was the blood.
The bathtub. His limp arm. The thick red tide that had pooled and dried.
His skin was gray. His lips barely moved.
But he was alive.
Barely.
The doctor didn’t waste a second—shouting for gauze, pressure, emergency services. One of the security staff had started shaking as he held George’s hand, whispering, “It’s okay, you’re okay,” though George’s eyes weren’t even open.
The ambulance arrived six minutes later.
The hotel manager tried to stop the receptionist from saying anything else. Legal reasons, PR chaos, you know how these things are.
But she was crying in the hallway.
“I—I just thought he was tired. That’s all. Just tired...”
The ride to hospital was a blur of shouts and blood and silence and grief.
Toto had never sat so still in his life.
Brad had come into the waiting room holding a laptop with trembling hands. “Toto,” he said quietly, “you need to see this.”
It was the video.
One of them.
One of many.
Not the worst, not the most graphic, but enough.
Enough to show George begging someone to stop.
And the timestamp.
One year ago.
George had raced the next day. Had even gotten a podium.
And none of them had known.
Toto’s knees buckled.
The last words he said to George—You think this team is your therapy space?
He’d said that to someone who’d been bleeding for years.
And none of them had ever seen him.
And when they finally did?
His wrists were slit open, left arm draped limply over the bathtub edge. Just blood. And silence. And him—barely breathing. A thin, trembling chest rise. Then stillness.
“Mein Gott. Why—fuck—why—” he asked, not to anyone in particular. “He was always so... I didn’t think. Fuck—!”
He didn’t finish.
He couldn’t.
Because now the entire internet knew. And the whole world saw what George had spent his life hiding.
The bruises. The begging. The fear. The absolute, raw helplessness of a child, a teen, a man—being used and thrown away, over and over.
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 21, 26.
Toto wished he didn't know what these numbers meant. His own words. The ones he had thrown off handedly not once thinking what they could carry—what they could cut. How deep they could bleed.
Grow up.
Are you even trying?
You think this team is your therapy space?
They replayed in his head like poison.
He had helped kill him.
George was still unconscious.
Machines beeped softly. His face was pale. Swollen.
The doctors said he might wake up. Or he might not.
His body was hanging by a thread—physically and emotionally shattered. A lifeline fraying at both ends.
And now, as Toto sat beside the hospital bed, staring at the boy he had dismissed for years.
He finally asked the question he should’ve asked a long time ago.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
The answer was obvious.
They never gave him a reason to believe they’d listen.