CHAPTER 56: THE UNMASKING

Fatih, as a person who had spent his previous life sick and often bedridden, had rarely seen people’s true colors. He had only ever experienced their benevolent, best sides, as the only ones who visited him were his close friends. As a result, he was now having a difficult time reconciling the sudden, jarring shift in Aslan’s attitude.

Though he had seen the way people could behave, how cruel they could be to others, it was always from the other side of a screen, through social media or in movies. Like someone who reads cheating subreddits, he had always believed that he would most likely never experience such raw, unfiltered ugliness firsthand. But in this new life, he wasn’t locked in a confined space. He was blessed, and perhaps cursed, to be experiencing the full spectrum of human nature he had missed in his previous life.

In his mind, he had considered Aslan a rational and passionate man when it came to racing. He had gone as far as to sponsor Fatih even when his own son was in the same competition, and he hadn’t made any problems when Fatih had won against him. But his answer now, and the cold, dismissive way he said it, reminded Fatih of the rabid fanbases from his past life. He had seen the best, or rather worst, version of it in the 2021 Formula 1 season, where both Max Verstappen’s and Lewis Hamilton’s fans would vehemently defend their own driver’s aggressive moves while simultaneously arguing for a ban, penalty, or disqualification when the other driver did something similar.

Rümeysa was the first to recover from her surprise, and her response was immediate and sharp.

"Arguing that it is just ’hard racing’ is counterintuitive, considering he had just received a race ban from the stewards for his driving conduct," she said, her voice calm but laced with steel. As a lawyer, she always preferred to deal in objective facts, and this time was no different. Using emotion would only push the other side to do the same. "As the governing body, they are the ones who know better what is hard racing and what is dangerous driving, and I think their decision already answered that question."

"Ah, if you are talking about the one-race ban, I have already dealt with that," Aslan said, a calm, knowing smile spreading across his face. "It has been reduced to a warning. So, I think I managed to persuade them that it was, in fact, just hard racing. If that is your argument, then I believe they are on my side this time."

As if it were normal, he dropped another bombshell of information. From the look of it, only he knew about it, as even Mehmet, the academy director, had a look of stunned surprise on his face.

"When did that happen?" Mehmet interjected, his voice tight. "We have not yet been notified of any change."

"At the moment, the investigation is officially still ongoing," Aslan said, subtly flaunting his connections. "But I was informed that this will be the decision. They should inform you on Monday, I think, since that is the start of the work week." He said all of this while looking directly at Rümeysa, making it clear that he was demonstrating the difference in their influence.

"What do you mean by that?" Rümeysa’s voice, which she had been trying so hard to keep calm, began to tremble with barely suppressed rage. She was gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached. "Are you saying you used your connections to change a decision they had already made? Is that how you teach your son to compete?"

"I didn’t say that," Aslan countered smoothly, not a flicker of guilt on his face. "I said I appealed the ruling and was informed that this is the expected outcome. I provided context on the situation. It was the last lap of the race, and he was on the verge of winning if he executed a good overtake. Mistakes are understandable for him to make, since he is just a child. It seems my explanation changed their line of thinking."

The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Rümeysa’s attempt to use objective facts had been completely dismantled by a display of raw, corrupting influence. The calm she had been fighting to maintain finally fractured.

"Understandable?" she repeated, her voice now laced with a cold fury that caused a few people in the room to flinch. "Your son has hit my son more than three times. The last two incidents forced him to retire. The first one required him to change his chassis due to the damage it received, and the second one took both of them out of the race after he had worked so hard to recover to the lead from last, hitting him with enough force to dislodge the rubber from the rims. And your response is that it’s ’understandable’ because he wanted to win? What you call ’providing context,’ I call witness tampering and undue influence. What you call ’hard racing,’ the rest of us call a pattern of dangerous and reckless behavior. And it seems you are the one enabling him." She looked him up and down, her expression making it clear that she thought his behavior was exactly what one would expect from a man like him.

In reaction to her words, Aslan’s smile vanished. In its place, a hard, dismissive glare. "Motorsport is a tough business," he said, his voice dripping with condescension. "If your son can’t handle the pressure, if he isn’t capable of handling hard, close-quarters racing, then perhaps he isn’t cut out for it. I’m investing in winners, in fighters. Not in those who crumble when the racing gets a little hard." He sent a subtle threat, trying to show Rümeysa, who had just insulted him, the difference in power between the two of them. He was the sponsor; he had the upper hand.

"Haa..." Rümeysa released a flabbergasted gasp. "Crumble? My son started from last and was leading the race by the final lap before *your* son took him out. The only thing that crumbled was his kart after your son’s actions. From that information alone, it should be perfectly clear who is the one crumbling under pressure."

Her voice turned ice-cold. "It also seems you consider the sponsorship you are providing to be a tool that gives you power, something that can force us to not respond to anything your son does. Now I regret not appealing his five-second penalty from the first race. It seems it has given you the idea that we are subservient to you, that you can make us move according to your whims. It seems our partnership isn’t cut out to be. Therefore, I am activating Article 25 of the sponsorship agreement. As for the reason, it is your using of undue influence to tamper with outcomes that are harmful to the sponsored driver, together with a clear conflict of interest." She immediately started the process to terminate the agreement.

"It seems you think your son is the only one that matters," Aslan said, doubling down. The look on his face showed that he had not expected Rümeysa to go through with it; he had expected her to back down. But his pride would not allow him to retract his words. He turned his head to Mehmet, who looked like he was about to intervene now that the situation was spiraling out of control. "Since she has deemed my actions a conflict of interest, I also need to act in a way to remove it. As the sponsor of the academy’s karts for this championship, I demand that Fatih not be provided with my karts for the remainder of the competition. If you give him one of my sponsored karts, I will take it as you not heeding my words, and I will terminate my contract with the academy as well."

He turned to look at Rümeysa with a subtle, triumphant smile, as if to say, ’See? This is the level of power I have compared to you. If you continue acting so mighty and don’t back down, I will just remove the very thing that allowed your son to have a competitive kart to win in the first place.’

With such a clear threat hanging in the air, Mehmet’s face tightened. "Let’s first calm down and try to look at these things objectively," he began, trying to de-escalate the situation. "Though they are here training, we need to make sure their bad behaviors don’t stick into their future caree....."

"And what do you propose to do about it, Mehmet?" Aslan interrupted, his voice sharp. "Punish my son? Let me be perfectly clear. If this academy takes any official action against my son, a suspension, a penalty that is not exactly the one TOSFED gives him, or anything that formally sides with Fatih over this, I will consider it a hostile act. I will pull my sponsorship from this academy immediately. We will see how you fund your ’champions’ after that."

He stood up, pushing his chair back with a sharp, scraping sound. "My son will not be punished. He will learn to be tougher. And your son will learn to handle it. That is the end of this discussion." He gestured to Selçuk, who, after a moment of stunned silence, scrambled to his feet. The boy looked from his father’s triumphant, cold expression to Fatih’s unreadable one, a storm of confusion, and a dawning, terrible sense of empowerment started to appear on his face, followed by a crooked smile. His father hadn’t just defended him; he had given him a license. He had declared him untouchable.