Chapter 56
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A wooden stake was bearing down on Lenore, and with a sharp yank on the handlebars, she executed a sideways drift on the steel frame track, a path barely wider than her bike.
In a swift motion, she lifted the front wheel, leaping toward a pipeline ten feet away and landing as steady as a fly.
Without missing a beat, she continued to race forward like a bullet, overtaking Carlos in the blink of an eye and leaving him in her dust.
The mid–air drift was a maneuver that even professional racers would struggle to pull off.
“Whoa!”
“With skills like that, is she really not a pro racer?”
“Who said this woman was just a pretty face?”
“That move she just pulled makes me think Carlos might be in trouble today…”
“Can I change my bet to her?”
A brief silence was shattered by gasps of shock and amazement, with some even starting to root for Lenore to win.
The motorcycle streaked by like a shooting star, and Carlos, momentarily stunned, didn’t slow down. He bellowed into his headset, “Don’t let her get away!”
Losing on his own turf would mean losing face in the entire racing world.
Jolted by Carlos’s roar, Ivan snapped out of his disbelief and suppressed his shock to bark orders into his headset. “Quick! Stop her!”
“Stop who?” someone asked.
“Of course, it’s Lenore!” Ivan answered instinctively before realizing the voice came from behind him, not through his earpiece.
He whirled around, catching sight of a guy he’d somehow missed–silent as the grave and twice as threatening. The dude’s vibe was so intense that it made his heart stutter and his feet retreat. “You…”
There was no chance for him to speak; Chuck’s fist connected with his face before he could utter a word.
The people hiding above, unaware of the situation, had prepared their obstacles to rain down on Lenore. Trash, wooden stakes, rocks–all were thrown in a vicious and underhanded attempt to stop her.
But Lenore, with her motorcycle, leaped and dodged as if she had eyes in the back of her head, evading every incoming threat with pinpoint
accuracy.
As she approached the final turn before the finish line, the iron plate in front of her suddenly split in the middle, and Lenore, who should have been going up, lost control and began to slide down.
Just when everyone thought she was about to crash, Lenore stood up on her motorcycle, gripped the handlebars, and spun her body in the air,
avoiding the horizontal iron plate. She landed back on the motorcycle and quickly changed lanes to escape the tear.
Before anyone could react, the motorcycle took off into the air and landed with a thud on the ground.
The screech of tires followed as Lenore corrected her direction with a drift, avoiding all danger and racing toward the finish line, while Carlos was still fifty meters behind.
Lenore had come out on top. She’d beaten the odds, taking down a whole mess of killer challenges. It wasn’t just a race; it was like she’d put on a one–woman motorcycle show. It was a total blowout victory. The junkyard went dead silent.
“Damn…” Wayne’s charming eyes widened like saucers, and he was almost speechless as he tugged at Silas’s sleeve. “This has to be as fast as Sonic, right?”
He had seen Lenore race in Peacefield and knew she was good, but he never expected her to be this amazing.
That final leap of Lenore’s did remind Silas of the scene where Sonic jumped across cliffs back then. But it was still not quite the same,
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Chapter 56
The dim light above cast a yellow glow into Silas’s deep eyes, reflecting emotions that others couldn’t discern.
‘Lenore… Won?! How is that possible? She grew up in a small town. How could she possibly know how to race like this? Esther thought.
In the corner, where Esther had planned to watch Lenore’s downfall, her face was now etched with shock and disbelief. Her hand, which was gripping that steel pipe tight, had turned ghost–white, her nails cracked and broken.
If there was anyone who couldn’t believe it more than Esther, it was Carlos. No matter how much he yelled into his headset, no one responded. When he reached the finish line, his face looked as if he had swallowed a dead rat.
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Lenore had already removed her helmet and was casually leaning against her motorcycle. Her hair was a wild mess in the evening gusts, her usually perfect features just a bit tousled. Her skin was glowy, but she had this magnetic, devilish kind of beauty.
“You lost,” she said, her voice ethereal.
Just two words, and Carlos almost ground his teeth to dust. He realized that the talk about being good at four wheels not meaning on two was a load
of bull.
He had been beaten on his home turf by Lenore, someone who had never been here before, and she had won so convincingly.
For a moment, the cockiness and defiance he’d felt earlier seemed like a whole lot more than just a slap in the face; Carlos felt like he’d been through a ringer, battered by a beatdown.
He wished he could rush up and tear Ivan, who had come up with this bad idea, to pieces.
Lost in her own world, Lenore sauntered over, cool as ice. She hoisted one slim leg up, rested her foot on the motorcycle, and peered down at Carlos. Her lips curved into a deliberate line as she enunciated each word. “Bow down and apologize.”
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