Patience // Oscar Piastri

12

"And in other news, Prema have announced the replacement of American driver Willow Young with the team's former F2 driver, Robert Shwartzman."

Willow locked her phone as to stop the Sky Sports F1 team from going on any further talking about her, which wasn't her favourite topic right now.

It had been two weeks since Monza and the F2 grid was now in Sochi, Russia for the next round of the calendar which was weird because it would also be a home grand for Robert for his first race of 2021.

Willow on the other hand was now back in the States, living with her grandparents until she figured out what she was going to do with her life now.

The reason the Sky Sports team had been talking about Willow and Robert was because the first F2 sprint race of the weekend was due to start in a few minutes.

Willow sighed before turning on the tv in order to watch the race. It felt weird knowing that she should be there now but instead was sat in her grandparents' living room watching it all.

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The second sprint race had been cancelled due to heavy rain in Sochi that even caused the support paddock to flood according to the boys' instagrams.

Willow's grandparents had returned home and joined her in the living room when the sound of the door opening caught their attention.

"Who is that?" Willow wondered causing her grandparents to shrug their shoulders in reply.

"Hello?" A familiar voice called out causing Willow to roll her eyes.

"Oh no. Did you two know she was coming?" Willow asked her grandparents who both shook their heads in reply.

"Willow." Her mother exclaimed happily as she walked into the living room.

"What are you doing here?" The former racing driver questioned coldly.

"I'm here to take you home." Her mother replied with a smile on her face.

"Excuse me?" Willow asked in confusion.

"You're coming home. Now that you're racing career is over it's time for you to come back home." The older woman spoke. Her words hurt Willow like a stab to the heart. Her reacting career was over.

"You really want to put me into depression all together?" Willow told her. "I'm not coming home."

"Oh yes you are." Her mother said sternly.

"Oh no I'm not. I'm nearly 20 years old, you can't tell me what to do." Willow spoke as she stood up to face her mother.

"Willow you're coming home. That positive doping test should've been you're first sign to come home." Her mother told her.

"How did you know about that?" Willow wondered.

"It was all over the news." Her mother said hesitantly.

"Yeh sports news. But you've never followed my career a day in you're life so how did you know about that?" Willow asked in reply.

Her mother was now avoiding eye contact with her telling her something was wrong and she was lying.

"What did you do?" Willow shouted firmly.

"Willow you've never taken drugs in you're life because you were too focused on racing. Why else do you think the test came back positive?" Her mother wondered causing the brown haired girl to gasp in reply.

"You!" Willow exclaimed as she went to leap at her mother but her grandfather held her back. "You did this. You had my test fixed. You ruined my career."

"I had no choice. This foolishness has gone on long enough and your stupid father always encouraged it even when I said not to." Her mother replied causing Willow to reach forward and slap.

"Say anything you want about my career, I don't care. But don't you dare insult the greatest person that ever happened to you and me." Willow told her. "Now get out."

"Willow-." Her mother started to say before she was cut off.

"Get out of our house." Her grandfather spoke firmly.

Without another argument, her mother left. Not that she even deserved to be call that any more. Willow sat back in her seat and sighed.

"Oh Willow." Her grandmother came and sat beside her.

"I've to go." Willow said as she stood up.

"Go where?" Her grandfather wondered.

"If I leave now I can it make it to Italy by the time Rene gets back from Russia." Willow told them before heading to the spare bedroom where she was sleeping to grab her stuff.

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Unfortunately for Willow there was no direct flights from Chicago to Venice when she arrived at the airport, nor was there any leaving for another 4 hours.

So it meant by time she arrived in Venice it was early Monday morning. After speaking with Oscar and making him promise not to say anything to Rene, he said it would be late afternoon by the time they were back in Italy.

Lucky for Willow, she had never gotten around to selling her apartment near Prema and could stay there for the few hours until the others got back from Sochi.

Willow walked back into her apartment for the first in over three weeks and it felt weird. All of her stuff was there like nothing had changed but everything had changed.

She had a few hours to figure out how she was going to tell Rene what her mother had down and how she could prove that she had done it.

All she could do was sit in hope that Rene would believe her and help to lodge an investigation in order to get her back in the Italian team and hopefully back in with McLaren too.

All of it was a big ask and she was living on hope but right now that was all Willow had was hope and without it all would be lost.

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