Revolution: A Driven World Novel (The Driven World) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  Other Works by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also Written by K. Bromberg

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  © 2020 JKB PUBLISHING, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  Published by JKB Publishing, LLC.

  Cover Design by: Najla Qamber, Qamber Designs and Media

  Cover Image: Stock Photo

  Editing by: Ellie McLove, My Brother’s Editor

  Formatting by: Stacey Blake, Champagne Book Designs

  Published in the United States of America

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to the Driven World!

  I’m so excited you’ve picked up this book! Revolution is a book based on the world I created in my New York Times bestselling Driven Series. While I may be finished writing this series (for now), various authors have signed on to keep them going. They will be bringing you all-new stories in the world you know while allowing you to revisit the characters you love.

  This book is entirely the work of the author who wrote it. While I allowed them to use the world I created and may have assisted in some of the plotting, I took no part in the writing or editing of the story. All praise can be directed their way.

  I truly hope you enjoy Revolution. If you’re interested in finding more authors who have written in the KB Worlds, you can visit www.kbworlds.com.

  Thank you for supporting the writers in this project and me.

  Happy Reading,

  K. Bromberg

  “Even if I am a girl, even if people think I can’t do it, I should not lose hope.”

  —Malala Yousafzai

  This one is for the girls.

  Inspired by true events

  Kacey

  IT WAS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY acknowledged that racing was a man’s world.

  And to be a woman in that world required some balls.

  “Joey!” I shouted, spotting the asshole in the black race suit who was responsible for my crash.

  Burning rubber, pungent gasoline, and adrenaline inflated my lungs with each breath. The exclusive aroma of NASCAR—and I couldn’t get enough of it.

  I scanned the tents along pit road. Expensive cars funded by big names sat like a life-size toy collection along the empty track now that the Daytona 500 had just finished.

  I brushed back strands of copper-red that clung to the sweat on my face, swallowing down the acrid taste of failure in favor of bewilderment and anger. My bright green fire suit shuffled as I picked up my pace to catch up to the other driver.

  I hadn’t changed. I’d hardly pulled my helmet off before abandoning the Hoyt Motors racing crew and our tent the moment the final flag waved.

  They’d pulled me and my car off the speedway just a few minutes ago, the crash into the wall had ended any chance I had for making a statement at the famous track.

  It was my first time racing in Daytona.

  And I was the only female on the track. Again.

  I couldn’t even focus on the car or the crash as I slid out through the window. I didn’t hear what the damage was or how well I’d been driving. I couldn’t focus on anything except finding Joey Puglisi, NASCAR’s favorite playboy who drove for Scott Racing, and the man responsible for forcing my car into the goddamn wall.

  He looked over his shoulder and shot me a smirk as he kept moving.

  Cursing under my breath, I picked up my pace, unzipping the top of my suit as heat and frustration built up to sweltering levels inside.

  I had every right to be mad.

  He’d done this on purpose.

  “Hey!” I grabbed his arm and pulled, forcing him to acknowledge me. “What the hell was that?”

  His eyes glittered with amusement as he looked from his six-foot-sexist frame down to my five-foot-fierce one, taking his time to leer over me. Every time I was around him, Joey made a point to stare at me like I was just another piece of ass.

  Like that would put me in my place which, to him, was anywhere off the track.

  “What are you talking about?” He tugged off his driving gloves, nonchalantly.

  I seethed. “You know what.”

  We’d been in the last twenty laps of the race. So. Fucking. Close. When I caught white in the corner of my eye—at the corner of my car.

  I’d been keeping to the outside, slowly inching my way forward through the crowd, through the prior crashes, through slow cars not moving out of my way.

  Patiently.

  Expertly.

  Precisely.

  But then he preyed closer. Too close. Until there was only space for one thing—to hit him or the wall.

  “You got too close to the wall,” he taunted me with a small laugh. “Your mistake, Kacey, or should I call you ‘Ace?’”

  Kacey Snyder was the mechanical engineer from a small town in Pennsylvania who started racing cars as a hobby. Ace was the racer she’d transformed into over the last three years. A hard shell for a hard world where merit caved to misogyny.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it. You edged me out,” I accused through tight teeth. “What is your problem with me, Puglisi?”

  I knew his problem with me, but for once, I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted to hear him say he had a problem with a woman competing in the sport.

  I was tired of hearing his superficial concerns that NASCAR was too dangerous for a woman. I was tired of hearing his complaints that it wasn’t fair for me to race because I weighed at least a solid fifty pounds less than most of the other drivers.

  An unfair advantage for the woman he didn’t think had the skill to qualify and compete in the first place.

  The hypocrisy of this world was more flammable than race gas. And
I wanted nothing more than to set it ablaze.

  But instead of proving them wrong. Legitimately. I hadn’t even finished the race.

  He laughed again, rubbing another piece of my hard work raw.

  “What are you gonna do, Ace?” he mocked me. “Cry to your momma how you can’t keep up with the big boys?” He stepped into my space, but I refused to back away.

  He smelled of sweat and musty misogynism, and it screwed with my need for restraint.

  Don’t react, Kacey.

  Don’t kick him in the balls.

  “Screw you, Puglisi,” I spat. “I want you to tell me why you did it.”

  Because he didn’t need to. He’d still finished the race in third. Hell, he still would’ve beaten me. But instead of letting our driving skills speak for themselves, he’d forced me into a crash I hadn’t been able to come away from.

  “I didn’t do anything. You’re just being emotional.” He looked around. “And now, you’re going to create a scene if you’re not careful.”

  I tensed, seeing several people watching our disagreement, pulling their phones and cameras out. Great.

  This definitely wasn’t what I’d come for.

  Honestly, I didn’t know what I’d hoped to accomplish by approaching him. Getting him to admit he had it out for me because I was a woman? Wrangling an apology from his arrogant ass? Neither of those goals were realistic.

  So, I hit him with the truth.

  “You thought I might beat you, didn’t you?” I planted my hands on my waist, cocking my head to one side.

  He thought I was fragile, but in this world. I’d learned there was nothing as fragile as a man’s ego.

  “Cute.” He smirked, but I caught the flicker of fear in his eyes. “Maybe if you drove like a man, you wouldn’t have had a problem, sweetheart,” he taunted, dropping his face close to mine.

  Swallowing the bile in my mouth and the uninhibited desire to throat-punch him, I returned, “Maybe if you stopped acting like a dick, it wouldn’t be so obvious that you don’t have one.”

  I turned away from him and a conversation that was going nowhere.

  It was a good move to walk away. But the smartest move would’ve been to never confront him at all.

  “Maybe if you stopped fightin’ so hard for a spot you aren’t qualified to have,” he jeered after me. “It wouldn’t be so obvious.”

  I shuddered, looking back to him just as one hand came to rest on my shoulder.

  No one captured it when he leaned in and whispered in my ear.

  No one heard what he said.

  No one saw what he did.

  The only thing the cameras saw was me, spinning on my heel, my arm swinging wide as I turned and threw all my weight into a single punch to Joey Puglisi’s chauvinist chin before launching myself at him, taking him down to the pavement for a few more swings before the NASCAR officials pulled me off him.

  And the only thing I saw was red.

  “Kacey, you can come in.”

  I pulled my head up from where it had been resting in my hands, the weight of my actions—and the consequences they would bring—a chain around my neck for the last two days.

  Rumors swirled as the media went wild.

  Only female at Daytona takes a swing at NASCAR veteran.

  Emotional outburst from the woman who crashed in final laps of Daytona.

  The articles went on and on—all with a coordinated effort to reference my sex in each and every headline.

  Pulling my fingers through my long, red waves, I spilled them over my shoulder like the impossible, irrational, and partially unbelievable situation I found myself in.

  All these years.

  All this hard work.

  I stood, rubbing my damp palms on my jeans before folding my arms and heading into Victor Hoyt’s office.

  A NASCAR legend himself, I remembered the moment when he’d called my house, wanting me to race for his team.

  I’d sunk to the floor in disbelief.

  Me.

  Kacey Snyder.

  Top of her class at Lafayette College with a degree in engineering, who’d worked for a global manufacturer of pipe fittings, and who spent her weekends—and all her money—racing cars at Pocono, Watkins Glen, and any other track I could get to that would let me on it.

  And Victor Hoyt, the owner of V. F. Hoyt Motors, called me to drive for his team.

  And now he was calling me into his office for an entirely different reason.

  “Hello.” I pressed my palm on the inside of the door, hesitating at the threshold, as though knowing the outcome of this meeting before it happened.

  “Please.” The older man’s round frame was matched with a grandfatherly round face, topped with sparse white hair. His skin mottled with the red and wrinkles of his seventy-two years of age, and the pained expression of having to be the bearer of bad news.

  He motioned me inside to take a seat.

  Mahogany furniture tufted with evergreen leather was staged around a pristine office, a history of the last thirty years of NASCAR racing wallpapering the walls, and a faint hint of cigar smoke framing the air like draperies.

  It felt like a museum, a living history that I was a part of. If only for part of a season.

  I held my head tall, my spine straight with perseverance, as I approached his desk. A few papers, a Hoyt Racing pen, and thin, wired glasses sat folded on top.

  I’d come this far. No matter what happened, racing was in my blood.

  Nothing would change that. Nothing would stop me.

  I took a seat in one of the two matching chairs, holding Victor’s troubled gaze as I did.

  “Victor,” I murmured with a reverential nod, my chin hanging low for an extra beat.

  I felt his heavy sigh more than I heard it.

  “Kacey.” His rasped tone belied a winning legacy celebrated for too many years with too many cigars and too much alcohol. He dragged his gaze from mine out the back window of his Floridian mansion to the expanse of beach sitting behind it.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized with a low voice though the words were superfluous; they’d been the first thing I’d called him with after the fight.

  “I know.” He shook his head. “I know. You shouldn’t have to be, and that’s what gets me.”

  The lump in my throat grew. I couldn’t disagree.

  He knew the truth. He knew why I’d punched Joey Puglisi, and why the asshole had deserved it.

  But he was the only one.

  “What did they decide?” I asked, my heart racing in my chest.

  I just needed to know what my punishment was.

  After the track officials had pulled us apart and Joey was taken to the medic and then to the hospital with a broken nose, the video went viral. And that was when I knew my consequences would have real repercussions. Even though his wouldn’t.

  Sharp, haze-gray eyes snapped to mine. “Suspension.”

  I nodded. I expected that.

  “For the remainder of the NASCAR Cup Series races this year.”

  The chair screeched as I stood. “What?”

  That was… the whole season.

  The color drained from my cheeks.

  He sighed. “Kacey, you punched another driver—attacked him, really.” He spoke with his hands and up until now, I’d found it endearing. “Jesus, you’re lucky he’s not pressing charges.”

  I snorted. “He’s lucky I’m not pressing charges.”

  “You could,” he countered.

  “But I won’t.”

  His eyebrows rose, lifting the hoods off his eyes completely. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  Anger rocked against the cage of my body. My fingers dug into my hip as I looked up to the paneled ceiling of the room for a moment, sorting through the chaos in my mind.

  A sigh swung from my chest like a gavel. “Yes.”

  I didn’t want to press charges.

  I didn’t want to tell the media about the part of the story they
missed.

  I didn’t want this to be what I was known for.

  Bending forward, I gripped the edge of his desk, shaking my head in disgust.

  “It could change things—change the ruling.”

  I whipped my eyes to his, the fire of determination a thousand times hotter than rage. “It would change my history, and I won’t let that happen—” I broke off with a huff.

  Kacey Snyder, the first woman driver to…

  Kacey Snyder, the only woman driver to…

  Kacey Snyder, the only female racer to…

  Wrong.

  All their narratives were wrong.

  For years, I’d fought to remove gender from the discussion of my performance. Of my driving. Of my talent.

  I didn’t want to be the best female racer. I wanted to be the best goddamn racer.

  “I want to be known for my driving, not because of this. Not because my beef with some sexist pig,” I told him, rising back to stand straight. “This is my story. I will control how it’s written.”

  His thick fingers tapped on his desk with a defeated thump.

  “It’s not just the suspension from the races, Kacey.”

  My eyes flicked wide. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been on the team for less than a year. Your contract says for a suspension or other major violation like this, I’ve got to let you go.”

  “So… I’m not allowed to race… and I’m no longer on the team?” I breathed the question out like it was my last breath.

  “I don’t want to do this, Kacey. Dammit, you know I don’t. I think you’ve got exceptional talent, but that doesn’t mean I can make exceptions.” He folded his arms across his exceptionally large stomach. “This team is too big… This business—”

  “I understand,” I told him thickly, fighting against the pain blooming in my chest.

  “Kacey—”

  “No, Victor. Please,” I insisted, my feet shuffling wider to help distribute the weight of my pain. “I want to be exceptional, not the exception. I understand. This is my choice.”

  And ultimately, it was. I could change the narrative if I wanted, but I didn’t… I couldn’t.