second chances
mob boss! lando norris x reader
part twenty-nine: blind spot
word count: 4.4k(?)
warnings: this chapter contains mentions of drugs, weaponry, and other illegal activities. reader discretion is advised.
twenty eight | twenty nine | thirty
He kept telling himself he was doing the right thing.
Give her space. Let her breathe, for fuck’s sake. Don’t make this about you.
But it was a joke, really. Because no matter how many times he told himself to back off, Lando couldn’t stop wondering what she was doing, how she was feeling, whether she’d eaten something that could actually be considered food. Whether she’d eaten the bread still warm from the bakery or left it to go stale on the table. Whether she cried when she was alone. Whether she cried at all.
He told himself to grow up. This wasn’t some teenage crush. He had blood on his ledger, weight on his name. He ran half the city’s undercurrent from behind the veil, stitched the streets together with money and fear and brute control.
So he acted like it.
Thursday came bitter and sharp, all wind slicing through his coat as he ducked down an alley off La Rousse and into the backroom of an old tailor’s shop – a legitimate front. It was run by an elderly man named Niki who had been running the business since back in the early 1980’s, long before Monaco ever gained their nefarious Reaper.
Lando just happened to be a loyal business partner of his – a humble young man who paid a generous amount in exchange for exclusive access to the basement of the old property. Niki had the added bonus of being a man who knew how to mind his own business.
Lando liked that in a partner.
The real business was three floors beneath—cold, concrete, and buzzing with quiet tension. His people were already gathered around the long steel table: Max Fewtrell leaning back in a chair, Logan with his arms folded, Carlos hunched over some schematics.
“News?” Lando asked, shrugging out of his coat and tossing it onto the rack behind him.
Carlos looked up, tapping the paper with his knuckles. “Got movement near Mile End. New shipment of knockoff tech—headsets, tablets, black market shit. I say we intercept and flip it.”
Lando nodded. “Do it quiet. No fireworks. I don’t want more noise than necessary this week.”
That’s when Verstappen stepped up to inform him that the warehouse on the docks had been hit. Two of Lando’s runners had gotten picked up and one of them was singing like a songbird. To make matters worse, their local books weren’t clean— for that matter, nothing was clean— but it meant that some fool had tried to skim off the gambling profits again.
Lando stood at the edge of the table, leaning forward on his fists as he surveyed the projected losses and the photograph evidence. With the way his sleeves were rolled up and his fists were clenched, Logan had to approach him, cutting off his train of thought.
“Mate, you have to take a breath, you're going to kill someone and then paperwork becomes my problem.”
“...Mate?”
“Boss. I meant boss. It’s, uh, a different way of pronouncing it. Yeah! Uh, French. Very French.”
The glare Lando shot him was so potent and so familiar that Logan didn’t need a language to understand it.
Shut up, Spin.
Logan sighed.
Why is it always me?
By noon, his phone buzzed with a familiar unknown number. There was no contact name, but the area code was French, and Lando was smart enough to know who would be so bold as to call him again.
Gasly.
The French always were so full of themselves.
It’d been a while since he’d heard from him. The Frenchman wasn’t one to just call up without a reason. And Lando had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a friendly chat about old racing memories.
With a roll of his eyes, Lando finally answered the call, placing the call on speaker before leaning back in his chair.
“Gasly,” Lando greeted succinctly, tone unreadable.
“Ah, now you pick up, huh? I have been trying to get your attention for some time now, Mr. Norris,” There was a slight chuckle, then a shift to seriousness. “Lando,” came the smooth, almost cocky voice on the other end. “You are busy?”
“Always,” Lando replied, his tone flat. “What do you need?”
“We should meet.”
He paused. The warehouse around him stilled.
“Where?”
“Neutral ground. Tomorrow night. Hmm, Le Voile d'Or? Not one of your places. Bring one of your own. Just one.”
“I’ll think about it,” Lando said, his voice low and cold. “But don’t think for a second I’m gonna let you walk all over me, Gasly.”
Gasly laughed, as if the challenge didn’t faze him. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The line went dead before Lando could respond.
Bastard.
That night, Lando was back at the head of the intimate table setup in the meeting room, the dark mahogany reflecting the warm light of the ornate overhead chandelier. He folded his sleeves casually, rolling them to his elbows, his knuckles still raw but healing. Logan, Carlos, and Max Fewtrell sat with him, a fresh set of printed diagrams spread across the table—half club schematics, half distribution routes.
“He’s been running the street scene uptown with those modified imports and the fancy kid drivers,” Daniel added, leaning back. “Why would he want to fold into our operation now?”
“Because we’ve got infrastructure,” Lando said. “He’s got speed and no discipline. We’ve got routes, clean-ups, and an intel network he couldn’t build in a decade.”
Max tilted his head. “You thinking we bring him in for delivery work? Or enforcement?”
“Neither.” Lando’s jaw tightened. “We make him a runner. Use Gasly and his Garage to move product across districts fast. Street races’ll double as cover. We don’t touch the actual racin’—we let him handle that circus.”
Daniel let out a low whistle. “That’s pretty ambitious.”
“It’s efficient,” Lando muttered. “We’ve lost two outer routes in the last month. We need speed without, like, needin’ to rebuild everythin’ from scratch.”
Lando leaned forward, resting his forearms against the edge of the table, rings tapping a dull rhythm on the steel. “He said his crew is fast, low-profile, and looking for more work. But I think he wants protection—someone to watch his back if things go south.”
Carlos frowned. “Could be good.”
“Could be bait,” Logan muttered.
Lando considered both. In this life, everything came with a price.
Trust, especially.
Still, he needed to keep moving. Staying still made him think too much—about her, about that night, about the blood on her hands and how small she’d looked on his bathroom floor, knees drawn to her chest, his name barely a whisper.
At least he could keep the rest of the world in order. That much, he could still control.
“He’s smart,” Max Fewtrell said, interrupting his thoughts, tracing a path from the docks through to the northern districts. “Gasly’s been running his racing ring lean. Tight crew. Fast drivers. They're ghosts, half’a the time.”
Carlos, leaning against the lockers, nodded in agreement. “They are a fast crew. Young. Aggressive, too. They know the roads better than most of our guys do. And the bikes they run with?” He let out a low whistle. “Custom-built, half of them. Perfect for the tight runs.”
“What, you trust ‘em?” Daniel half-laughed, skeptical.
“No,” Lando rolled his eyes, as if Daniel had asked some stupid, childish question. “But I don’t need to trust ‘em. I need him to know we could make each other very, very rich, ” he smiled smugly.
Logan looked up from the tablet. “Using his drivers as runners could cut our drop times in half…”
“And also draw heat,” Carlos pointed out. “They crash one car, we will lose the route and the product.”
Lando leaned back, eyes flicking over the blueprints again.
Logan folded his arms. “ I dunno… could be useful. If we want to up our speed game, y’know.”
Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Or it’s a setup. C’mon, I thought I was our car guy!”
Carlos only laughed.
Lando cracked his knuckles. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll hear him out. He wants to meet at a neutral place, suggested Le Voile d'Or. I want two exits, working comms, and I want eyes on the building an hour before Max n’ I even step foot in it. Logan and Oscar will go tonight and set up early. Got it?”
He could feel his heart rate pick up, the adrenaline that always came with making deals like this. But at the same time, he couldn’t escape the thought that kept gnawing at him—he wasn’t doing this to move forward anymore. He was doing it to outrun what was closing in behind him.
His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, the shadow of the city growing darker behind him. Everything he was doing now was just a distraction. A way to ignore the fact that, no matter how many deals he made or how many punches he threw, it was never enough.
Lando gritted his teeth. He didn’t have time to think about that. Not now.
Gasly had his attention, and that was enough for tonight.
“Yuki!” Pierre barked, stepping over a tangle of brake lines. “The NSX is still sputtering in third—didn’t I tell you to fix that two days ago?”
Yuki, crouched under the hood with grease smudged across his cheek, didn’t flinch. “Yeah, you did. And I am, but maybe if Esteban didn’t screw with the ECU mapping behind my back—”
“That was an improvement,” Esteban waved off, leaning against the wall with a bottle of water and a smug tilt to his mouth. “Unlike your tuning, which sounds like a dying blender.”
Pierre groaned, pacing past the two. “If you two can go thirty fucking seconds without pissing on each other, maybe we would have a car ready before Lando and his crew show tomorrow.”
Tucked into a half-abandoned industrial lot on the outskirts of the city, the place didn’t look like much from the outside. But inside, rows of souped-up cars lined the walls, glittering under harsh fluorescent lights. Toolboxes clanged, beats thudded from an old speaker rigged in the corner, and the murmur of French, Japanese, and the occasional curse in English hung low in the air.
The scent of gasoline and burnt rubber hung heavy in the air, thick with adrenaline and sweat. Neon light spilled from under the cracked roll-up doors of Gasly’s Garage, casting eerie pinks and greens over the collection of customized engines and half-assembled machines inside. It looked like chaos, but every screw, wire, and rev was calculated—Pierre wouldn’t allow otherwise.
This was Gasly’s world. And tonight, he was not fucking around.
“We need to look tight,” Pierre said sharply, pacing between two low-slung Hondas with custom body kits and matte finishes. “Like… we belong in that league, same as him.”
Yuki, now crouched under the open hood of a deep purple Acura NSX, didn’t even look up. “We do belong in the same league. You just want to look prettier.”
“Prettier gets us in the room,” Pierre snapped. “The rest comes after.”
From the far side of the garage, a socket wrench clattered to the floor. Esteban straightened up, rubbing his grease-stained hands on an already filthy rag.
“I thought the whole point of us was not needing his approval,” he said, too loud on purpose. “But sure. Let us beg for Norris’s scraps. I’m sure he’ll be flattered.”
Pierre’s jaw flexed. “It’s not begging. It is business.”
Esteban gave him a look. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, mon frère.”
Yuki rolled his eyes, muttering something in Japanese that probably wasn’t flattering.
“Putain,” Pierre swore under his breath, rubbing the side of his face. “Where the fuck is Jack? Tell me the rookie isn’t late. Again.”
“He’s not late,” came Yuki’s voice, straightening up to take a step back from the hood and check his work. He was still admiring his handiwork when he plainly told Pierre, “You are just anxious.”
Pierre shot him a look. Yuki didn’t flinch, just wiped his hands on a rag and dropped the hood with a satisfying thunk, before coming to stand beside Pierre.
“I’m not anxious,” Pierre said, voice low but clipped. “I’m focused. There’s a difference.”
“You are pacing like my grandmother used to before Sunday Mass,” Yuki deadpanned.
“Your grandmother also used to smuggle hash through airport security in her rosary beads,” Esteban muttered from the side, leaned against a stack of tires with a lazy smirk. “Ah, I know! Maybe she should be running this crew instead.”
Pierre turned his head sharply. “Say that again, Ocon. I dare you.”
Esteban lifted both hands in mock surrender. “I am just saying. If Lando Norris is coming all the way down from his big castle to check us out, maybe he’s expecting more than… this shit.”
Pierre stepped toward him. Yuki, with the patience of someone who’d seen this a hundred times before, simply pulled out his vape and took a long drag.
“You think you could run this place better?” Pierre asked tightly, jaw set. “Sois mon putain d'invité.”
“Je ne veux pas de ton travail, mon pote. I just want to survive the night without you starting a pissing contest in front of a guy who could bankroll half the East District.”
“Guys,” Yuki interrupted. “Maybe focus up? If we screw this up, we lose our only shot at this.”
The hangar doors creaked open with a mechanical groan before Pierre could respond. Jack Doohan rolled in then, stepping out with a backpack slung over one shoulder, hair damp like he’d just showered in a gas station sink. His car was flashy, over-tuned, too much chrome.
“You’re late,” Pierre snapped.
“Sorry,” Jack offered with a crooked smile, dropping the bag with a thud. “Cops shut down the shortcut. Had to take the long way ‘round.”
Pierre just glared.
Jack raised both hands. “Hey, I’m here now. What’d I miss?”
Yuki stood up, wiping car grease off his hands. “Everything important. But mostly Pierre yelling.”
Pierre shot him a warning look, cutting them off. “We’re here to make this look good. Lando Norris isn’t just some suit with a penchant for fast cars. He’s a calculated bastard. He’ll smell desperation from a mile away, so get your heads on straight.”
A beat of silence passed. The only sound was the low hum of the cars still cooling and the faint beat of music shifting to something darker.
At the back of the garage, Jack stood quietly, knuckles skinned from a rushed brake swap, eyes wide as he tried to absorb everything. This was his third week with Gasly’s crew, and it felt like a masterclass in organized madness. Pierre didn’t trust easily, but Jack had shown he wasn’t just another rich kid with a turbo’d Civic and something to prove. He listened. He learned. And most importantly, he earned his bruises.
“Oi,” Pierre called to him. “Check the tire pressure on the GTR. If we’re gonna show Lando we can move fast, we need to look like we live at 300 kph.”
Jack nodded immediately, wiping his hands on his jeans before jogging over to the corner.
The Garage was more than just their base—it was sacred ground. A Frankenstein’s lab of torque and tension. The walls were lined with old race trophies and Polaroids: half the people in them long gone, half still hanging on by blood, rivalry, or debt.
“You have got two hours,” he said instead. “We meet Lando and his guy at midnight sharp, comprendre?”
Esteban crossed his arms. “And what do we do when Lando starts asking questions we can’t answer? You think he is just going to just hand over his distribution lines because we brought him pretty toys?”
“No,” Pierre said. “I think he’ll listen if we show him we’ve got speed, discipline, and something he doesn’t. He knows this city better than anyone — but we know the streets. Every alley, every cop rotation, every crew too young or too desperate to turn legit. That’s what we offer.”
Jack looked around, cracking his knuckles. “You, uh, think they’ll bring Spin?”
Yuki raised an eyebrow. “No, I don’t think so. Lando doesn’t let anyone talk for him.”
“Except the Fewtrell boy,” Pierre muttered. “That’s his second, from what I hear.”
Esteban snorted. “Great. Can’t wait.”
Yuki closed the RX-7’s hood with a clang. “Why are we even trying so hard with this guy? You know he doesn’t play well with others.”
Pierre shot him a look. “Because Lando Norris doesn’t just run a syndicate—he is the syndicate. We get this deal, we stop bleeding cash on side bets and finally start –how they say– playing in the big leagues.”
“And if he says no?” Esteban asked, too casually.
“Then we make him say yes.” Pierre’s voice was calm, too calm.
Yuki exhaled, long and low. “You always say that before something explodes.”
“That’s because something always does,” Pierre grinned, flashing gold where his canine used to be. “Now get the hell to work. Tomorrow’s not just a meeting. It’s our audition.”
With that, Pierre was already walking toward his own car — a sleek silver Nissan GT-R with a cobalt blue underglow, hood up, engine gutted and humming as his crew fine-tuned every detail. He stood there for a moment, one hand resting on the roof.
This had to go right.
Because Gasly’s Garage wasn’t just a bunch of kids racing for pink slips anymore – not since the money started moving, not since the bets turned serious. Not since the first time someone crashed, and the body disappeared before sunrise.
They were in it now. And Lando Norris — the Reaper himself — was the next step.
So yeah, they’d play nice.
For now.
But only because they planned to run this city one day.
And when they did?
They’d remember exactly who looked down on them.
The chosen meeting, an unconstructed club called Le Voile d'Or was nothing more than a skeleton — steel beams, concrete floors, and open air where the ceiling should’ve been. No neon signs, no thumping bassline. Just construction tape fluttering in the breeze and the sound of sawdust spreading about. Lando liked it that way. No distractions. No corners to hide in.
The meet was set for midnight.
He arrived at 11:43, naturally. Max was already pacing near the car, hands shoved into his jacket pockets.
“They’re not here yet,” Max muttered, eyes scanning the lot. “You sure this isn’t a trap?”
“It’s always a trap,” Lando said evenly, pulling off his gloves as he stepped onto the gravel. “S’why we lay ours first.”
Oscar was already in position. Rooftop a block out, four floors up, a clean sightline, silencer on. One text and he could stop a heartbeat mid-sentence.
Logan had swept the perimeter earlier — camera blind spots mapped, back exits sealed, with Daniel and Verstappen posted by the service stairs. With Carlos positioned near the front entrance, nothing got in or out without them knowing.
Still, Lando’s eyes never stopped moving. Even in this hollow, half-built ruin, he was all edges. Sharp jaw, sharper gaze. His coat moved like a shadow when he walked, his boots steady and deliberate. You could tell just by looking at him: he wasn’t here to negotiate unless he wanted to.
11:56.
The hum of tuned engines echoed off the walls before the headlights appeared — three cars, low and fast, cutting through the dark. One was black with a burnt-pink stripe. The other, a silver Nissan, purred like a threat.
Gasly stepped out first. He didn’t hurry – he didn’t have to. He had that swagger particular to people who knew they were dangerous in ways others hadn’t even figured out yet. Yuki emerged just behind him — shorter, tenser, but clearly not a sidekick. Not with the way he scanned the site like he was already calculating escape routes.
Pierre approached with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes, giving the Brit a once over. “Is that a gun? Or you are just happy to see me?”
Lando raised a brow. “Only as happy as you are,” he shot back, pointing his gaze to the handgun tucked into the band of Pierre’s baggy jeans.
Pierre chuckled. “Ah, touché.”
Max stayed silent behind Lando, eyes locked on Yuki, who looked like he might pull a knife just for fun. He made a point to stretch, the lifting of his jacket enough to show off the gun tucked in his own pocket, even if he couldn’t spot one on Pierre’s second. Tension crackled beneath the false politeness — a quiet understanding that everyone here had killed someone, directly or not.
Still, they went through the motions.
“Gasly,” Lando greeted.
“Norris.”
They shook hands — cool, quick, firm. No warmth.
“I hear you’re looking to expand,” Pierre said, tone smooth. “And I hear you’ve had trouble keeping up with demand lately.”
Lando didn’t react. “You offering t’help or just here to gloat?”
Pierre smiled. “Help, of course. I’ve got roads you don’t. Drivers you haven’t met. Eyes in places your boys would never pass unnoticed. You’re good at staying clean. I’m better at staying untraceable.”
Max Fewtrell looked over at Lando, unimpressed. Lando reflected that same look back to Gasly.
“Did you call me here just to make y’self feel nice, or do you actually have something f’me?
Gasly chuckled. “I have been thinking. You know how we used to roll together, back in the day? The racing, the high stakes? I’ve got a proposition for you.”
Lando unbuttoned the front of his suit, leaning against a makeshift table as he stared up at the Frenchman with a look that told to get on with it quickly. Lando Norris didn’t take kindly to have his time wasted, especially by posh wannabes looking to be somebodys.
“Go on.”
“I’ve got a network, a big one – street racers, quiter routes, plenty of guys who know not to play by the rules.” He glanced over at Yuki, who nodded, before he continued with his pitch. “We’ve got the runners, the cars, the cash flow, but we’re looking for someone who can push things, make it worth the risk. And you… well, you’ve got a reputation.”
Pierre had slowly been making his way closer to where the two Reaper boys were standing, and it was making Max antsy. Gasly saw Max’s hand twitch for his handgun and laughed, waving him off. “We are old friends here, non? No need for such things.”
Within moments, Lando’s mind clicked over the options. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d been looking for: leverage, power, control. A street racing ring under his influence meant more money, more influence, more control of the territories he was still trying to solidify. Gasly could help him gain an edge over rival crews who were too weak to understand how to play the long game.
“I’m… listening,” Lando muttered carefully.
“There’s potential in this for both of us, Lando. We can talk the bigger numbers when you agree. But you and I, we’ve always worked well together. Let us make something bigger than just a few races, hmm? Let us make it profitable for both of us.”
Lando’s jaw clenched. He could hear the pitch—Gasly was selling the idea of partnership, but he was also a businessman. If Lando played his cards right, this could open doors for all sorts of opportunities. But he had to be careful. Gasly was clever, slippery. And Lando wasn’t sure he trusted the guy enough to dive in without a second thought.
“And in return? Somehow I get the feelin’ you’re not doin’ this out of the goodness of you heart,” Max asked.
“Product. Routes. A seat at the table. Not the whole table — I know who I’m talking to.” Pierre tilted his head, smiling. He took a step closer, his voice lowering. “But… perhaps a slice.”
Yuki stepped forward, holding out a tablet with a map — color-coded, clean, and too detailed for Lando’s liking. Lando didn’t touch it. He simply nodded for Max to take it.
“I’ll have someone vet it,” he said.
“Of course,” Pierre replied. “And if you don’t like what you see?”
Lando met his gaze. “I’m sure you’ll be the first to know.”
The air held its breath for a moment.
Then Pierre smiled again. “I always like a man who’s polite when he threatens me.”
“Oh no, I’m not threatening,” Lando said, his smile sickly sweet. “Yet.”
Pierre laughed. Yuki didn’t, his eyes flitting between the two Brit’s momentarily.
One mistake, and it could all fall apart.
They talked numbers next — shipments, timing, how many people were on Pierre’s crew, what kind of muscle they had, whether they had clean fronts or needed cover. Pierre answered everything easily, like he’d been rehearsing for this moment.
Lando noticed it, clocked it, but didn’t call it out.
Pierre’s boys had made their pitch, and Lando—cool, unreadable, two steps ahead as always—had picked it apart and rebuilt it in his favor. On paper, they’d be allies. In reality, Gasly’s Garage would be working under him without realizing it. Lando had danced circles around sharper men. Pierre might’ve been slick, but Lando was surgical.
He slid his hands into his coat pockets, posture relaxed. Beside him, Max gave the faintest nod, as if to say we’ve got this. Across the concrete skeleton of the unfinished club, Pierre was still talking—something about logistics, runners, trust but Lando had mostly stopped listening by then.
They’d already won. His work here was done.
But he let Pierre talk anyway, because letting a man believe he’s in control is often the final stroke in tightening the noose.
By the time they finished, the night had shifted — the air less hostile, the power still clear but… tentative. Like everyone had shown their cards, but kept a few aces tucked into their sleeves.
Yuki appeared more closed off, standing more like a protective Doberman by Pierre’s side, while it was Pierre who approached so he and Lando could shake on it..
“Looking forward to working with you, Lando.”
“We’ll see,” Lando said. His designer shoe clacked against the concrete underneath as he too took a step closer, and then—
“Lando—”
Two clicks sounded before Oscar’s voice crackled to life in his ear – urgent and out of breath.
Why was he out of breath?
Lando barely had enough time to wonder when Max looked at him with a matching expression of realization.
“It’s an ambush! You guys need to get out, now!”
a/n: yippee! a new chapter, and some new (familiar) faces! what do we think?
