Chapter 4 - Under the Hood
The moment the doors locked for the night, the boutique belonged to Marcus.
He didn't need Chad's diagnostic tablet. He rolled a heavy steel toolbox out from the back—a toolbox he hadn't opened in ten years. Inside were analog tools, precision micrometers, and notebooks filled with his own original schematics.
The Bugatti was a marvel, but beneath the modern carbon fiber, it still operated on the fundamental laws of thermodynamics—laws Marcus had mastered before Damian Cross was even born.
He stripped off his detailing shirt, leaving him in a white undershirt. He cracked his knuckles and went to work. He bypassed the digital sensors entirely, manually adjusting the wastegates on the twin turbos and recalibrating the fuel injection timing using a custom manifold spacer he fabricated on the spot from scrap aluminum in the back shop.
Around 3:00 AM, the boutique manager, Elias, walked in. He handed Marcus a black coffee.
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"You're crazy, Holt," Elias muttered, looking at the dismantled hypercar. "If Cross finds out who you really are, he won't just fire you. He'll ruin you."
"His father already ruined me," Marcus said, taking a sip of the bitter coffee. "Damian is just holding the keys to my stolen house." He picked up a torque wrench. "By tomorrow, I'm taking the keys back."
