Free Web NovelChapter 84: Chapter 84 Red Ferrari
_Rowena’s POV_
I left the mansion early in the morning before anyone was properly awake.
I had planned the disguise the night before. Nothing complicated. Dark clothes, a cap pulled low, and plain shoes. The kind of outfit that made a person forgettable, which was exactly what I needed. No jewelry, or accessories, nothing that would catch anyone’s eye. I looked like someone’s assistant running an errand and that was the point.
“More like a delivery person.” Kyra chuckled.
I took one of the unmarked cars from the back of the property and drove myself.
Starlight Supercars sat on the north side of the city, a building that managed to be both understated and impressive the way only genuinely expensive things could be. The exterior was clean and modern, mostly glass, with the company name etched rather than displayed in large letters.
The company was named after Star, Silas’s mother, the founder’s wife who had passed away some years ago. My father had told me the story once. She had loved fast cars and her husband had loved her enough to build an entire empire around that fact.
I knew Silas from a long time ago.
He had been one of my father’s people in the years before everything fell apart. Not a soldier though, neither was he an advisor exactly, but the kind of person my father trusted to be in the room when important things were being decided. He had been younger then, still learning the business from his father, still figuring out what he was going to be.
He was older now, married to his mate, two boys at home, the company essentially his to run.
I had not seen him in years. ƒrēewebnovel.com
I went through the side entrance I had looked up in advance and asked for him by name, giving a false one for myself. The receptionist looked at me with a polite look in her eyes and made a call.
Silas came down himself ten minutes later.
He had his father’s build and his mother’s eyes and when he saw me he stopped walking and looked at me for long enough that I was glad the disguise had limits. He recognized me. That was fine. That was why I had come to him specifically.
He looked around the lobby briefly, then gestured for me to follow him.
We went up to his private office, which had a view of the showroom floor below where the competition vehicles were staged in a line that made my chest do something involuntary. Clean lines, serious engineering, the kind of machinery that meant business.
He closed the door.
"Rowena," he said.
"Silas," I said.
"You shouldn’t be here," he said. Not unkindly. Just immediately.
"I need to register for the competition," I said. "And I need it done quietly."
He looked at me for a moment and then sat down on the edge of his desk with a calm expression, as if what I just said was a joke to him.
"No," he said.
"Hear me out."
"I know who you are and I know what the competition involves and the answer is no," he said. "Your father would want me to say no. In fact your father would be in this office right now saying it himself if he....." He stopped.
"If he were alive," I said.
He looked at the floor.
"That’s exactly why I’m here," I said. "Sit down properly, Silas. Let me finish before you say no again."
He pulled the chair around and sat.
I told him about my father. About the last wishes that had been passed to me through channels I trusted, about the specific thing my father had believed needed to be done and had not lived long enough to do himself. I told him about my brother, who had understood the same thing and had died understanding it. I told him what the competition meant beyond the surface of it, what it represented in terms of the region’s stability, what was at stake if certain things didn’t shift in the next cycle of leadership decisions.
I didn’t exaggerate. I didn’t perform it. I just told him the truth clearly and let it be what it was.
Silas listened without interrupting.
When I finished he was quiet for a while.
"You know how to drive," he said finally. It wasn’t a question.
"My father taught me on a track outside the city when I was fourteen," I said. "I have been keeping up with it privately for years."
"The competition isn’t a track outside the city," he said.
"I know what the competition is."
He looked at me, then looked at the window, then he looked at the showroom floor below us.
"If anything happens to you," he said, "I will not be able to live with it."
"Nothing is going to happen to me," I said.
"You don’t know that."
"No," I said. "But I know why I’m doing this and I know what I’m capable of and I know that my father believed this mattered enough to spend the last part of his life working toward it. I’m not going to let that end with him."
Another long silence.
Then Silas stood up and walked to the window and looked down at the showroom floor for a moment.
"I’m registering you under a competition alias," he said. "Completely clean documentation, nothing that points back to your name until you choose to reveal it." He turned around. "And you take the car I choose. Not the one you’d pick. Mine."
"Which one?"
He looked at the floor below.
The red Ferrari F8 Tributo was positioned at the end of the line. It caught the light differently from the others, something in the finish that made it look like it was already moving.
"That one," he said. "Two hundred and seventy thousand. It’s been prepared for competition already. It’s the best thing in this building for what you’re going to do."
I looked at it through the glass.
"Silas," I said.
"Don’t thank me yet," he said. "Just win." He looked at me seriously. "And keep it quiet until you’re ready. Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody knows you’re registered. The moment it gets out it becomes a different kind of problem."
"Understood," I said.
He walked me back down himself, taking the long route around the showroom floor, and we paused for a moment beside the Ferrari.
Up close it was even more precise. Every line deliberate. Everything built for a specific purpose.
"Your father would be furious with me," Silas said quietly.
"My father would be proud of both of us," I said.
He looked at me for a moment.
Then he nodded once and walked me to the side exit.
