Chapter 7

Nina

Instinctively, I threw out a hand and caught the carbon-fiber body of the car beside me, barely managing to steady myself.

"Don't leave your filthy handprints on my paintwork." Liam's voice cut through the air, cold and laced with undisguised disgust.

He glanced down at the spot where I'd just been lying. "I'm paying you a million, not hiring you to take my car apart. If you damage so much as a single part, you'll never earn enough to pay it back in your lifetime."

I drew in a slow breath, peeled off my work gloves, and stuffed them into the pocket of my mechanic's suit.

I didn't lose my temper. I simply turned back to the workbench, picked up the tablet, and pulled up the data I'd just modified.

Then I walked over to him, keeping a safe distance, and turned the screen toward him.

"I didn't damage your car, Mr. Cranston." I kept my tone as calm and professional as I could. "I just checked the chassis. The suspension on this car is set too low—the oil pan on the V12 already shows slight signs of scraping. If you take it onto the track like this, the centrifugal force through the corners will destroy the chassis outright. All I did was make a preliminary adjustment to the shock damping. That's the best way to protect the engine."

Liam lowered his eyes and let his gaze sweep across the screen.

He didn't look at me. He just let out a cold laugh.

"You think a little experience patching up junk pickups in the slums qualifies you to teach me how to tune an F1-grade race car?" He lifted his head, his stare heavy with pressure. "This suspension height came out of wind-tunnel testing by the factory team's engineers. You touch the damping, and you throw off the downforce across the entire aero package."

His long fingers tapped the screen, his voice biting. "Redo the drawing."

I frowned, a flash of urgency rising in me.

"But if I don't adjust the suspension, the chassis simply won't survive a high-intensity race. The downforce issue can be compensated for by adjusting the front lip and the rear wing—"

"I said, redo it." Liam cut me off, his tone leaving no room for argument. He took a step forward, his tall frame suddenly closing the distance between us, that familiar scent of cedar rolling over me along with the weight of his presence. "From this moment on, every modification on this car, every piece of data, goes through me. You don't lay a finger on it without my permission."

He fixed his eyes on mine, his gaze scraping across my face like a blade. "If you feel hard done by, or you can't understand what I'm telling you, you can get out right now. Just don't forget the penalty clause—two million. Can you come up with that?"

The number pressed down on my spine like a mountain, choking off every objection I might have made.

I clenched my teeth and swallowed the irritation and humiliation rising in my throat.

Tony's arrogant face and that three-hundred-thousand loan-shark note flashed through my mind. I had no way out.

"Fine. I'll redo it." I dropped my eyes, avoiding his gaze.

I turned back to the workbench, pulled out a chair, sat down, and brought the design back up on the screen.

I assumed he'd leave once he'd said his piece. He was the heir to the Cranston family, after all, with countless meetings and deals to handle. There was no reason for him to waste his time on a mechanic.

I was wrong.

Steady footsteps approached. Liam pulled out the chair beside mine and sat down.

He leaned back, crossed his legs, and let his cold gaze settle on my screen.

He actually intended to sit here and watch me.

I took a deep breath and forced my attention onto the lines and figures on the display.

Following his instructions, I restored the chassis height to its original parameters, then tried to compensate for the lost cornering downforce by adjusting the angle of the front lip.

The garage was so quiet that the only sound was the stylus sliding across the screen.

Liam sat beside me, his presence overwhelming. Even in silence, I could feel that oppressive gaze fixed on my hands the entire time.

Half an hour later, I handed the revised drawing over to him.

Liam took the tablet, gave it a single glance, and let out a cold snort.

"The front lip angle is too steep—it'll add drag on the straights. And the spoiler design on the rear wing is far too conservative. It won't hold down a V12's power at all. Redo it."

He tossed the tablet back onto the table with a dull thud.

I didn't argue. I took the tablet back and kept working.

Time slipped away, minute by minute, and the garage's fluorescent lights began to sting my eyes.

I stared at the screen until the lines in front of me started to blur and double.

My stomach churned with a hollow weakness, and my head felt as heavy as if it had been filled with lead.

I knew this was the fever medication kicking in, on top of a night of high fever that had drained me of nearly all my strength. My body was in open revolt.

I blinked hard, trying to shake off the crushing drowsiness.

I wanted to close my eyes and rest, even just for a few minutes.

But I didn't dare.

Liam was sitting right there, those icy eyes tracking my every move.

The moment I let the slightest bit of exhaustion show, he'd humiliate me with the cruelest words he could find—or throw me out altogether.

I bit down hard on my lower lip until I tasted blood, and the pain jolted me back to a brief moment of clarity.

I was frustrated with my own weakness.

Back in the slums of Los Angeles, I used to pull two or three all-nighters in a row just to meet deadlines and scrape together a little extra money.

Even running a fever, I could throw back two bottles of cheap black coffee and slide right back under a car, wrench in hand.

Never like this—never so wrecked by nothing more than a fever and a few tablets that I could barely hold a stylus.

Maybe I really was getting old. Or maybe these three years of scraping by at the bottom had already burned my body down to nothing.

The blue glow of the screen bored into my aching eyes.

I forced myself to stay sharp, recalculated the drag coefficient and the downforce ratio, and made an exceedingly fine adjustment to the curvature of the spoiler.

My fingers grew more and more sluggish as they moved across the screen, and my breath turned hot and labored.

I could feel cold sweat trickling down my forehead and dripping onto the workbench.

The scent of cedar still lingered at the tip of my nose. I could even hear Liam's fingers occasionally tapping the table—a sound like the drumbeat of an executioner, hammering against my taut nerves.

"It's done."

I finally finished the last stroke, my voice so weak it sounded foreign even to me, rasping like sandpaper dragged across a tabletop.

I turned my head and held the tablet out toward him.

In the very second my hand hung there in midair, a violent wave of dizziness slammed into me.

The image before me shattered instantly, the glare of the fluorescent lights breaking apart into blinding white shards.

A sharp ringing filled my ears, drowning out every other sound in the garage.

The tablet slipped from my limp fingers and clattered onto the workbench with a crisp bang.

My body lost all control, and like a puppet with its strings cut, I toppled straight to the side.

In the last instant before my consciousness sank into darkness, I dimly saw Liam surge up from his chair.

On that always-cold, always-mocking face, there appeared something close to horrified panic.

He reached out a hand, as if to catch my falling body.

I must be delirious with fever, I thought, laughing bitterly to myself as my eyes closed.

He hated me. He wanted nothing more than to grind me under his heel and humiliate me. How could he possibly be worried just because I'd fainted?