The Volkov's inheritance: 90 days to rule

Adrian’s POV

“Adrian. Get your ass in my office. Right now.”

Damien’s voice cut through the garage like a blade through oil. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Every impact wrench stopped. Every conversation died. The whole service bay went quiet the way a room does when something bad is about to happen.

I was elbow-deep in the engine of a vintage Ferrari 250 SWB. The owner had brought it in three days ago because it was choking under load and none of the other guys could find the fault. I had. The intake valve on cylinder three was hanging a fraction of a second too long. Tiny sound. Easy to miss if you weren’t listening the way I listened.

I straightened up slowly. Grease coated my knuckles and had worked itself into the cracks of my skin the way it always did. I wiped my hands on a rag that was already black and looked toward the doorway.

Damien stood there in a charcoal suit that cost more than three months of my rent. Hair perfect. Shoes so clean they reflected the fluorescent lights. That soft smile sat on his face like it had been painted on.

Behind him, two security guards waited with their arms crossed. Big men. Black polos. The kind of quiet that said they were ready for trouble.

My stomach dropped, but I kept my face still. I had learned a long time ago that showing weakness in front of Damien only made him enjoy it more.

“Damien,” I said, keeping my voice even. “The Ferrari’s almost done. Give me forty minutes and she’ll run cleaner than the day she left the factory.”

“It can wait.” He turned without another word and walked toward the showroom. The guards followed. So did I.

We moved through the rows of silent supercars. The air smelled of new leather and expensive polish. Customers turned to watch. I felt their eyes on my stained coveralls, on the way the guards walked too close, on the fact that the owner of Cross Motors was escorting his best mechanic out of the garage like a criminal.

My pulse started hammering in my throat.

Inside the corner office Damien closed the door. The click sounded final. He sat behind the big mahogany desk and folded his hands like a man about to deliver bad news to a stranger.

“I’m going to ask you one question, Adrian. Did you take the carburetor from the vintage Aston Martin?”

I stared at him. “What?”

“The fifty-thousand-euro carburetor. It was here yesterday morning. It’s gone.”

“I didn’t touch that Aston,” I said, voice flat. “I’ve been on this engine since eight this morning. You know that. Everyone in the bay knows that.”

He nodded at one of the guards. The man left and came back less than a minute later holding a heavy, polished piece of metal. The missing carburetor sat in his palm like a trophy.

I looked at it. I didn’t panic. I stepped closer and checked the stamped numbers on the side of the casting.

“You grabbed the wrong part, Damien.”

He frowned. “Excuse me?”

“That’s a Weber 45 DCOE,” I said. “A twin-choke side-draft racing carburetor.”

Damien’s smile flickered. “So?”

“So a standard Aston Martin DB5 runs on triple SU HD8 carburetors,” I said, tapping the casting. “The SU is a constant-vacuum carb. The Weber is a completely different animal. The bolt pattern on this flange won’t even line up with a standard Aston intake manifold without a custom adapter plate.” I paused, letting the room go quiet. “The only way a Weber 45 DCOE belongs on a DB5 is if it’s the Vantage engine. The high-performance model. A matching set of three of these, with the correct period jetting and linkages, is worth fifty grand to the right collector. But this one is a single unit. No matching pair. No manifold. You didn’t just plant the wrong part, Damien. You planted a part that doesn’t even belong on the car you claim I stole it from.”

The security guards exchanged a quick glance. Damien’s smile didn’t move, but the warmth drained out of his eyes until they looked empty.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said softly. “They’re going to believe me. Not the poor mechanic with grease under his nails.”

He stood and walked around the desk until he was close enough that I could smell his cologne fighting the garage scent still clinging to my clothes.

“Clean out your locker. You’re fired. I’ve already called your landlord. You’re being evicted by the end of the day. Your bank accounts are frozen. And by this afternoon every dealership in Milan will know exactly what kind of man you are. A thief.”

I stared at him. We had grown up on the same cracked street. Same mud when it rained. Same shared cigarettes behind the old factory when we were fifteen. His father hit it big when we were still kids, and overnight Damien became someone who looked down on the rest of us. He hired me four years ago so he could watch me scrub grease off his cars while he wore suits that cost more than my rent.

I reached under my shirt and touched the small silver necklace I always wore. It was the only thing my mother left me before she died. The metal was warm from my skin.

I didn’t beg. I didn’t bring up the past. I didn’t give him the long speech he was clearly waiting for.

I just looked him in the eye and said one thing.

“You’re going to regret this.”

Damien’s smile stayed soft and wrong.

“Get him out of here.”

The guards grabbed my arms. Their fingers dug in hard enough to bruise. They dragged me through the glass door, past the whispering customers, past the woman in the white dress with her hand over her mouth. I didn't fight. I couldn't. The humiliation was still burning through me, hot and thick, like I had swallowed acid.

“I didn't take it “ I shouted on top of my voice, just so everyone could believe I was innocent 

But as they pulled me toward the back exit, I looked past Damien, out through the glass wall of his office and into the service bay.

A man was standing there. I didn't recognize him. Forties. Broad shoulders. A thick, ugly scar running along his jaw from ear to chin. He was standing near the tool chests, talking quietly to Damien's personal assistant. But his eyes weren't on her. They were locked on me through the glass.

He didn't look away. He just watched.

The guards pushed me through the back exit. I hit the pavement on my hands and knees. Pain shot up both wrists. Gravel tore into my palms. The metal door slammed shut behind me with a sound that felt like the end of something.

I stayed on the ground, breathing hard. My chest hurt. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Damien's face. That soft, snake smile. The way he leaned in close and told me I was finished. The way the security guards dragged me through the showroom while everyone watched like it was free entertainment.

I pushed myself up and sat on the curb. My coveralls were filthy. Grease streaked across one cheek where I had wiped my face. I pulled out my phone with hands that still shook and opened the banking app.

A red banner stretched across the top of the screen.

ACCOUNT SUSPENDED.

I stared at the words until they stopped making sense. Then I stood, walked to the brick wall, and threw the phone as hard as I could. It exploded into pieces. Glass and plastic scattered across the alley like broken teeth.

I sat back down on the curb and stared at the pieces. The silence in the alley was loud. Somewhere behind that metal door Damien was probably already pouring himself a drink and congratulating himself on a clean win.

I reached up and touched the silver necklace again. My mother's face flashed through my mind for a second—tired, kind, gone too soon. I had promised her I would never become the kind of man who needed anyone else's permission to survive. Right now that promise felt thin.

I looked up.

The man with the scar was gone from the service bay. But I knew what I had seen. He wasn't just a customer. He wasn't just a stranger. He was someone who worked for Damien. Someone who had been sent to watch.

I didn't know his name yet. But I knew the look of a man who had been sent to watch something finish.

I was broke. I was homeless. My reputation in every garage in Milan was about to be poison. The only thing I still owned was the clothes on my back, the necklace around my neck, and a mind that knew how to take broken machines apart and put them back together better than before.

Damien Cross had just taken everything I had built with my own two hands.

And for the first time in a long time, the quiet pressure in my chest didn't feel like defeat.

It felt like the second before an engine finally snaps.