Chapter 3: The Secret in the Software
"How... how did you do that?" Harrison stammered, the arrogant billionaire suddenly looking like a terrified child himself. He backed away from the roaring vehicle, staring at the little boy in the green hoodie as if he were looking at an alien entity. "The elite factory specialists told me the source code was entirely locked. They said it would take a mainframe computer three weeks just to decrypt the ignition sequence!"
The little boy slowly laid his heavy titanium wrench down on a clean micro-fiber cloth near the fender. He reached into the front pocket of his dirty green hoodie and pulled out an old, heavily scratched metallic tablet, its screen displaying a complex stream of proprietary algorithmic coding.
"The factory specialists built the code on a standard architecture," the boy explained, his voice entirely professional. "But they forgot to account for the thermal expansion of the cylinder walls when the twin-turbos hit peak pressure. I rewrote the core operating system's software patch. It took me twelve minutes."
Suddenly, the glass double doors of the garage's main office slid open, and the master mechanic of the facility—a hardened, elderly man named Marcus who had serviced cars for presidents and kings—rushed out onto the floor, his face completely pale.
"Mr. Vance! Mr. Vance, please don't touch him!" Marcus yelled, his voice trembling with a mix of reverence and panic as he ran straight toward the child.
"Marcus, what is the meaning of this?!" Harrison demanded, trying to reclaim his elite composure. "Who is this kid? Why is he working in your bay?"
Marcus dropped to one knee beside the little boy, looking at the tablet screen before looking up at the billionaire with absolute gravity. "Sir... this isn't just a street kid. This is Leo. He’s the son of David Vance."
Harrison’s heart stopped beating. The name David Vance sliced through his mind like a lightning bolt. David Vance was Harrison’s estranged elder brother—a legendary, reclusive mechanical genius and the original co-founder of the Vance empire who had mysteriously vanished seven years ago after a bitter, high-stakes boardroom betrayal orchestrated by Harrison himself to seize full control of the family's assets.
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"David’s son...?" Harrison whispered, the dark, toxic secret of his past suddenly crashing violently into reality.
"Yes, sir," Marcus said, his voice thick with emotion. "David passed away in poverty three months ago due to an illness, but he left everything he knew to Leo. This boy possesses his father's entire digital vault of proprietary engine blueprints—the very blueprints your company has spent billions trying to replicate."
