The Single Dad had been kneeling beside the dead race car for eleven minutes when the Female CEO decided she had seen enough.
From across the auction hall, she watched him drag a small flashlight underneath the left front fender for the third time.
Around him, several hundred collectors moved between polished Ferraris, vintage Bentleys, prewar Bugattis, and racing machines presented beneath carefully positioned lights.
The battered olive-green car beside the Single Dad had none of that treatment.
No velvet rope.
No polished display stand.
No champagne tray nearby.
No auction specialist answering questions.
It sat against the far wall beneath a plain sign.
LOT 147.
NO RESERVE.
Its body was coated in grime.
The paint looked less olive-green than exhausted.
The aluminum panels were scratched.
One headlamp was cloudy.
The wire wheels were oxidized.
The interior smelled faintly of old leather, oil, and decades of storage.
To most of the room, it was an ugly interruption between beautiful things.
To the Single Dad, it was the only interesting car in the building.
He shifted his flashlight.
There.
Again.
The weld.
Not factory production.
Not normal repair work either.
A narrow reinforcement plate had been hand-formed along the inside edge of the suspension mount.
He ran one thumb across it.
Uneven.
Old.
Beautiful.
Somebody had built this car expecting it to be driven hard.
Very hard.
“What are you doing?”
The Single Dad looked up.
The Female CEO stood over him.
He had noticed her earlier.
Impossible not to.
She looked as if she had stepped out of a completely different world and temporarily wandered into his.
Blonde hair pulled into a precise bun.
Oversized black sunglasses.
An immaculate oversized white designer blouse with a long scarf-like panel falling nearly to her knees.
High-waisted olive-brown leather trousers.
Black heels.
A dark-burgundy leather tote hanging from one arm.
Everyone else in the auction hall seemed to move around her.
Assistants.
Collectors.
Employees.
People who wanted her attention.
The Single Dad recognized her too.
Not personally.
Professionally.
She ran the auction house.
More accurately, she controlled the international company that owned this auction house, three restoration facilities, two private collection advisory firms, and a specialty finance division responsible for underwriting cars expensive enough to require their own legal teams.
She was one of those executives whose photographs appeared beside phrases like market transformation, new collector demographics, and record-setting sale.
The Single Dad stood.
His knees complained.
He ignored them.
“I’m looking.”
“At what?”
“The car.”
She glanced toward Lot 147.
Her expression suggested he had answered incorrectly.
“I can see that.”
The Single Dad waited.
The Female CEO folded her arms.
“You’ve been crawling around it for ten minutes.”
“Eleven.”
Her sunglasses lowered slightly.
“Excuse me?”
“Eleven minutes.”
For a second, he thought she might laugh.
She did not.
Instead she looked toward the battered car.
“Our specialists inspected it yesterday.”
“Good.”
“They found nothing.”
“Less good.”
Her expression sharpened.
“You disagree?”
The Single Dad crouched again.
“Yes.”
The Female CEO stared down at him.
“You haven’t even seen the paperwork.”
“I don’t need the paperwork yet.”
“That’s an interesting level of confidence.”
“Paperwork tells me what somebody thinks the car is.”
He moved the flashlight farther underneath the chassis.
“The metal tells me what somebody actually built.”
That caught her attention.
Not enough to show interest.