Chapter 3 - The War Room in the Garage
By 6:00 AM, the storm had passed, leaving behind a crisp, clear autumn sky.
Erica stood inside Damon’s detached garage behind his house. It was a mechanic’s paradise—clean, organized, filled with the scent of motor oil, iron, and fresh paint. Two classic muscle cars sat under cloth covers, but the main workbench was covered in stacks of technical manuals, diagnostic computers, and a small black ledger.
Damon set two paper cups of hot black coffee on the bench.
"When I worked at Redwood," Damon began, pulling out a heavy blue binder from a locked steel drawer beneath the bench, "I didn't just inspect cars, Erica. I managed the inventory logs for every high-end vehicle that came through the central service bay."
Erica stepped closer, leaning over the bench. "What did you find?"
"Travis wasn't just embezzling procurement funds," Damon said, opening the binder to reveal columns of vehicle identification numbers (VINs), inspection dates, and secondary shipping manifests. "He was swapping out high-end OEM factory parts on luxury vehicles—Porsche, Audi, Mercedes—and replacing them with cheap, counterfeit grey-market components."
Erica’s breath caught in her throat. "He was compromising customer safety for profit?"
"He was shipping the stolen original parts to a secondary chop shop in Baltimore," Damon explained, his finger tracing a red ink line down the log. "That silver sports coupe I refused to sign off on? It didn't just have a steering defect, Erica. Travis had personally swapped out the factory steering knuckle for a defective cast-iron knockoff to pocket the three-thousand-dollar margin."
"That’s criminal endangerment," Erica whispered, horror dawning on her face. "If that car had gone onto the highway at seventy miles an hour..."
"The assembly would have shattered," Damon nodded grimly. "That’s why I refused to sign. I knew if I signed that waiver, someone was going to die."
Erica looked up at Damon, her heart pounding with a mixture of rage and overwhelming admiration for the man standing before her. He had protected innocent lives, even when it cost him his livelihood.
"Do you still have the diagnostic logs?" she asked eagerly.
"I have the physical paper manifests with Travis’s forged inspector stamps," Damon smiled, a sharp, dangerous light gleaming in his eyes. "And I have the digital backups on an encrypted hard drive right here."
Erica looked at the binder, then at Damon. For five months, she had felt trapped inside a gilded cage, forced to play nice with corrupt board members while her company bled out from the inside. Now, for the first time, she had an army. And her general was a master mechanic.
"Redwood’s annual shareholder meeting is this Friday at the Norfolk Convention Center," Erica said, a ruthless, brilliant smile spreading across her face. "Russell Bellamy plans to announce my formal resignation and name Travis as COO."
Damon picked up a heavy chrome wrench, setting it down with a solid, satisfying clunk against the steel workbench.
"Then I guess we better make sure we get front-row seats," Damon said smoothly.
Suddenly, the side door of the garage opened.
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Monica Ward—Damon’s ex-wife—stood on the threshold, holding her car keys. She was an attractive, sharply dressed woman in her late thirties, her face contorted in a mix of surprise and immediate suspicion as she looked between Damon and Erica.
"Damon?" Monica asked, her eyes locking onto Erica. "Nia told me you had a guest... I didn't realize it was the woman who fired you."
