Theo insisted on coming with me. Marisol tried to claim she had too much work to do, but Nia took over her scheduling tasks for the day and told her to stop pretending she wasn’t curious.
We arrived at the restoration facility just after lunch. Camille led us into a bright inspection room where the Lamborghini sat beneath a row of carefully positioned lights.
The first thing I noticed wasn’t the yellow.
It was the absence of red.
No stains along the hood. No bleeding color near the windshield. No cracked mirror. No distorted reflections in the door. The finish looked deep and continuous, the surface almost liquid. The carbon-fiber details were clean. The panel gaps aligned. The lamps revealed no visible marks where the lettering had once been.
I walked around the car slowly, trying to remember to breathe.
“Take your time,” Camille said.
Theo examined the surface with the attention of a man who respected another specialist’s work enough to look hard for flaws. He asked about measurements, curing, and calibration results. Camille showed him the documentation. Marisol stood near the rear bumper, wiping her eyes when she thought nobody was watching.
I opened the driver’s door. The interior smelled like leather, clean materials, and the particular quiet of a machine that has been carefully reassembled. I sat behind the wheel without starting the engine. For a second I was afraid to look through the windshield, as if the word might still be there from the inside.
It wasn’t.
Camille asked if I wanted to take a short supervised test drive. I did. I was nervous. Every seam in the road seemed threatening, every passing vehicle too close. The car felt unfamiliar in my hands even though I’d owned it for years. I drove slowly, listened to the engine, and checked every response. It performed beautifully.
When we returned, Camille studied my face.
“How does it feel?”
“Like I remember,” I said, then corrected myself. “Almost.”
She nodded. “That’s honest.”
I signed the final inspection documents after reviewing them carefully. The restoration had been extensive. The car was ready to come home, but the experience wouldn’t vanish simply because the surface looked new.
On the way back to the city, Theo kept turning around to look at the enclosed transport following us.
“Still can’t believe how good it looks,” he said.
Marisol smiled. “I can. You’d be furious if anybody expected less from you.”
I stared ahead at the road. For the first time in months, I was thinking about where to drive the Lamborghini instead of how it had been damaged.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO — Sunshine Shark
The transport arrived at my house on a Saturday afternoon. I hadn’t announced it, but people noticed. A truck that long doesn’t disappear into a quiet residential street, especially when it’s carrying a yellow Lamborghini behind closed doors.
Arthur came outside first, wearing a baseball cap and carrying his tablet. Priya appeared with her daughter, who was taller now and no longer frightened of asking me questions. Denise and Eli arrived while the driver checked the unloading area. Several other neighbors stood at a respectful distance.
When the rear doors opened, the yellow finish caught the sunlight. The crowd made a quiet sound of surprise. No one shouted. They had all seen what the car looked like when it left.
