He looked straight into the camera. I felt like he was looking through the screen, right into my messy living room.
“Until a young man in a cheap suit pulled over.”
My heart stopped. My stomach twisted.
“He didn’t know who I was,” Arthur said, his voice dropping with emotion. “He thought I was a poor old man freezing to death. He ruined his only suit. He fixed my car with a level of ingenuity and mechanical logic I haven’t seen in my engineering department in years. He used a steel pipe as a lever—a simple, yet genius solution in that environment.”
Martha wiped a tear from her eye on screen.
“And when I offered him my last forty dollars… he refused. He told me to buy hot soup for my wife.”
The room gasped. In this world of money, that act sounded like a fairy tale.
“He told me he was an unemployed aerospace engineer,” Arthur said, his voice hardening. “He said people told him he lacked ‘grit’.”
Arthur chuckled. A dark chuckle that would terrify his competitors. “If fixing a rusted axle in a monsoon, kneeling in the mud to help a stranger, isn’t grit, then I don’t know what is.”
He held up a piece of paper. It was a charcoal sketch.
It was me. Wet hair matted to my forehead, grease on my face, but with determined eyes.
“I don’t know his last name,” Arthur announced. “He only said his name was Stuart. But I have a message for Stuart.”
Arthur leaned into the mic, every word driving a nail into the silence.
“Stuart, if you are watching this… This morning, I fired my current Head of Innovation. He was one of the men who drove his Porsche past me while I shivered on the roadside. The position is yours. But you have to come and claim it.”
Chapter 5: The Convoy
I sat on the sofa, petrified. The phone slipped from my hand onto the cushion.
“Stuart!” my mom was still screaming. “Did you hear that? Head of Innovation! You’re rich! My son!”
“Mom,” I rasped, choking on the words. “I… I have to go.”
I hung up.
I stood up, swaying like a drunkard. I looked around my apartment. The stacks of instant noodle bowls. The sticky notes on the wall with meaningless equations. This impoverished reality had just been ripped apart by a lightning bolt from heaven.
Head of Innovation. That was a C-suite position. Seven figures. The power to change the world.
Ding-dong.
The doorbell rang.
I jumped. I walked to the door, hands shaking. I opened it.
Standing there was a giant of a man in a black suit, wearing a coiled earpiece—standard Secret Service or high-end security look. Behind him, parked blatantly across the narrow street, blocking the entire neighborhood, was a convoy of three black Cadillac Escalade SUVs.
“Mr. Stuart Miller?” the man asked, voice deep and polite.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Sterling is waiting for you, sir. We tracked your phone as soon as you opened the news app.”
“You… you tracked me?”
“Mr. Sterling has significant resources,” the man smiled professionally. “Please, sir. We shouldn’t keep him waiting.”
I looked down at my feet. I was wearing bunny slippers—a gag gift from my mom last Christmas. I was in boxers and an old t-shirt.
“I… I need to change.”
“No need, sir. Mr. Sterling said to come as you are. That is ‘real grit’.”
I walked out in my bunny slippers. Neighbors were peering out of windows. Mrs. Higgins, who always yelled at me about the recycling bins, stood on her porch, jaw dropped, dropping her trash bag.
I climbed into the middle SUV. The door closed with a solid thump, sealing me off from the noisy world outside.
Chapter 6: The Reunion
The trip to Aero-Dynamics headquarters took twenty minutes. We didn’t stop for red lights; the convoy had police escorts clearing the way. I felt like the President, or a high-profile prisoner.
We pulled up to the massive glass tower piercing the city sky. I had stood before this building dozens of times, looking up with burning desire, wishing I could just be an intern sweeping the floors.
Now, the red carpet was literally rolled out.
I was escorted through the lobby, past the security guards—the same ones who used to look at me with disdain when I dropped off resumes. Now, they stood at attention, saluting as I shuffled past in my bunny slippers.
The private elevator took me straight to the top floor. The Penthouse.
The doors opened.
The office was the size of a football field, with glass walls overlooking the entire city. Arthur Sterling sat behind a massive desk of glass and steel that looked like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
Seeing me, he stood up immediately. He walked around the desk, arms wide.
“Stuart,” he said.
“Mr. Sterling,” I stammered. “I… I really didn’t know.”
“That is the point,” he said, gripping my hand firmly. His shake was warm and solid. “If you knew, you would have stopped for money, for fame. You stopped for humanity. That is something I cannot buy, and it is something this company is severely lacking.”
Martha was there too, sitting on a white leather sofa. She stood and hugged me. She smelled of lavender and luxury, the smell of rain long gone.
“I’m sorry about your suit,” she smiled kindly.
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