Part 4 — The Billionaire Mocked Me and Ordered Me to Repair the Car, but Five Minutes Later Strange Fear Appeared on His Face

Marine’s last words hung in the air.

Giorgi immediately took out his phone.

“I am calling the police.”

“I already called,” Marine replied. “But Irakli is not alone.”

Giorgi’s face once again became that of the man who had feared for others all his life, but not for himself.

“Nino, do not leave here.”

“This time you cannot make the decision instead of me.”

“He is planning to kill you.”

“And did you live for fifteen years without plans?”

My words were harsh, but in my heart there was nothing left to protect.

Five minutes later police cars appeared in the yard. The sound of sirens struck the wet walls. Marine brought out all the documents, the camera recording, and my mother’s letter. Giorgi stood in one place and looked at that sealed folder.

His lawyer, Levan, was speaking to someone on the phone.

“Mr. Giorgi, the freezing of the accounts has already begun.”

“Stop it.”

“I cannot stop it. The transfers signed by Irakli were made in your name.”

“Then prove the use of my name.”

Levan softened his voice for the first time.

“I will do that, but I can no longer protect you from the statement you made against Nino.”

Giorgi knitted his brows.

“Which statement?”

Levan put the phone on the table and turned on the recording.

Giorgi’s own voice sounded: “If this girl appears once more, security must take her out of the yard. She will receive the money only if she proves that she is worthy.”

Silence fell.

I remembered these words. A few minutes earlier he himself had told them to me, only in another form.

Giorgi looked at the recording as though it were someone else’s voice.

“Did I speak like that?”

“Yes,” Levan said. “The camera was on.”

Giorgi lowered his eyes.

“I turned my own daughter into a bargain.”

I said nothing.

That same night Irakli was arrested at the airport. He had a false passport, several documents drawn up with my mother’s signature, and a memory card with him. The card contained letters that had been sent in Giorgi’s name.

One of them said: “I am not looking for Nino. I no longer want contact with her.”

When Giorgi read this letter, his hands were trembling.

“I never wrote this,” he said.

“I know,” I answered. “But I did not know that then.”

I saw my mother’s small apartment the next day. The rooms were almost empty. Her work desk stood by the window, and on it remained one burned candle and a photograph from my childhood. In the photograph I was eight years old, holding a small toy car.

But the old toolbox hurt my heart the most. On its lid my mother had written in pencil: “For Nino, when she is ready.”

Inside there was only one thing—a small copper key like the one on my pendant.

That night I understood that Mother had been waiting for the day when I would open my own story myself.

Three weeks later a case was brought against Irakli. I did not go to court. I did not want to watch his punishment. I wanted responsibility to be left to him and for my life no longer to be built in his name.

Giorgi temporarily handed the management of his company over to Levan. He tried to transfer money to me.

“This is your share,” he told me.

“No. This is an attempt to redeem your guilt.”

“Then what do you ask of me?”

“Nothing. Only do not act as though you can buy lost time with money.”

He stood silently for a long time.

“Could you someday give me permission to be a father?”

“Maybe. But today you do not have that permission.”

Giorgi nodded. For the first time he did not argue with me.

Two months later I opened a small workshop in Tbilisi. I wrote “Key” on the door. The workshop was bright, tools hung on the walls, and a rubber plant stood beneath the window. In the mornings I listened to the first car’s engine and only then began working.

I had kept Mother’s habit.

One evening the seven-year-old neighbor girl, Ana, brought me a drawing to the workshop. Three people stood by a car on the paper. A woman, a little girl, and a tall man. A yellow sun was drawn above them.

“Is this your family?” she asked me.

I looked at the drawing for a long time.

“It is beginning to exist now,” I told her.

A few days later I received a message from Giorgi.

“Today I could not start the car. For the first time I was not afraid. I realized that I can wait for a person who can help. If you ever want to, I will wait for you for coffee.”

I held his number on the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote to him:

“Coffee is possible. Returning—not. We have to get to know each other from the beginning.”

The reply came immediately.

“I will wait.”

On the first morning of spring I placed Mother’s old box on the workshop shelf. The copper-key pendant was around my neck. I left the second key in the box, as the sign of a door whose opening I now decided myself.

A light rain was falling outside. On the street, the engines of cars were waking one after another.

I placed my hand on one of the hoods, listened, and smiled.

Some doors really do open only with the truth.

This time the key was in my hand.