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

My father abandoned me fifteen years ago, and that day he placed ten million dollars in front of the car I had repaired with my own hands and mocked me.

All this happened in the yard of a private auto service on the outskirts of Kutaisi. It was five o’clock in the evening. Raindrops glittered on the asphalt, while the air smelled of gasoline and hot metal. A man walking around the hood of an expensive car in a black coat was making everyone nervously fall silent.

Giorgi Japaridze.

Almost everyone in Georgia knew his name. A billionaire, a hotel owner, a man who could change someone’s life with one phone call. Or destroy it.

I stood before him with hands blackened by oil. A small pendant in the shape of a copper key showed from the pocket of my old work apron. My mother gave it to me when I was twelve and told me that some doors opened only with the truth.

Giorgi first looked at the pendant, then at my face.

“You will repair this car?” he asked me.

“If you allow me, I will try.”

The mechanics standing behind him chuckled.

“The best specialists have found nothing for three hours,” one said. “And five minutes will be enough for a girl?”

Giorgi took out his wallet, but did not take out any money.

“If you start it, I will give you ten million dollars,” he told me in a tone as though he were telling me a fairy tale. “If not, you will admit in front of everyone that you are an overconfident child.”

I felt cold in my stomach, but I did not lower my eyes.

“Have the money ready in five minutes.”

The yard fell silent.

He burst out laughing loudly.

“Do you even know my name?”

“I know your car. That is enough.”

I lifted the hood. Oil splashed onto my hands. I felt the engine’s vibration in my fingers, and suddenly remembered my mother’s voice: “Nino, listen to the car first, then touch it.” She was the one who taught me everything I knew when I spent nights in the small workshop.

Giorgi came closer.

“Who taught you this work?”

“The person who did not abandon me.”

The smile disappeared from his face, although he did not understand why I had told him this.

I disconnected one wire. I checked another. The problem was not where everyone was looking. Below the engine, at a hidden small contact, I found the smell of burned metal.

“Impossible,” the chief mechanic said quietly.

“Impossible only when you are looking in the wrong place.”

Giorgi looked at his watch.

One minute passed.

The second.

At the third minute he said to me sternly:

“If you cannot do this, my security will take you out of here.”

“Then do not interrupt me at the wrong time.”

At the fourth minute the engine’s sound changed. I was tightening the last bolt when Giorgi suddenly saw my pendant. His face changed.

“Where did you get this?”

My hand instinctively went to my neck.

“My mother left it to me.”

“What was your mother’s name?”

I did not answer. The fifth minute ended. I closed the hood and put the cloth aside.

“It is ready.”

Giorgi got into the car. Everyone held their breath. He turned the key.

The engine roared immediately.

His smile disappeared.

He was no longer looking at the car. He was looking at me.

“Tell me your name,” he said quietly.

I realized that this moment had been waiting for me for fifteen years.

“Nino Beridze.”

Giorgi’s fingers froze on the steering wheel. He looked at the pendant once more and stepped back.

“This is impossible…”

“For you, probably.”

Just then a black van stopped at the gate of the auto service. A gray-haired woman got out of it, holding a sealed folder. She looked directly toward Giorgi, then toward me, and said:

“It is time for Nino to learn why you abandoned her…”

The woman came to me and put the folder on the table. My mother’s surname was written on the cover.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Marine. Fifteen years ago I was your mother’s lawyer.”

Giorgi turned pale.

“You should not have dared to come here.”

“You should not have hidden the truth for so long either.”

I touched the folder, but Marine caught my hand.

“First you must know that your mother died believing that you were safe.”

“What does that mean?”

Giorgi came closer to me.

“Nino, let’s go home. I will explain everything.”

“Home? With the man who did not know whether I was alive or not?”

For the first time I saw pain in his eyes, but suspicion immediately covered it.

Marine opened the sealed folder. Inside, the corner of an old photograph could be seen, although she did not take out the document.

“There is not only a letter here,” she said. “There is evidence that someone changed your birth records.”

Giorgi shouted harshly:

“Marine, be quiet!”

I looked at him.

“Why are you afraid of this folder?”

He could not answer.

At that moment my phone rang. An unknown number was visible on the screen. I answered the call.

“If you want to know who took the child from your mother, come to the old station tonight,” said a man’s voice. “Alone.”

The call ended.

Marine pressed the folder to her chest.

“Do not go there. It is a trap.”

But Giorgi muttered quietly:

“No… he has returned.”

“Who?” I asked.

For the first time Giorgi looked at me as his own daughter.

“The man because of whom your life became a lie…”

Marine locked the door and stood by the window. Giorgi’s security was moving outside, but such silence descended over the auto service as if all the cars had stopped breathing at the same time.

“We have no more time now,” she said. “Nino, you must know everything.”

She opened the folder.

The first document was a letter written in my mother’s hand. A brown stain had appeared in the corner of the paper, while her signature was clearly visible below.

“Giorgi, if you are reading this, our child is already far from you. I did not take her. Your brother Irakli took the child from the hospital and convinced me that you did not want to see her. In your name, he sent me a letter saying that you would never acknowledge Nino.”

I heard the sound of blood in my ears.

“This is a lie,” Giorgi said. “I never wrote such a letter.”

Marine took out a second sheet.

“Because it was forged. But there is a hospital record, a protected copy of the camera footage, and a DNA result.”

She opened a small plastic envelope and placed the conclusion on the table.

“Nino Beridze is Giorgi Japaridze’s biological daughter. The probability of a match is one hundred percent.”

No one moved.

Giorgi put a hand on the chair, as though he no longer had strength in his legs.

“My daughter…” he repeated quietly.

I laughed, but this laughter resembled tears.

“Do you remember me now?”

“I remembered you every day.”

“No. Every day you remembered the girl you thought had abandoned me. But I remembered the man who never came to look for me.”

Giorgi moved toward me.

“I thought your mother had taken you away. Irakli told me that you did not want to see me.”

“And you did not check even once?”

His eyes could not give an answer.

Marine turned on the phone. Young Giorgi’s voice could be heard in the recording:

“No one will take my child from me. If anything threatens Nino, I will leave everything to protect her.”

Giorgi listened to his own voice, and his face gradually changed. And for the first time I heard that once he had truly been afraid because of me.

The recording ended.

“Where did you find this?” he asked.

“In Irakli’s old house,” Marine answered. “We found another file there too.”

She looked at the phone and suddenly turned pale.

“What happened?” I asked.

Marine turned the screen toward Giorgi.

It said that Irakli was crossing the border tonight and was taking all the company’s hidden accounts with him.

Giorgi quickly took the phone.

“He is running away with the money.”

“No,” Marine said. “The money is only the reason. The last file says that he first planned to kill Nino, because she can claim the share left in her mother’s name…”