Towed in on a flatbed trailer under a gray California sky, looking less like a private jet and more like a casualty of war. Two larger maintenance centers in the region had already turned the project away, calling the damage too extensive, and the timeline too unrealistic to be worth the liability. The rear fuselage had buckled in a hangar accident. The pressurization system had been compromised, and a significant section of the wing structure needed to be rebuilt from the spar outward. Most shops would have simply stripped the airframe for parts and called it a total loss.
But Rowan Hale looked at the twisted metal and saw something worth saving. He walked the length of the fuselage with a flashlight and a notepad for nearly 3 hours before he said a single word to anyone waiting outside. When he finally spoke, he told his lead technician that the aircraft could fly again safely within 6 months if they did the work in the right order and never cut a corner to save a week. Vivien had inherited both her fortune and her assumptions from a family that had spent three generations building an empire out of aviation, real estate, and investment holdings. And she had rarely, if ever, been told no, by anyone she considered beneath her station.
She measured people almost entirely by the size of their bank accounts and the polish of their offices, a habit that had served her reasonably well in boardrooms full of people just like her, but one that left her poorly equipped to judge a man who kept his ambitions modest by choice rather than necessity. She arrived at the hangar with an entourage that outnumbered the entire Hail Arrow Restoration staff. Trailed by assistants, a security escort, and two attorneys carrying leather folios, she stepped out of her car in a tailored coat that cost more than most of the equipment in the shop. Scanning the grease stained floor with visible distaste. When she spotted Rowan in his work coveralls, sleeves rolled up, and a smudge of hydraulic fluid across one forearm, she assumed he was a junior mechanic and addressed her questions to the man standing beside him instead.
It took her assistant clearing his throat twice before she understood that the man in coveralls actually owned the company she had just entrusted with a multi-million dollar aircraft. Even then, she kept glancing toward Dorian Kesler, her chief financial officer, as though he might be the one who truly understood what was happening. She asked within earshot of the entire team whether a man juggling school pickups for a daughter could realistically manage a project of this size and complexity. Rowan let the remark pass without a flicker of reaction because he had learned years earlier that defending himself to people like Vivien rarely changed their minds and always wasted time better spent on the work itself. He simply asked that any changes she wanted made to the original repair plan be submitted in writing so there would be no confusion later about what had been requested and what had been delivered.