Chapter 61: The Last Witness

Tasha's POV

OLD MAN Reyes remained silent for so long that I almost thought he had changed his mind again.

The office felt unusually small. Outside, I could still hear the muted sounds of the garage, the occasional clatter of tools, the distant rumble of traffic from the street beyond. For most of my life, those sounds had comforted me. They had always meant I was safe. Tonight, they only seemed to emphasize how quiet the room between us had become.

I sat across from him without moving, unwilling to give him an opportunity to retreat behind another excuse.

He had spent years protecting secrets. I had spent years accepting that protection. Neither of us could afford to continue pretending it was working.

Finally, he exhaled heavily and removed his glasses. "There was someone else."

The words were so unexpected that for a moment I wasn't sure I had heard him correctly.

My pulse quickened. "What?"

Old Man Reyes looked down at the desk before answering. "There was someone else who knew about you."

The room seemed to tilt slightly.

For years, I had believed only three people knew the truth about my existence: my mother, my father, and the man sitting across from me. That was the story I had grown up with. Whenever I asked questions about my childhood, that was always the version I received.

Now he was casually destroying it. I stared at him.

"Someone else knew I existed?"

He nodded once. "Yes."

"Who?"

His jaw tightened. "We're not there yet."

A frustrated laugh escaped me. "Abuelo, you can't tell me something like that and then expect me to sit here patiently."

"I'm asking you to listen."

"I've been listening for twenty years."

The response came out sharper than I intended. To his credit, he didn't react. He simply folded his hands together and looked at me with the same weary expression he had been wearing all evening.

"Ricardo trusted very few people," he said quietly. "The public saw a champion. Sponsors saw a marketable star. Teammates saw a competitor. Most people knew the version of him that appeared in magazines and interviews."

His gaze drifted toward the window. "I knew the man underneath all of that."

Something in his voice softened. For the first time that evening, he wasn't speaking about secrets. He was speaking about my father.

The man. Not the legend. Not the scandal.

My father.

"What was he like?" I asked before I could stop myself.

Old Man Reyes smiled sadly. "Stubborn."

I rolled my eyes. "That doesn't narrow it down."

The smile widened slightly. "No, I suppose it doesn't."

For a moment, the tension eased. Then his expression became serious again.

"Ricardo had a habit of carrying everything by himself. Problems. Responsibilities. Fear. He believed it was his job to protect everyone around him from whatever burden he happened to be carrying."

I blinked. The description felt uncomfortably familiar.

Old Man Reyes noticed immediately. "Yes," he said. "You inherited that from him."

I looked away. That wasn't something I wanted to examine too closely.

"He didn't trust easily," Reyes continued. "By the time you were born, that had become even worse. The pressure from racing was constant. The media followed him everywhere. People were interested in his money, his career, his reputation. Every decision he made became a headline."

His expression darkened. "And then there were the people who wanted something from him."

The bitterness in his voice caught my attention. I remembered the documents. The investigations. The questions that still surrounded my father's final years.

For the first time, I wondered how many enemies Ricardo Hamilton had accumulated long before the crash.

"So he kept me secret."

It wasn't really a question.

"Yes."

The answer came immediately.

"He loved you more than anything, Tasha. That's the truth nobody ever talks about."

My throat tightened unexpectedly.

I had spent so much time hearing about Ricardo Hamilton the racer, Ricardo Hamilton the addict, Ricardo Hamilton the scandal, that sometimes I forgot there had once been a father hidden underneath all of those labels.

A father who had apparently spent considerable effort keeping his daughter hidden from the world.

"If he wanted to keep me secret," I asked carefully, "then why tell anyone at all?"

For the first time since the conversation began, Old Man Reyes hesitated. Not because he didn't know the answer. Because he knew it too well.

"Because eventually he realized he couldn't do everything alone."

I leaned forward. The shift was subtle, but I felt it immediately. We were getting closer. Closer to whatever truth he had spent years avoiding.

"He trusted one man," Reyes continued. "One person outside this garage. One person outside your family. And when things started becoming complicated, Ricardo made a decision."

My heartbeat accelerated. "What decision?"

"He told him about you."

The words settled heavily between us. I tried to imagine the moment. My father sitting across from someone. Lowering his guard. Revealing the secret he had worked so hard to protect. Trusting another person with the existence of his child.

The image felt strangely intimate. Dangerous, even. Because trust like that wasn't given casually.

"Who was he?"

Reyes sighed. "Tasha."

"No." I shook my head immediately. "We're not doing that again."

His eyebrows lifted. "Doing what?"

"The part where you give me ninety percent of the story and then stop."

A reluctant smile touched his face. Despite everything, he looked almost proud. That only annoyed me more.

"Tell me who he was."

"It's complicated."

I pointed at him. "That sentence is exactly why we're sitting here."

The smile vanished. For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then Old Man Reyes leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling as though searching for patience.

When he looked at me again, something had changed in his expression. Resignation. After twenty years of keeping promises, he finally seemed exhausted by them.

"The man is still alive."

The words hit me like a physical blow. "What?"

"He's alive."

My heart began pounding.

Every question I had been carrying for weeks suddenly collided inside my head at once. If he was alive, then he wasn't just part of history. He wasn't another dead end hidden in an archive. He wasn't another sealed document.

He was real. He was out there somewhere. Walking around with answers. Maybe answers about my father. Maybe answers about the crash.

Maybe answers about why so many people suddenly seemed interested in reopening a case that should have been buried decades ago.

I pushed my chair back. "Who is he?"

Reyes watched me carefully. "Tasha—"

"Who is he?!"

"He may not want to be involved."

"I don't care."

"He may not welcome questions."

"I definitely don't care.Abuelo."

The old mechanic closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them again, I could practically see the internal battle happening behind them.

For years, he had protected this secret.

For years, he had protected me.

Now those two things were finally colliding. And he could no longer do both.

I stepped closer to the desk. "Please."

The word came out quieter than everything else. "I need to know."

For a long moment, neither of us moved. Then Old Man Reyes slowly nodded. His shoulders sagged as though the weight of twenty years had finally settled on them.

"The man your father trusted," he said quietly, "the only person besides me who knew Ricardo Hamilton had a daughter the world never knew about..."

I held my breath. Reyes looked directly into my eyes.

Then he spoke. "His name was—"

A loud crashed outside cut through the entire mechanic shop.