Chapter 8 George whitmore
George didn’t plan to return to S-city this soon.
Twenty-nine years away taught him two things:
how to stay invisible,
and how to watch people without being watched.
The warehouse district was quieter than he expected. Rusted metal. Broken lights. The kind of place where people came to forget consequences. Or outrun them.
According to his reports, Daphne Whitmore preferred this place.
He had read her file a hundred times.
The chairman’s only grand-daughter.
Wild, spoiled, reckless.
A headache for the board.
A future disaster.
He never believed half of it.
He preferred to see things for himself.
George blended into the shadows, scarf covering the lower half of his face. He didn’t look like the George who had vanished three decades ago. He looked like another man in a coat, another ghost in a crowd.
Engines roared from inside the warehouse.
A voice shouted, “Drivers, last call!”
George resisted the urge to fold his arms. His posture was always too sharp, too disciplined, too military. It made people stare. Tonight, he didn’t want eyes on him.
A car door slammed.
He looked up.
There she was.
Not a girl.
Not a princess.
Not the troublemaker the board complained about.
Just a young woman who looked painfully alone.
Daphne Whitmore walked toward the line of cars with her helmet under one arm. Hair tied back. Chin up. Shoulders tense. She didn’t laugh with the others. Didn’t flirt. Didn’t show off.
She moved like someone who didn’t care if she made it home.
George felt a small tightening in his chest, irritation or concern, he wasn’t sure.
She was twenty.
Barely an adult.
Barely aware of how fast a life could be taken.
He watched her check her car, a brutal machine, too powerful for someone her size. Illegal mods. No proper safety cage. Whoever set this up didn’t care if she lived.
She didn’t care either.
George’s jaw flexed once before he forced it still.
He had spent months studying her life from afar.
Her habits.
Her patterns.
Her tells.
She ran whenever she felt cornered.
And she ran here the most.
The announcer yelled, “Line up!”
Daphne slid into her car. No hesitation. No fear. Just a strange, hollow calm.
George stood at the back of the crowd. He didn’t draw closer. He didn’t speak. He didn’t interfere.
He simply observed.
The race started like a punch, engines screaming, tires burning, metal rattling. People cheered. Money flew. Someone beside him yelled her name like she was a toy meant to entertain them.
George ignored it.
His eyes never left her.
She drove with a recklessness that made even the crowd gasp. Cutting corners. Brushing barriers. Taking risks no trained racer would take.
She wasn’t racing to win.
She was racing to feel something.
Maybe anything.
George breathed slowly through his nose.
She nearly clipped a wall.
She corrected at the last second.
She spun around another driver with a skill that didn’t match her age.
And then she pushed harder.
Too hard.
George felt it, the moment her control slipped. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch, but every muscle in his back tightened.
She could have crashed.
She should have crashed.
Somehow… she didn’t.
She crossed the finish line. The crowd erupted. People swarmed her. Someone grabbed her shoulder like she belonged to them.
George watched her jerk away and force a smile she didn’t feel.
He saw the truth beneath it.
Exhaustion.
Anger.
Fear she would never admit.
He had seen that expression before, on runaways, on broken heirs, on people who had already lost too much.
He stayed in the dark as she slipped out of the crowd, wiping sweat from her forehead, breathing unevenly, pretending she wasn’t shaking.
She didn’t know he existed.
She didn’t know he was watching.
She didn’t know he had returned for one reason:
To decide whether she was a liability…
or a weapon.
His phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown encrypted contact:
“Did you find her?”
George typed back:
“Yes.”
He pocketed the phone, eyes still on the warehouse door she disappeared through.
Then, barely above a whisper, he said:
“She doesn’t even know she’s in danger.”
He stepped deeper into the alley, the cold settling into his coat, the shadows swallowing him whole.
George Whitmore had come
home.
Quietly.
Carefully.
With a purpose no one expected.
And the girl who didn’t even know him… was the first person he planned to watch.
