Richard laughed bitterly.
“Engines? Do you know who I am?”
Grace shook her head.
“I’m Richard Stone. I own Skybridge Airlines. I have spent three billion naira hiring experts from America, Germany, and Japan to fix my engines. None of them can solve it. And now you’re telling me you know engines?”
A lesser person would have run.
Grace didn’t.
“Sir,” she said carefully, “may I ask what symptoms the planes have?”
Richard stared at her.
But something in her face made him answer.
“The engines shake. They knock. They lose power in the air. No one can tell me why.”
Grace’s eyes widened.
It matched exactly what she had heard the day before.
“Sir,” she said, voice trembling, “did anyone check the fuel injectors for internal scratches?”
Richard went still.
“What did you say?”
“The fuel injectors,” Grace repeated. “If they develop tiny scratches inside, the fuel sprays wrongly. It’s like watering a plant with a broken hose—the liquid goes everywhere except where it should. That causes poor combustion, knocking, and shaking.”
Richard stared at her.
“How do you know that?”
“My father taught me. A damaged fuel path can destroy an engine from the inside, slowly.”
For a long moment Richard said nothing.
Then he made the most unexpected decision of his life.
“What’s your name?”
“Grace Johnson.”
“Grace,” he said, “come with me.”
She followed him through the airport, terrified.
People stared, wrinkled their noses, whispered. Security tried to stop her, but Richard silenced them instantly.
Inside the maintenance hangar, twenty engineers stopped working when they saw their billionaire boss walk in with a homeless woman.
“Sir,” the chief engineer asked, stunned, “what is this?”
“This is Grace,” Richard said. “Bring me engine number seven. Let her examine it.”
The protest came immediately.
“Sir, this is ridiculous—”
“I said now.”
The parts were brought out.
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