THE BIKER'S TEACHER

Not your ordinary tutor

SHANE

My old man — the Great Chairman — was six feet under, and somehow I got dragged out from under a chassis and shoved into his leather chair.

“Mr. Sterling?” The guy to my left tapped his pen on a stack of paper. “We’re waiting for your thoughts on the merger documents. Specifically the exit clauses on page sixty.”

I looked down. Just a wall of black ink. My eyes kept sliding off the lines. Page sixty? Hell, I couldn’t find page two without guessing.

“I’m thinking,” I said.

“It’s a straightforward buyout,” a younger suit piped up. “Unless you have concerns about the liability shifts in section four?”

Section four. Exit clauses. Might as well be Greek. My collar got tight. Sweat started at the back of my neck. Daisy’s voice popped into my head without asking.

"They’ll eat you alive."

I leaned back in the chair, tried to look bored instead of lost. “I don’t like the vibe of it.”

That was my move. When I didn’t know what the hell was going on, I talked about vibes.

The room went quiet. They knew. You could see it. They smelled the garage on me. Waiting for me to trip over a word I couldn’t pronounce.

Then a shadow hit the table. Harris. The butler. He’d followed me from the mansion like a ghost I couldn’t shake. He set a glass of water down by my hand, real casual.

“If I may, Mr. Sterling,” he said. He bent down, fussed with my coaster . His finger landed on a big red number at the bottom of the page.

“The Chairman always said if the numbers at the bottom don’t match the promises at the top, the engine’s blown,” Harris said. Loud enough for everyone to hear. Then, lower, just for me: “The red number, sir. We’re paying them to take our own company.”

I didn’t think. I slammed my hand down. The table jumped. “Exactly. Look at the red number. You’re asking me to pay these clowns to walk away with my inheritance? This deal’s junk. Fix it or scrap it.”

Harris went back to the corner. Face blank as a wall. Like he hadn’t just pulled me out of a fire.

I sat there staring at the contract. All those words blurring together. I’d won the round, but it was luck. Dumb, blind luck.

---

“Tough day at the office, sir?” Harris asked later on . We were back at the mansion. I’d barely made it through the door before I collapsed into the leather armchair.

“They’re sharks, Harris. Every one of ‘em.” I rubbed my eyes. The textbook Daisy left was still on the coffee table. It was definitely judging me. “I almost cut off my hand today. If you hadn’t pointed at that red line…”

“A temporary fix, sir.” Harris set another glass down. “Band-aid on a blown head gasket.”

I snorted. He always talked cars when he wanted me to listen.

“In light of today’s near-catastrophe, I took the liberty of running a more thorough background check on Miss Daisy Miller.”

I froze with the glass halfway to my mouth. “What’d you find? That she’s a frustrated kindergarten teacher? She’s got a lot of nerve for a tutor.”

Harris didn’t blink. “Actually, sir, Miss Miller holds an MBA in Economics and Business Management. One of the top programs in the country. She graduated at the top of her class. She isn’t exactly a tutor by trade. She’s a strategist.”

The water turned to cement in my throat. I set the glass down hard. “An MBA? From where?”

“Wharton, sir.”

I let out a breath. “If she’s that overqualified, what the hell is she doing trying to teach a guy like me? How to read ‘The Cat in the Hat’?” My ego took another hit. Didn’t have much left to bruise. “She could be running her own firm with those credentials.”

“A curious detail, sir.” Harris adjusted his cuffs. “It appears she took the position specifically at your father’s request before he passed. He was insistent. She was to handle your transition into the company.”

I looked at the book again. Daisy’s handwriting was on the inside cover.

She wasn’t just some girl with a bag of tricks. She was a heavyweight pretending to teach phonics.

My old man didn’t send me a teacher. He sent me a lifeline. And I’d kicked it out the front door myself.