Mark Walked Into His Own Kitchen and Found His Wif…

I walked through the door after work with a strange pressure sitting in my chest, the kind of feeling you get when the air inside your own house does not belong to you anymore. I could not put my finger on it, but I knew something was waiting for me, and sooner or later, it was going to hit. It was only five o’clock on a Friday afternoon, but that alone felt wrong.

Normally, I would still be at the shop, moving between bays, checking parts orders, making sure everything was ready for the Saturday rush. My name is Mark Ashworth, and I run Ashworth Autos, a business I built from nothing but grease under my fingernails and a stubborn refusal to quit. I started fixing cars when I was sixteen.