Chapter 419: Stable Boy To Tech Billionaire
Clara, still frozen behind her desk, felt her brain short-circuit.
The reason the company exists? How can that be? Mr. Goldfield built Iris Bionic from the ground up. Everyone knows that.
How could this stranger have anything to do with—
But she didn’t get to finish the thought, because Luca was already speaking again.
"Enough about that. How is Iris? Is she doing well? Healthy?"
Winston’s face brightened.
"She’s wonderful! Absolutely wonderful! We have grandchildren now, you know."
Luca’s eyebrows shot up. "Really?"
"Of course! It’s been thirty years, Luca! What did you expect?" He began counting on his fingers. "Four sons, two daughters, and a whole herd of grandchildren running around. They’re all in different countries now, doing their own things."
"My youngest just started university. Can you believe it?"
"That’s...that’s incredible, Winston." Luca’s smile was warm with genuine happiness.
"Leave that aside. What’s really surprising is YOU."
Winston stepped back and looked Luca up and down with an expression of genuine bewilderment until finally asking,
"Are you...Are you a vampire?"
Luca blinked. Then burst out laughing.
"A vampire? Where did that come from?"
"It’s your face!" Winston gestured wildly at him. "Look at you! It’s been thirty years! THIRTY YEARS! And you look exactly the same! Not a single wrinkle! Not a gray hair!"
"I look like I’ve been through a war and you look like you just stepped out of a skincare commercial!"
"I moisturize." Luca said dryly.
"Moisturizing doesn’t do that!"
"Good moisturizer."
"Luca, I am being serious! I have grandchildren now! GRANDCHILDREN! And you look young enough to be one of my sons!"
He shook his head, his mustache twitching.
"You must tell me your secret. Is it diet? Exercise? Did you make a deal with some ancient deity?"
"Good diet. Plenty of rest. And I stay out of the sun." Luca grinned. "It’s really very simple."
Winston was baffled and Clara also felt the same.
Thirty years. The chairman was talking about thirty years as if it were yesterday.
But this man couldn’t possibly be older than twenty-five. Could he?
She looked at the statue again. At the rider’s face. At Luca’s face.
The resemblance was no longer just a coincidence. It was exact!
Before she could pursue that thought further, Luca had draped an arm over Winston’s shoulder, steering him toward a quieter corner of the hall.
"But look at you, Winston." He said, his voice taking on a teasing lilt. "Little Winston from back then. The stable boy who couldn’t stop tinkering. Now you’re all grown up."
He ruffled Winston’s thinning hair.
"Gray hair already. It won’t be long before you’re completely white."
Winston grinned, leaning into the touch like a younger brother basking in an older sibling’s attention.
"And this!"
Luca patted Winston’s belly with a firm thump.
"What happened here? Back then you were so fit you could wrangle a horse with one arm. Now you’ve got this potbelly. Your wife must be so disappointed."
The employees watching this exchange collectively held their breath.
This stranger was treating him like a kid brother, and the chairman was...loving it?
"What can I do?" Winston said, his voice taking on a plaintive, almost childlike quality. "Back then I was running around with the horses all day, lifting hay bales, cleaning stables. Now I sit in meetings."
"And then more meetings..."
"And then meetings about the meetings..."
"And the only thing I lift is a coffee cup." He sighed dramatically. "Sally would be ashamed of me."
At the mention of that name, Luca’s teasing smile softened.
"Sally." He repeated. "She really would, wouldn’t she? That horse had higher standards than most people I’ve met."
"She did." Winston’s voice grew quiet. "She really did."
A silence settled between them with shared memory.
The employees, sensing that they were intruding on something private, began to disperse.
Clara hersel didn’t f understand the history.
But what she did know was that these two men shared a bond that ran deeper than anything she could easily categorize.
—
The story of Luca and Winston had begun thirty years ago, when this very spot had been nothing more than a modest horse farm.
Luca, wandering through the world as he often did, had stumbled upon the beautiful landscape and decided he wanted to go for a ride on a horse.
He had approached the farm to rent a horse...and that was when he first met Winston.
Back then, Winston had been a young stable boy managing his father’s horses.
But when Luca found him in the barn, the young man was surrounded not by hay and saddles, but by mechanical parts and intricate gears. It looked more like a workshop than a stable.
And right in the middle of it all, young Winston had collapsed to the floor from sheer physical exhaustion.
Luca had rushed in, saved the young man, and carried him to the nearest country clinic.
When Winston finally woke up, tears in his eyes, he thanked Luca profusely—and over a warm meal, he shared his heartbreaking story.
Winston was a simple farm hand, but his absolute world revolved around a magnificent white mare named Sally, his childhood companion and best friend.
Tragically, Sally had suffered a severe, shattered bone injury in her hind leg.
In those days, a broken leg was an absolute death sentence for a horse. Farm policy and veterinary standard required her to be put down.
Winston simply could not accept it.
He knew Sally was suffering, but he refused to kill his best friend.
So, despite having no formal university degree, the brilliant young stable boy locked himself in the barn day and night, desperately trying to invent a mechanical brace or prosthetic apparatus that could support Sally’s heavy weight and let her walk again without pain.
And Luca had listened.
What struck Luca the most, was not Winston’s intelligence or his determination, though both were remarkable.
It was the moment when a white horse had limped into the barn, straining her injured body to check on her unconscious owner.
Sally had sensed something was wrong. She had pushed through her pain to make sure Winston was alright.
The bond between them wasn’t one-sided. Sally loved Winston just as much as he loved her.
So Luca had offered to help.
Winston had been hesitant at first—why would a stranger care about his problems?
But Luca had insisted, and eventually, Winston had accepted. He had no other choice.
What happened next had shocked the young stable boy to his core.
Luca’s ideas were revolutionary!
Concepts that shouldn’t have existed in that era.
Designs that seemed decades ahead of their time.
He would even point out flaws in Winston’s blueprints without even needing to see physical models, then offer solutions that left Winston’s mind racing at full speed.
For two weeks, they worked together day and night.
Winston’s wife-to-be, Iris, had supported them both, praying for their success while keeping them fed and caffeinated.
And then, finally, they had done it.
A prototype. A support structure for Sally’s leg that distributed weight away from the injury. It was light, elegant, and most importantly it worked!
The day they fitted it onto Sally’s leg, Winston had wept with joy. The horse had walked. She had moved without pain for the first time in months.
And the look of pure gratitude and happiness in her eyes had been worth every sleepless night.
Winston had hugged Luca so tightly that the air had been forced from his lungs.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" He had sobbed. "Y-You’ve saved her life! You’ve saved my best friend!"
After that, Winston had been smart enough to realize that the technology they’d developed could be used for more than just horses.
Prosthetics for humans. Medical devices. The applications were limitless!
He had approached Luca with a business proposal, a company they could build together. He had even offered Luca ninety percent ownership.
But Luca had simply shaken his head.
"This has nothing to do with me." He had said. "If you want to build a company, Winston, build it yourself. I don’t care about ownership or profits."
Winston had begged him to reconsider, but Luca had been firm.
"Take the ideas. Use them however you like. All I ask is that you bring good into the world and that no other beloved horse has to be put down because of a broken leg."
And then, like a ghost, Luca had disappeared into the night, leaving behind only a hug and well-wishes for Winston’s future.
—
Now, thirty years later, the company born from those two weeks of collaboration stood as one of the world’s leading technology firms.
Finally, Winston grabbed Luca’s arm with the enthusiasm of a child pulling a friend toward a new toy.
"Come! Come with me! I have to show you everything! The laboratories, the new models, the—there’s so much you haven’t seen!"
He practically dragged Luca toward the elevator, jabbing the call button with impatience.
"You’re going to love this." Winston said as the doors slid open. "The new generation of prosthetics—we just finalized the designs last week. The precision is unprecedented. The weight distribution is—"
"Winston." Luca interrupted gently. "Breathe."
"I don’t need to breathe! I need to show you what we’ve built!"
They ascended, the elevator gliding upward and through the glass walls, Luca could see the floors passing by.
Each one a different department, a different branch of the empire that had grown from a rickety barn and a boy’s desperate love for a horse.
Winston launched into a tour with the manic energy of a man who had been storing up information for three decades and was finally being given the chance to release it.
"See that floor? That’s where we develop the neural interfaces! The prosthetics don’t just move—they respond to thought patterns. A patient thinks about moving their hand, and the hand moves. It’s not science fiction anymore, Luca. It’s REAL!"
They passed another floor.
"Human prosthetics! We’ve expanded far beyond the equine models we started with. Veterans who lost limbs in combat. Children born with congenital defects. Elderly patients who can’t walk anymore."
"We’ve helped them all! And every single one of those designs traces back to the work you and I did together in that barn!"
Luca watched the laboratories blur past—scientists in white coats, robotic arms performing delicate calibrations, holographic displays showing three-dimensional models of joints and limbs.
It was magnificent!
"Here!" Winston grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the elevator onto a floor that hummed with quiet activity.
Through a glass wall, Luca could see a prosthetic leg suspended in a testing rig, its joints flexing and extending in a smooth, lifelike rhythm.
"This is the latest generation! Carbon fiber frame. Adaptive joint tension. The sensors in the foot can detect terrain changes and adjust accordingly. A patient wearing this could run a marathon!
Luca examined the arm with quiet amazement. The joints moved with fluid grace, mimicking the natural motion of a human arm with uncanny accuracy.
"Without your ideas." Winston said, his voice sincere. "None of this would exist. The company. The technology. The millions of people we’ve helped. It all traces back to you."
He paused, then added more quietl,
"We also keep our prices as low as possible! The lowest in the industry! There are companies out there that charge fortunes for prosthetics—they see suffering as a business opportunity."
"But I’ve never forgotten what you taught me. The kindness you showed. I’ve tried to pass that on, in my own way. No one should have to break their bank to walk again."
He looked at Luca like a student showing his work to a beloved teacher and hoping for a gold star.
"You’ve done well, Winston." Luca said quietly. "Better than I ever could have imagined."
Winston’s face split into a grin so wide it threatened to escape the boundaries of his mustache.