Prince Richardson =link= -

By thirty, Prince had buried that old man, his mother, and two dreams. The first was playing jazz piano—he’d sold his Fender Rhodes to pay for the funeral. The second was love, a woman named Celeste who left when the money ran dry. Now, his kingdom was a four-bay garage called “Richardson & Son” (no son, just him), and his subjects were dead alternators and seized brake calipers.

“I don’t need a tuner,” she said. “I need someone to remind it what music sounds like.” prince richardson

He didn’t play a song. He just laid his hands on the keys and let them remember. A chord. Then another. Something that wasn’t quite jazz, wasn’t quite blues—just the sound of a man who’d stopped being a prince a long time ago, finally finding his throne in a dusty basement, one broken key at a time. By thirty, Prince had buried that old man,

The name sat on him like a borrowed tuxedo—stiff, formal, and a little too big. Prince Richardson wasn't a prince. He was a mechanic from East Cleveland who smelled of grease and spoke in grunts. His father, a man with a cruel sense of humor, had named him after a racehorse he'd lost a fortune on the night Prince was born. Now, his kingdom was a four-bay garage called

She raised an eyebrow. “Of course you are.”

The car needed a new fuel pump—a three-hour job. But as Prince worked, he noticed the small things: a child’s sock wedged under the passenger seat, a grocery list written in shaky handwriting, a crack in the dashboard he couldn't stop staring at. This wasn't a rich woman’s toy; it was a broken thing pretending to be whole.