After waiting a full hour and a half, Stark finally drove the car back.
"Excellent car. How much?" No pleasantries. His opening line was pure billionaire.
The nerdy engineer's face lit up. He was just about to quote a price when Bella shoved him aside.
"Koenigsegg plans to produce a total of six CC8S worldwide," she announced.
Scarcity drives value—a principle that applied everywhere. Stark was far too sharp not to see through her intent immediately. And yet he still chose to play along.
"How many have been produced so far?"
"This is the first one."
"Buyers for the rest already decided?"
Bella counted on her fingers. "Let me see... One goes to the King of Sweden. One's been reserved by a racer friend of Christian's. Christian himself is keeping one for his personal collection. Koenigsegg plans to keep one in the showroom. And the last one..." She paused dramatically. "That's mine. I want to buy one too—this car has serious collectible value, don't you think?"
In Bella's view, very few high-performance sports cars were actually bought to be driven. Everyone's purpose was remarkably consistent: buy them and stash them away.
Stark's lips curled. "You don't understand cars at all."
Bella shot back immediately. "But I understand beauty, ugliness, and investment value."
Stark barely hesitated. "I'll buy the slot for that last car. Tell Koenigsegg not to produce the final one. Five cars worldwide—that's more appropriate."
Under the billionaire's insistence, Bella gave up her completely fictional plan to buy a car herself.
What had originally been a deal to sell one car turned into selling two—and the second one didn't even need to be built. Zero cost. The entire payment was pure profit.
The listed price of a Koenigsegg CC8S was €690,000. Two cars meant €1.38 million.
Bella's commission was 25% of the car's net profit.
For a complete vehicle, after deducting parts, labor costs, various losses, import tariffs, and all sorts of miscellaneous fees, the net profit that actually made it onto the books wasn't as high as one might expect.
Koenigsegg adhered strictly to the principle of scarcity. In the future, profit per car would be very high—but that was the future, not now.
The current €690,000 price point was set to break into the U.S. market.
From the first car, Bella received one quarter of the net profit. After all calculations, her income was a little over €60,000—less than €70,000.
The profit from the second car was absurd. This car existed only on paper and hadn't been produced at all.
With zero cost, the €690,000 selling price was almost entirely pure profit, and Bella took €160,000 directly as her commission.
In half a day, she'd earned nearly €220,000.
Koenigsegg's earnings were even greater—over a million euros flowed in, instantly wiping out their interest payments to that Swedish investment bank.
Bella had proven her value.
For Koenigsegg, once they saw real money coming in, even tech nerds who lived solely to build cars were overjoyed. No one truly hated money—no matter how much someone claimed to disdain it, watching account balances rise rapidly always brought smiles.
Christian von Koenigsegg led his employees in a week-long celebration. Afterward, he suppressed his excitement and returned to focusing on his goal: building the world's fastest sports car.
Bella contacted Jeri Hogarth—the lawyer still in France—and had her make a trip to Sweden.
Through phone calls, emails, and negotiations between both sides' lawyers, Bella formally bought into Koenigsegg. Combining her income from the car sales with her own savings, she paid €400,000. In exchange—and on the condition that she'd handle Koenigsegg's sales throughout the Americas—she obtained 5% of the company's shares from Christian von Koenigsegg.
In the future, if new investors came aboard, her shares would inevitably be diluted. However, Koenigsegg wouldn't be making any major moves over the next two years. The team was holed up in a small Swedish town, developing a brand-new CCR model to replace the CC8S.
This investment was far more valuable than Bella's half-dead Weyland Occult Items Shop.
The downside? Her available cash shrank drastically.
She had no choice but to speed up her writing.
She'd read The Da Vinci Code before, but only in translation. There were differences compared to the English original, and converting her memories into English and then polishing the text was a massive undertaking.
By May 2001, the first draft was complete, and she was in the middle of a second round of revisions and refinement.
In her spare time, Bella showed her manuscript to her roommate, the busty Heather.
"You're really talented!" The classical literature major—who also worked as a cook—read the manuscript like a novel and praised it constantly. She knew Bella liked hearing compliments.
This roommate with husky-blue eyes was the second devoted admirer Bella had cultivated after Jacob.
"Does the Priory of Sion really exist?" Like many young American women, Heather didn't believe much in science but was especially fond of mysterious things.
Bella shook her head with a light laugh. "It existed historically, but like the Knights Templar, it probably disappeared into the river of time."
"You're amazing! Someone ordinary like me can only work part-time in a shop..." Heather praised sincerely.
Bella brushed it off modestly—though clearly satisfied. "I'm just writing nonsense. If the editor doesn't like it, it might not even get published."
When it came to publishing, Heather raised a concern. "Isn't the content a bit... sensitive? Won't it provoke opposition from the Church?"
Bella had already thought this through.
Between the lines, The Da Vinci Code took plenty of shots at the Catholic Church, repeatedly casting Opus Dei—a Vatican-affiliated organization—as the villain.
Some of the book's ideas were sharp, too. The Mona Lisa being Leonardo da Vinci himself. The Last Supper depicting not thirteen men, but twelve men and one woman. Even the claim that Jesus married and left behind descendants.
Bella copied the Opus Dei storyline wholesale. As an American writing a book criticizing the European Church, she felt zero pressure. If it sparked controversy, sales would only skyrocket.
At worst, it would just be a war of words. They weren't going to summon the Archangel Gabriel, were they?
She also kept the idea that the Mona Lisa was Leonardo himself. Da Vinci wouldn't crawl out of his grave to refute it.
Twelve men and one woman in a famous painting? Writing it from the perspective of a female author was perfect. Don't ask why—if you ask, it's feminism.
As for whether Jesus actually had descendants?
On that point, she completely chickened out.
Bella was worried about drawing the real figure's attention and creating a mess she couldn't clean up—so she didn't dare mention a single word.