Chương 10
She waited.
He did not move.
Thomas picked up the room-service menu. “There’s a thirty-dollar hamburger.”
Anna took it from him. “You’re not ordering a thirty-dollar hamburger.”
“It comes with truffle fries.”
“You hate mushrooms.”
“Truffles are expensive mushrooms. That could change things.”
Victor removed his wallet and placed cash on the desk.
Anna looked at it. “No.”
Thomas looked at it. “Yes.”
Victor slid the money toward him. “Order the hamburger.”
Anna shoved it back. “He has dietary restrictions.”
Thomas sighed. “Kidney failure is a prison run by sodium.”
Victor folded the cash and returned it to his wallet. “What can he eat?”
“Not much that comes with truffle fries.”
Thomas opened the menu again. “There’s grilled chicken.”
Anna sat on the edge of the nearest bed, suddenly exhausted.
Victor looked at her. “Sleep.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The second sentence.”
He left before she could see the faint change in his expression.
For the next three days, the investigation expanded faster than anyone controlled it.
Former employees returned calls with stories of missing overtime, canceled coverage, unexplained tax forms, and threats tied to immigration status or housing. One woman had delayed prenatal care because she believed her insurance was active. A maintenance worker had paid cash for his son’s asthma medication while deductions continued from every paycheck. A cook named Evelyn Harper had been fired after asking for an insurer’s group number.
Evelyn kept everything.
She arrived at David Shaw’s office with two grocery bags containing pay stubs, text messages, printed emails, certified letters, and a notebook in which she had recorded every call.
“I knew they’d say I was confused,” she told Anna. “So I wrote down when I was confused.”
She was fifty-six, broad-shouldered, and spoke with the blunt confidence of someone who had survived too many managers to fear another.
Anna sat beside her at the conference table. “Did Dominic call you?”
“Once.”
“What did he say?”
“That Mr. Russo considered me disloyal.”
Anna glanced toward the glass wall. Victor was in another room with Nina, visible but unable to hear.
“Did you believe him?”
Evelyn followed her gaze. “Look at that man. Everybody believes something when his name is attached.”
Victor saw them looking and turned away.
Evelyn opened her notebook. “Mr. Vale offered me two months’ pay if I signed a resignation letter saying I’d never been promised health benefits.”
“Did you?”
“I told him two months wasn’t enough to buy my memory.”
Despite herself, Anna smiled.
Evelyn smiled back. “Then I cried in the bus station because I had nine dollars.”
The smile left both of them.
“Why didn’t you go to the labor department?” Anna asked.
“I did. Filled out a form online. Got a number. Then my landlord raised the rent, my mother broke her hip, and a man sat outside my apartment for three nights.”
“Did you report him?”
“To who?”
Anna looked through the glass again.
Victor was no longer pretending not to watch.
The employees’ evidence established a pattern, but the strongest financial records remained on a server housed in a warehouse near the river. Dominic’s team controlled the building. Nina sought a court order through outside counsel, but that process would take time. Federal investigators, once notified, warned everyone not to attempt private retrieval.
Victor disliked being warned.
Anna learned about the server from Thomas, who overheard Leo discussing it in the hotel hallway.
“You have to tell Nina,” she said.
“I assumed she knew.”
“Victor knows?”
“Victor always knows.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Thomas adjusted the blanket over his legs. Dialysis left him cold even in warm rooms.
Anna called Nina, who answered from a courthouse corridor.
“Yes, I know,” Nina said. “No, Victor is not going to the warehouse.”
“Did he agree to that?”
“He stared at me until a bailiff asked whether I needed assistance.”
Anna looked toward the hotel window. A black sedan waited across the street. It had been there since morning, supposedly part of the approved security arrangement.
“Where is he now?”
“His office.”
“Are you sure?”
A pause.
“No.”
Anna hung up and called Victor.
He answered over the sound of a car engine.
“Where are you?”
“Working.”
“You’re going to the warehouse.”
“Who told you?”
“Thomas.”
In the background, Thomas whispered, “Traitor.”
Anna walked into the bathroom and closed the door. “The investigators said not to.”
“They also said it may take forty-eight hours.”
“And?”
“Dominic can destroy a server in four minutes.”
“So you’re going to walk in with guns?”
“No.”
“That hesitation was loud.”
Victor’s voice remained calm. “I’m going to speak with the building manager.”
“Who works for Dominic.”
“He works for me.”
“Your name is printed on his checks.”
Silence.
Anna pressed her palm against the bathroom counter. “You taught me that.”
“I’ll call you later.”
“No.”
“Anna.”
“If you do this your way, every employee becomes part of a story about gangsters fighting. No one talks about stolen wages. No one believes the records. It becomes you against Dominic.”
“It is me against Dominic.”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
Victor did not answer.
She continued, “Evelyn had nine dollars after they fired her. A woman skipped prenatal visits. Thomas missed medicine. Those are the facts. Don’t bury them under another body.”
His voice changed slightly. “You think I’m going to kill him.”
“I think you’ve spent your whole life making violence look practical.”
The engine sound disappeared. He had either stopped the car or muted the call.
Anna waited.
Victor said, “What would you have me do?”
“Call Nina.”
“She’ll tell me to wait.”
“Then wait.”
“And if he destroys it?”
“Then we use what we have.”
“It may not be enough.”
“It has to be enough without you becoming the worst thing in the room.”
Victor was quiet for so long she checked the screen to see whether the call had ended.
May you like
Finally he said, “You don’t know what the worst thing in that room is.”
“No,” Anna said. “But I know you’re afraid it’s you.”
