Chương 9
Antonio’s gaze sharpened. “You want access to operating data?”
“I want proof before you tell people they’re too expensive.”
“That information is confidential.”
“So are wages. Everyone seems comfortable discussing those when it helps them cut.”
For the first time, Antonio’s control slipped enough for irritation to show.
“You are asking for authority without responsibility.”
Sophie felt the old instinct to answer with a verdict.
She stopped.
“What responsibility would come with it?” she asked.
The question seemed to surprise both of them.
Antonio looked at the staffing plan. “If employees participate in restructuring, they would need to confront the actual condition of the restaurant. Debt. Deferred repairs. Unprofitable service periods. Vendor contracts. Not just missing tips.”
“Then show us.”
“And if the numbers require cuts?”
“Then we decide what we’re willing to lose.”
“We?”
“The people whose lives are inside your cells.”
Antonio leaned back.
Maria’s phrase came to Sophie: He mistakes speed for love.
Perhaps Antonio also mistook control for responsibility because he had so rarely been asked to share either.
“I’ll consider a staff review committee,” he said.
“No.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Consider means no until we get tired.”
David looked down, hiding something that might have been amusement.
Antonio lifted his coffee, found it empty, and set it down.
“David will draft terms.”
“Evelyn will review them.”
“Yes.”
Sophie left before Antonio could turn agreement into gratitude.
Marco contacted her that night.
The message came from an unknown number.
He is using you to make himself look clean. Ask what Vincent knew.
Sophie showed it to Evelyn.
“Do not respond yet,” Evelyn said.
“Can we trace it?”
“We are not police.”
“He wants something.”
“Probably.”
“What if he has records?”
“He may. He may also want to know what you have.”
Sophie stared at the message.
“Can I ask him to send proof?”
“You can, but assume every word may appear in litigation or online.”
“That makes conversation sound impossible.”
“Sometimes it is.”
Sophie waited an hour, then replied:
What did Vincent know?
Marco answered immediately.
Everything that mattered.
A second message appeared.
You think forged signatures started with me?
Then a photograph arrived.
It showed a spreadsheet with columns for event revenue, service charges, staff distribution, operating transfer, and owner adjustment. The date in the corner was eighteen months earlier. Vincent DeLuca’s initials appeared beside several owner adjustments.
Sophie forwarded the image to Evelyn.
“Could be altered,” Evelyn said.
“Could be real.”
“Yes.”
“What do we do?”
“We find the original.”
The next three days turned Bellarosa into a building full of locked doors and whispered alliances.
Forensic accountants imaged computers. David negotiated document access with the workers’ center. Renzo opened the kitchen each morning to prevent inventory loss, then complained that accountants stood in doorways as if garlic could be embezzled.
Temporary payments went out to staff. Two were calculated incorrectly. Priya received six hundred dollars less than promised because payroll used her reduced winter schedule. Luis’s check was issued to an old address. A dishwasher who relied on cash pickup was told to create an online account he could not access from his phone.
Each mistake weakened Antonio’s promises.
Sophie spent hours at Bellarosa correcting spreadsheets with employees. She became the person everyone called because she had become visible, exactly as Antonio instructed, and visibility turned out to be another form of unpaid labor.
People sent her screenshots at two in the morning. They asked whether the restaurant would reopen, whether Marco would be arrested, whether Antonio could be trusted, whether they should apply elsewhere. Sophie knew none of those things.
When she failed to answer quickly, one server accused her of keeping information for herself.
When she answered, another accused her of speaking for everyone.
On Friday afternoon, she found Antonio alone in the dining room measuring the distance between tables.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking whether we can add seats without violating the existing layout requirements.”
“Why?”
“Renzo believes dinner can be profitable without the private lounge if we increase capacity by twelve covers and renegotiate two supplier contracts.”
“Renzo spoke to you?”
“He cornered me near the freezer.”
“That sounds like Renzo.”
Antonio crouched beside a table, holding a tape measure. His suit jacket hung over a chair. Without it, he looked broader and more tired. A bruise had appeared beneath the scar at his eyebrow, though Sophie did not ask about it.
She handed him a payroll correction sheet.
“Priya’s amount is wrong again.”
He stood. “David said it was fixed.”
“It was fixed on the form and not in the transfer.”
Antonio read the sheet. His jaw tightened.
“You can be angry at the computer,” Sophie said. “It won’t care.”
“I’m angry at the person who approved the transfer without checking it.”
“That person probably has three hundred transfers.”
“Then the process is wrong.”
“Now you sound like us.”
He looked at her.
She regretted the warmth in the remark and covered it by pointing toward the tables.
“Twelve more covers will make service worse.”
“Not if we alter the station assignments.”
“You can’t put another table near the west aisle. Maria’s chair barely fit through there.”
He glanced at the space.
“She uses a cane on bad days,” Sophie added. “So does Mr. Feldman from table four. And the woman who comes with the book club uses a walker.”
Antonio let the tape retract. “Then we don’t put one there.”
Sophie watched him write a note.
“Marco said Vincent knew,” she said.
His pen stopped.
“About the tip transfers?”
“Maybe.”
“Did Marco contact you?”
She ignored the question. “Did Vincent’s accountant ever show you owner adjustments?”
“No.”
“Did you ask?”
“Not in those words. The financial statements treated service charges as revenue.”
“Is that normal?”
“It can be, depending on how charges are disclosed and distributed.”
“That sounds like David.”
“It sounds like an answer you dislike.”
May you like
“It sounds like no one wanted to know where the money came from.”
Antonio folded the measuring tape into his palm. “We were buying a distressed business. We reviewed tax returns, contracts, liabilities, revenue, and operating costs. We did not audit every banquet signature.”
