The boss took a knife from one of his men and cut the ropes from my mother’s wrists himself.
She flinched at first.
He saw it and slowed down.
“I did not authorize this,” he said.
My mother rubbed the raw skin at her wrists and looked at him with a hatred too tired to burn.
“No.
You just built a world where men like Garrett thought they could.”
Nobody corrected her.
Not even him.
A phone began ringing on the metal table near the wall.
It was one of the guards’ phones, the screen bright against the dirty surface.
GARRETT.
The name pulsed in the dark.
Every man looked at the boss.
He walked to the table, picked up the phone, and answered without speaking.
He put it on speaker.
Garrett’s voice filled the warehouse, smooth and irritated.
“Is it done?”
No one moved.
Garrett sighed.
“I said is it done? The woman, the kid, the receipt.
All of it.
I need that dock transfer clean by morning.”
My mother’s hand found my shoulder and clutched it so tightly it hurt.
I did not pull away.
The boss stared at the phone.
Garrett laughed softly.
“Don’t go stupid on me.
The old man never checks kitchen staff.
She saw the wrong paper.
That’s all.
Make it look like she ran.
Kids run too.”
The old man.
That was what he called the boss.
The room heard it.
The scarred guard on the floor closed his eyes like a man listening to his own grave being dug.
The boss finally spoke.
“Garrett.”
There was silence on the line.
Then a faint shift, like someone sitting up straight.
“Victor?”
That was the first time I heard the boss’s name.
Victor looked at my mother.
Then at me.
Then at the receipt in his hand.
“You used my men,” he said.
“My warehouse.
My car.
My name.”
Garrett recovered quickly.
Men like him always did.
“You were unreachable.
I handled a leak.”
“A kitchen worker?”
