“A witness.”
“A mother.”
Garrett laughed again, but this time it had a crack in it.
“Since when do you care what they are called?”
Victor’s eyes changed.
Not softer.
Sharper.
“Since you put your fear in a seven-year-old’s sock,” he said.
Garrett stopped laughing.
Victor ended the call.
The warehouse stayed silent after the line went dead.
Outside, river water slapped against the pier.
Somewhere above us, a loose chain tapped metal in the wind.
My mother bent toward me.
“You did well,” she whispered.
Her voice broke on the last word.
I wanted to cry then, but I was too busy watching Victor.
He had the receipt in one hand and the phone in the other, and suddenly he looked less like a monster from whispered warnings and more like a man discovering rot inside his own house.
He turned to the guard still standing.
“Tell me why Garrett needed her gone.”
The guard’s eyes darted to the scarred man on the floor.
Victor nodded to one of his men.
“Separate them.”
The standing guard spoke before anyone touched him.
“She cleaned the private room last week.
The blue room.
Garrett left documents in the trash.
She put them back on the table.
He saw her read the top page.”
My mother closed her eyes.
Victor asked, “What page?”
“Dock transfer.
Two shell companies.
One registered to a police handler.
One to Garrett’s driver.”
The word police did not make the men relax.
It made them worse.
Victor looked at my mother.
“You understood what you saw?”
She gave a bitter little smile.
“I know numbers.
I used to do books before my husband died.
Men assume aprons make women blind.”
One of Victor’s older men lowered his gaze.
Whether from shame or fear, I did not know.
Victor took off his coat and placed it around my mother’s shoulders.
She stiffened, but he did not comment.
“Bring the blue room ledger,” he said.
“Bring the safe drive.
Bring the dock contracts.
And bring Father.”
At that, several men looked up.
Garrett had sounded afraid of Victor.
But the room became truly afraid at the word Father.
We were taken back to the restaurant through a side entrance, not the bright front room where people ate expensive food and pretended they could not smell danger.
