Chapter 9
Marco spread the printed access records across a narrow table in the Moretti Plaza security room. The room smelled like dust, warm plastic, and the coffee someone had forgotten beside a keyboard. Through the glass wall, I could see the bottom of the massive chandelier hanging over the lobby. It looked different from down there, less like a star and more like hundreds of sharp pieces waiting to fall.
Mom sat beside me with both hands around a paper cup she wasn't drinking from. Dominic stood near the door, too tall for the small room, his dark suit making the walls look even grayer. He hadn't asked me to leave. He also hadn't touched any of the papers.
Marco tapped one page with his finger.
"This is the document-generation session," he said. "The termination letter was created from a workstation assigned to Victor Hale's executive office."
I knew Victor Hale's name. He was the man who had smiled at the charity event while Mom stood near the back of the ballroom. His smile had stayed in place even when he looked at her.
Mom's fingers tightened around the cup. "The assistant's workstation?"
"Assigned to her," Marco said. "That doesn't prove she wrote anything. It only tells us where the file was opened and printed."
Dominic's voice stayed quiet. "Who was the assistant?"
"Janice Reed."
Mom lowered her eyes. "Janice never liked me, but she wasn't cruel."
"Dislike isn't evidence," Dominic said. "Find out who instructed her. Don't turn an employee into a convenient answer because the trail stops at her desk."
Marco looked at him for a moment, then nodded. He circled a time on the page. "The file was created at 4:18 p.m. The printer released it at 4:26. The final authorization step was recorded at 4:29."
He turned another page.
There was a blank space between 4:29 and 4:34.
"Why is that missing?" Mom asked.
"The security archive has no camera record for those five minutes," Marco said. "Not corrupted. Not delayed. The interval was removed from the preserved copy."
My stuffed rabbit's repaired ear brushed my chin as I hugged it tighter. "Can you put it back?"
Marco's face changed in a small way. He didn't look away from me, but his mouth pressed into a line.
"No," he said. "Not from that archive."
Dominic moved closer to the table. "Then we document the absence. We don't pretend it's something else."
The missing minutes made the room feel colder. Someone had not only made a letter with Mom's name on it. Someone had made sure a piece of time disappeared around it.
Marco pulled out a second file, this one marked with a vendor dispute from the previous winter. Mom read the first page, then the second. Her breathing became shallow.
"That phrase," she said.
I leaned toward her. The words were too long for me to understand, but I saw the line she pointed to.
"Failure to maintain operational confidence," she read. "That exact wording was in a letter Victor's office sent to a vendor after they questioned an invoice."
Marco compared it with the termination letter. "The phrase appears in both."
"Victor didn't write the vendor letter himself," Mom said. "But his office did."
Dominic looked at her. "Why didn't you tell me that before?"
Mom stared at the folded termination letter on the table. The creases had turned white from being opened too many times.
"Because I didn't know who I could safely tell," she said. "And because I thought if I kept quiet, Lily and I could stay where we were."
No one answered immediately. The hum of the security monitors filled the silence.
A phone buzzed in Mom's coat pocket. She read the message, and the color faded from her face. Then she handed the phone to Dominic.
It was from a law firm representing Victor Hale. The message used careful words, but I understood the part Mom didn't say aloud.
If she filed a public complaint, they would challenge her reliability, her judgment, and the reasons she had been dismissed. They would make people look at her instead of the letter.
Mom took the phone back. "They want me scared before I choose."
Dominic didn't reach for her. He only said, "You choose the route. Public complaint or quiet legal strategy. I won't decide for you."
Marco gathered the records into a folder, leaving the original termination letter untouched on the table.
"The evidence points to Hale's office," he said. "But the missing interval gives them room to deny the final step."
Mom looked through the glass toward the lobby, where people walked beneath the chandelier without knowing what had vanished above them.
Then she looked at me.
"I need to know what happens if I speak," she said.
Dominic's eyes lowered briefly to my yellow boots, still on the wrong feet.
May you like
"Then we find out before you do," he said.
Mom folded the warning into her pocket. The decision wasn't made, but the quiet way out no longer looked safe.
