Chapter 1 - Rice on the Marble Floor
The marble wouldn't stop being cold through my uniform. I had tucked myself against the dark cabinets under the warm strip of under-cabinet light, knees up, the white plate balanced in my lap. The rice was plain and already cooling, left over from dinner service, and I ate it slow with the fork so it would last. Then the overheads clicked on and his shadow cut straight across the white floor toward me.
My name is Lena. I was twenty-two and three weeks into living where I worked.
It must have been close to midnight. The house had gone quiet after the dishwasher finished its cycle, and I'd waited until I was sure no one needed anything before I scooped what was left in the pot. I didn't hear his steps on the marble. I just looked up and he was there in the doorway in an unbuttoned black satin shirt and dark trousers, his gold watch catching the light, staring down at me sitting on his kitchen floor.
"What are you doing in here?" His voice was stern, not loud.
I stopped with the fork halfway to my mouth. My throat closed up. "I'm sorry, sir. I was just hungry."
He didn't move right away. He stepped in closer and the light shifted across his face. I set the fork down against the rice and looked down at the plate because I couldn't hold his look. My apron had a spot on it I hadn't noticed. I wiped at it with my thumb like that mattered.
He crouched a little to see me better, careful, measured. "How much is the agency paying you?"
The question surprised me more than the first one. Nobody in a house like that asked that. I kept my eyes down. "1400 a month, sir."
For a few seconds he didn't say anything at all. I tried not to cry and failed at it. A tear tracked hot down my cheek and I breathed through my nose and stared at the grains of rice blurred white in front of me. The fork trembled when I shifted the plate. I heard him move, fabric and a shoe on marble, and then he was kneeling down to my level, his brows pulled together, looking at me straight on now instead of down.
I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I just held the plate tighter. The marble pressed hard into my back through the gray uniform. My cap had slipped a little and I wanted to fix it but I didn't dare move too much. He didn't reach for the plate. He didn't tell me to get up or get out. He just looked at me like he was doing math he didn't like.
May you like
Then he pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen lit up bright in the dim kitchen and he held it out between us, toward me, his eyes still fixed on my face. I couldn't read the text from where I sat with tears in my eyes, just the white glow of it.
"Someone is stealing from my employees."
