Chapter 3 - Missing Minutes
My mother read the threat twice and didn't tell me to calm down.
She photographed my screen with her own phone, then asked for the number. "We're keeping everything," she said. "Even the things we wish hadn't happened."
At two in the morning, when the hospital released me with follow-up instructions and a warning to return for bleeding, severe pain, headache or decreased fetal movement, Nico was still sitting in the waiting room. He stood as we passed.
"I can get you a car."
"I already have one," my mother said, holding up her keys.
"Sofia, I spoke with Grant," he began. "He says somebody sent a message to you, but he denies knowing anything about it."
My stomach sank. "How does he know I got a message?"
Nico's mouth tightened. "I showed him the screenshot. I wanted him to understand how serious this is."
"You told the man I suspect of deleting evidence exactly what evidence I have."
"I was trying to help."
"That makes two of us," I said. "Only one of us keeps getting hurt by it."
My mother put her hand at the center of my back and guided me toward the exit. Nico didn't follow.
I slept in uneven pieces. By morning I had an email from human resources: TEMPORARY LEAVE PENDING WORKPLACE INVESTIGATION. No details. The message said my access badge would be inactive and requested that I return my uniform within forty-eight hours. I reread the line about company property until I noticed they hadn't used the word paid.
I called Marco. "Did they suspend me?"
"Grant told everyone there was a pending safety review. He's saying you drove a client's car too close to the service gate."
"I never moved Nico's car. It came in with a driver."
"I know."
He sounded close to tears. Marco was forty-one, with two teenage boys and a mortgage on a house fifty minutes outside Miami. He'd spent nine years trying to make captain. Asking him to challenge the boss could cost him everything he'd worked for.
"You saw the photograph," I said quietly.
"Yes. But the system says it's gone."
"How?"
"The image wasn't stored on the phone. We use a company app. Grant's got the admin access."
"You took the screenshot."
"Of the log, not the scratch. I didn't know we'd need the actual image." He paused. "There's another camera over the service gate. The contractor runs it. I don't know how long they keep footage."
There was a knock at my apartment door. I held the phone to my chest and looked through the peephole. A courier stood in the hallway with a flat envelope.
Inside was a letter from the hotel's law firm. It accused me of an "unsubstantiated personal claim" regarding an executive, warned against disclosing confidential employee information, and offered two weeks' pay if I signed a separation agreement. I had forty-eight hours to respond.
My mother stood in the kitchen peeling a tangerine. "Don't touch that pen."
"I wasn't going to."
"You looked at it."
I sat down with the pages spread across my small table. They hadn't included an amount for the damage to the car. They hadn't mentioned pregnancy accommodations. They had included a paragraph promising not to make "disparaging statements concerning Meridian Palm leadership." It was the kind of wording that sounded reasonable until you imagined telling anyone what happened.
I called a legal clinic my prenatal nurse had mentioned. A coordinator helped me preserve documents and arranged a consultation with employment attorney Alicia Chen.
"Do not sign something you don't understand," she said. "And please keep a record of your hours and pay stubs."
I found them in a shoebox under my bed. For months, our tip pool had been shrinking even on days the hotel was full. Marco had kept telling us the accounting system was being updated. At the time, I believed him.
At noon, Nico called. I let it ring once, then answered.
"I've had Grant put you on leave," he said. "With pay. I thought you needed rest."
"The email says nothing about pay. There's a severance contract on my table."
"What contract?"
I heard a door open on his end. Grant's voice came faintly from across an office, asking whether Nico was ready for the lenders.
"You should ask him," I said. "He's standing right there."
Nico covered the phone. I heard the muffled edge of an argument, then he returned.
"I didn't authorize a separation agreement."
"Then maybe you're not in charge of as much as you think."
I hung up before he could say he was sorry again. I had heard enough apologies from men with office keys.
That evening, a woman named Rina Patel, who handled banquet deliveries at the Meridian Palm, texted me a photograph. It showed Nico's sedan at the curb just after noon, an hour before my shift began. On the rear door was a thin, pale scratch.
May you like
She wrote: I was unloading flowers. I thought you should see this. Please don't tell them it was me.
I stared at the image until I could see not just the scratch but a reflection in the window: Grant, standing beside the car with his radio raised.
