Chapter 2 - TWENTY-THREE NAMES
Mom grabbed my hand.
“We’re leaving.”
David immediately stepped into our path.
“No, Claire.”
Vincent’s men moved.
David stopped.
Mom looked at Vincent.
“I don’t want trouble.”
Vincent answered quietly.
“You already have trouble.”
He pointed toward the office hallway.
“You just got used to carrying it alone.”
Mom’s eyes filled, but she refused to cry in front of David.
She had done that before.
Never here.
Never where he could see.
Vincent asked his accountant to come to the restaurant.
Her name was Elena Ruiz.
She arrived twenty minutes later carrying a laptop and two thick folders.
She didn’t look frightened by Vincent.
She didn’t look impressed by David.
She looked annoyed.
That seemed worse.
Elena sat at an empty table.
“How many current employees?”
David said nothing.
The kitchen manager whispered.
“Twenty-three.”
“How many former employees in the last eighteen months?”
“Maybe forty.”
Elena opened her laptop.
“Then I need payroll records for all of them.”
David laughed.
“You don’t have authority to demand private business records.”
Vincent nodded.
“That’s true.”
For a moment, David seemed relieved.
Then Elena turned her laptop around.
“But the Illinois Department of Labor does.”
A complaint form was already open.
David stared at it.
Mom squeezed my hand.
“I never filed anything.”
Elena looked at her.
“You don’t need to be the only person who does.”
A waitress named Tina stepped away from the bar.
“I will.”
Everyone turned.
Tina was fifty-six.
She had worked there nine years.
Her husband had been sick all winter.
David had cut her hours and withheld two weeks of tips.
“I’m owed thirty-eight hundred.”
A dishwasher raised his hand.
“Me too.”
Then another server.
Then one of the cooks.
People started talking.
Not loudly.
Not bravely at first.
But once one person said a number, another person remembered theirs.
Four hundred dollars.
Twelve hundred.
Seven thousand.
Missing overtime.
Missing tips.
Cash deductions nobody understood.
Uniform charges.
Broken-glass fees.
Hours that vanished from timecards.
David shouted.
“Enough!”
The room froze.
He pointed toward the kitchen.
“Everybody back to work.”
Nobody moved.
David turned toward Mom.
“This is because of you.”
I felt Mom’s fingers tighten around mine.
“You brought that kid in here and now everybody thinks they can steal from me.”
Mom stared at him.
“Steal from you?”
Her voice was quiet.
For seventy-seven days, my mother had begged.
That afternoon, something changed.
She stopped begging.
“You owe me money.”
David stepped closer.
“You’ll never work in this city again.”
Vincent Kane stood.
The scrape of his chair echoed through the dining room.
“No.”
He adjusted his jacket.
“She’ll never work for you again.”
Then Elena looked at her screen.
Her face suddenly changed.
“Vincent.”
He turned.
“What?”
She rotated the laptop toward him.
A bank transfer appeared on the screen.
The date was three days earlier.
The amount was $92,000.
The receiving company was called DS Luxury Holdings.
Mom looked confused.
Vincent didn’t.
“What is that?”
Elena opened another document.
“The company that bought the Porsche.”
Everyone looked toward the bright red car outside.
David took one step backward.
May you like
And Elena quietly added.
“The transfer came directly from the restaurant payroll account.”
