“Pilfering. Expired snacks she took home for her daughter. Items that were already marked for disposal. He’s documented six incidents in two months. He’s preparing to terminate her for cause.”
I closed my eyes. Derek. Of course it was Derek.
“He doesn’t know I know her,” I said.
“He doesn’t know she exists to you, sir. That’s the only reason she still has a job.”
I walked into my own corporate headquarters as the homeless man.
I thanked him and hung up. Then I put the disguise back on.
I walked into my own corporate headquarters as the homeless man. The receptionist froze. Two security guards moved before I even reached the elevator.
“Sir, you can’t be in here.”
“I’d like to speak with Derek,” I rasped. “Tell him it concerns the night cleaning staff.”
Derek appeared at the top of the stairs a minute later.
The receptionist hesitated, then picked up the phone. I watched her face as she relayed the message, the small flicker when whoever was on the other end asked her to repeat it. A homeless man asking for Derek by name was apparently strange enough to warrant a page upstairs.
Derek appeared at the top of the stairs a minute later, smelling the situation before he saw it. He didn’t recognize me. He only saw the cane, the coat, the dirt.
“Get him out,” Derek said flatly. “And check the cameras. I want to know who let him in and who told him my name.”
Her family records stared up at me from the page.
They took my arms gently, because I was old. Derek didn’t even watch me leave.
That evening, my lawyer brought a thick folder to the mansion. Personnel files. I asked for Lily’s mother’s.
I opened it slowly.
Her family records stared up at me from the page.
I knew that line. It belonged to Anna’s younger sister, the one Anna had grieved for in whispers late at night, the sister who cut her off and vanished with a baby girl Anna was never allowed to hold.
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And tomorrow, I would walk into my boardroom one last time, no longer in costume.
I sat very still.
The one stranger who had stopped for me in that store was the only blood Anna had left in the world.
