Chapter 5 - The People Who Paid
We sat in a crowded coffee shop three blocks from my office.
Nina kept both hands around a paper cup she hadn’t touched.
“I have two kids,” she said.
“I know.”
“My youngest needs medication every month. I can’t just lose my job.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“That’s what people always say before they ask for something that costs you your job.”
She wasn’t wrong.
I pushed the envelope back toward her.
“You can leave with this. I won’t stop you.”
Nina stared at it.
Then she pushed it back.
“Payroll is short.”
That changed the room.
“How short?”
“Enough that Friday won’t clear unless somebody moves money.”
“What happened to the reserve?”
“Valerie called it excess cash.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside were reports Nina had prepared as part of her job.
Payroll projections.
Unpaid invoices.
Expense requests.
The consulting payments sat beside charges for a resort, jewelry, and furniture delivered to my house.
One line stopped me.
Executive residence refresh.
Forty-eight thousand dollars.
They had used company funds to redecorate the house they planned to take from me.
“Did you approve these?” I asked.
“No. I flagged them.”
“To Anton?”
“And the controller. Anton told me my job was payroll, not policing his marriage.”
I turned another page.
A list of forty-three employees.
Salaries.
Health insurance deductions.
Retirement contributions.
Those people hadn’t laughed in my living room.
They hadn’t forged anything.
And now they were standing underneath the wreckage of my marriage.
Nina leaned forward.
“Please don’t shut the company down just to hurt him.”
The question hurt more because she had every reason to ask it.
“I won’t.”
“Can you promise that?”
“I can promise I’ll try to protect payroll. I can’t promise this will be painless.”
For the first time, her shoulders loosened.
Mendoza arranged for the records to reach an independent accountant.
By evening, we were working on a controlled account to keep wages separate from disputed spending.
It would require more of my money.
Money I might never get back.
I approved it anyway.
At nine, Nina sent another message.
He knows I met you.
Then another.
He fired me.
I called her.
She answered in a whisper.
“Clara, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“The file he keeps locked in his office.”
I stood.
May you like
“What file?”
“The one marked with your mother’s name.”
