Chapter 10 - The Price of a Lie
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
I stared at it long enough to feel ashamed.
That amount would clear my debt.
Pay a deposit.
Buy time.
For one terrible second, I imagined signing.
Rachel didn’t judge me when I admitted it.
“Of course you considered it,” she said. “That’s why they picked a number.”
The agreement came from an attorney representing the Rossi family.
It called the money a goodwill payment.
It called my injury accidental.
It called my accusation a misunderstanding caused by emotional distress.
At the end, I would agree never to discuss my employment at the estate again.
“They want your silence to look like your decision,” Rachel said.
“What happens if I refuse?”
“We document what happened. We discuss your options. You choose.”
Nobody had said those last two words to me in a long time.
You choose.
I told her no.
That afternoon, Nora joined our video call.
She brought her old pay stubs.
Her deductions matched mine.
Then Daniel called.
“I need to tell you something.”
I expected him to withdraw his offer to help.
Instead, he said, “The greenhouse camera wasn’t working that morning.”
My stomach sank.
“Victor turned it off?”
“No. A storm damaged it two weeks earlier. I submitted the repair request.”
“So there’s no recording.”
“Not from that camera.”
He paused.
“I was photographing the drainage problem near the greenhouse. For the landscaper. My phone takes those moving pictures.”
Live photos.
My pulse kicked.
“Did you photograph us?”
“I didn’t realize it until I checked.”
Rachel asked him not to edit anything.
He sent the original files.
The first showed standing water.
The second showed a cracked drain cover.
In the corner of the third, beyond the greenhouse glass, were two women.
One in a cream sweater.
One in a work jacket.
The image moved for barely a second.
A hand reached out.
My shoulder jerked backward.
Then I disappeared below the frame.
It wasn’t clear enough to show everything.
But it showed more than Isabella knew existed.
I started crying before I understood why.
Nora leaned toward her screen.
“Emma?”
For two days, I had kept replaying that moment, wondering why I hadn’t moved faster or spoken differently.
Now it existed outside my head.
Rachel said quietly, “Save the original. We’ll have someone examine it.”
My phone rang.
Luca.
May you like
“Victor’s gone,” he said.
“And the payroll archive is missing.”
