Chapter 5 - The Signature
For several seconds, I just stared.
There was my name.
Elena Hayes.
Under a paragraph claiming I had agreed to participate in a paid birthday performance involving “temporary cosmetic alterations.”
“Did you sign it?” Rachel asked.
“No.”
“Good. Then we start there.”
Dominic stood behind my chair.
I could feel him reading the sentence again.
Temporary cosmetic alterations.
A clean little phrase for six men holding me down.
The document was dated Friday at 8:43 p.m.
At 8:43, I had been carrying a tray of oysters to table twelve.
Dennis had yelled at me because one order was missing lemon.
I remembered the lemon more clearly than anything else.
“That signature came from somewhere,” Rachel said.
“My hiring forms.”
“Possibly.”
She opened my old payroll emails.
We found my direct-deposit authorization.
My signature leaned slightly upward. The final stroke under Hayes dipped and curled.
So did the one on the consent form.
Exactly.
Rachel enlarged both.
“Don’t call this proven yet,” she said. “But it’s something an examiner can compare.”
Mia leaned forward.
“Dennis asked me to scan employee files last week.”
“Whose?”
“All of ours.”
The room went quiet.
Dominic walked to the window.
I knew that posture.
He was deciding which call would hurt the most.
“Dom.”
He turned.
“Stay here.”
“I am here.”
“Then stay with me. Don’t go somewhere in your head where I can’t follow.”
His shoulders dropped slightly.
“All right.”
Graham Hale arrived at noon.
He hadn’t been invited.
Our housekeeper left him in the entryway until Dominic asked me what I wanted.
“Let him in.”
Graham wore a navy suit and the worried expression of a man whose money had stopped working normally.
“Elena,” he said. “What happened was disgraceful.”
“Then tell your son.”
“He’s frightened.”
“So was I.”
He sat without being asked.
“I’ve come to make this right.”
Rachel placed the forged agreement on the table.
“Did you send this?”
Graham looked at it.
For half a second, his expression changed.
Then it was gone.
“I’m not involved in the club’s internal paperwork.”
He reached into his jacket and placed an envelope beside it.
Inside was an offer for two million dollars.
At the bottom, beneath the confidentiality terms, was a sentence requiring me to withdraw my allegations.
May you like
Graham folded his hands.
“Before you answer, you should know who owns part of that club.”
