Chapter 9 - The Baby Bottle.
Elena stared at Adrian’s forged signature and understood something that changed the room.
He was not watching a crime that belonged only to employees anymore.
Someone had put his name inside it too.
Daniel sat back down.
His confidence returned in a different form.
“You see the problem now.”
Adrian looked at him.
“What problem?”
“That drive contains fabricated records designed to implicate senior leadership.”
Victor shook his head.
“You told me Adrian never reviewed the fund.”
Daniel ignored him.
“You cannot authenticate anything on that device tonight.”
“That is true.”
Adrian’s agreement surprised everyone.
He closed the laptop.
“So no one touches it again except investigators.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
The police collected the drive as potential evidence.
Elena looked at the clock and suddenly stood.
“I have to go.”
Adrian thought she was frightened by the investigation.
Then she pointed to the bottle.
“Noah’s with my neighbor.”
Her voice shook.
“He has enough formula for one more feeding.”
Daniel glanced at the unsigned settlement still on the table.
“Thirty thousand dollars would solve that problem.”
Elena turned on him so sharply that even Victor flinched.
“My son is not a bargaining chip.”
The room went quiet.
Adrian picked up the baby bottle and handed it to her.
“I’ll have payroll issue the three hundred dollars tonight if the time sheet can be verified.”
Elena looked exhausted.
“Not from you personally.”
“It won’t be.”
“I don’t want a favor.”
“It won’t be one.”
Maribel and Caleb both confirmed the hours in writing.
A kitchen scheduling log confirmed Elena had been assigned the three shifts.
At 10:47 p.m., payroll produced an emergency corrected wage statement.
Three hundred dollars was transferred to Elena through the company’s legitimate payroll system, with taxes and the correction documented separately.
Elena stared at the confirmation on her phone.
She did not smile.
She just whispered, “Thank God.”
Then her phone rang again.
It was her neighbor.
Elena answered immediately.
“What happened?”
The color drained from her face as she listened.
Adrian stood.
“What is it?”
Elena lowered the phone.
“Someone went to my apartment.”
The officers looked up.
“My neighbor saw a man at my door asking where I was.”
She clutched the canvas bag against her body.
“He said he was from the restaurant and needed to retrieve company property.”
Victor looked toward Daniel.
Daniel’s face stayed blank.
The taller officer asked Elena for the address and called for a unit to check the building.
Five minutes later, the response came back.
Her apartment door had been forced open.
Nothing obvious had been stolen.
But drawers had been emptied onto the floor.
Closets had been searched.
And the cardboard box where Elena kept every piece of mail connected to the fake bank account was gone.
Elena looked down at the brown canvas bag.
The copies she had carried into Bellamy House were now the only records she still possessed.
Before leaving the restaurant that night, Elena stopped near the table where Adrian had been sitting when the bottle rolled to his shoe.
The marble had already been polished clean.
There was no mark showing where she had fallen.
That bothered her more than she expected.
Places like Bellamy House could erase a scene in minutes and look untouched by morning.
She took a photograph of the empty floor.
Not for social media.
Not for revenge.
She wanted a record that something had happened there even after the shine returned.
May you like
Adrian saw her taking it.
He did not ask her to delete it.
