Chapter 5 - The Morning Shift And A Concrete Request
The morning light cut through the high arching windows of the restaurant, turning the polished dark marble tabletops into mirrors of gray daylight. Gone were the warm tabletop candle lamps and the moody low-key restaurant interior lighting of the night before. Without the shadows, the grand crystal chandelier overhead looked less like a theatrical centerpiece and more like an expensive piece of hotel decor waiting to be dusted.
I stood by the side station, my hair tied back tightly into a neat bun, smoothing down the front of my white button-down shirt and adjusting my black vest. My hands were steady, but my mind was still tethered to the manila envelope sitting on the nightstand in my apartment. The birth certificates, the old medical records, the faded photographs of a backyard I had half-forgotten—they had kept me awake until the blue light of dawn began leaking through my blinds.
When the heavy oak front door clicked open twenty minutes before our official opening, I didn't look up right away, assuming it was the delivery driver with the morning produce crate. Instead, the soft, expensive scrape of leather shoes on hardwood signaled someone else.
I turned around with a polite, practiced retail smile on my face, ready to tell whoever it was that we didn't open for lunch service until eleven. The smile died on my lips.
He sat alone at a corner table near the alcove where we had stood just twelve hours earlier. He had swapped the black shirt for a crisp, high-collared white one, though the black suit remained, impeccably tailored and completely uncreased. He looked younger in the daylight, the harsh lines around his eyes softened by the morning sun, but the intense, calculating gaze remained unchanged. He didn't have his bodyguard standing behind him today; the room was entirely empty except for the two of us and the faint hum of the refrigeration units in the back.
"You're early," I said, my voice flat, keeping my distance behind the service counter. I didn't reach for a silver tray this time.
"Time looks different when you don't sleep," he replied. His voice was lower than the dining room's morning acoustics should have allowed, carrying across the empty floor with absolute clarity. "I figured you'd be the same."
"I have a shift to prep for," I said, lifting a stack of clean linen napkins and beginning to fold them with mechanical precision. "If you're here to talk about what you said last night, the answer is that I need to go to work. People depend on this place being open, even if you clearly don't have to worry about schedules."
"I worry about plenty of things," he said, rising from the chair. He didn't rush. He moved with a deliberate, measured grace that commanded the entire room, his hands sliding smoothly into his trouser pockets. He walked slowly toward the service station, stopping a few feet away from the counter. "And right now, at the top of that list is making sure we finish what we started before the rest of the staff walks through that door."
I stopped folding. I laid the linen flat on the marble surface and looked straight into his dark eyes. "You dropped a bomb in the middle of my dining room, walked out into a town car, and now you expect me to just pick up where we left off? I spent the entire night looking at papers that prove you might share my last name, but that doesn't mean I share your life."
"I don't expect you to take my word for it," he said, holding my gaze without flinching. "That's why I'm here. I want you to come with me to a neutral location. Somewhere quiet, away from this floor, away from my offices, where we can look at everything—the real records, the full story—without interruptions."
I narrowed my eyes, crossing my arms over my vest. "A neutral location. Your idea of neutral usually involves armed men in black suits standing outside the door."
"No guards today," he said quietly, holding up empty hands for a fraction of a second to prove his point. "Just you and me. I need you to see the rest of the picture, because whatever you found in that envelope last night is only the surface of what's coming."
I stared at him, weighing the risk against the gnawing need for answers that had kept me pacing my apartment floor for hours. I wasn't going to let him pull me into his world blindly, but staying here and pretending nothing happened was no longer an option.
"I'll go," I said slowly, every word measured. "On one condition. I drive my own car behind you, or I walk out of here on my own terms when we're done. If I feel like this is a trap, I walk away, and you don't follow me."
A faint, humorless shadow of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. "Fair enough."
May you like
I didn't answer. I turned around, unpinned my service name tag, and dropped it onto the counter next to the linen napkins. I untied my black apron, let it fall into the laundry basket beneath the station, and grabbed my jacket from the back hook. Without another word, I walked past him toward the front exit, stepping out into the bright morning street to find his black town car idling softly at the curb.
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