Chapter 5 - FORTY-SIX DOLLARS
The first thing I did after seeing my name on the anonymous message was check my bank account.
Forty-six dollars and eighteen cents.
Enough for groceries if I was careful. Not enough for an attorney, not enough for a new apartment, not enough to survive a month without wages. Certainly not enough to be the woman the internet had decided was receiving secret payments from a billionaire.
My landlord had already sent a reminder about next week’s rent. I had not missed a payment in four years. I was terribly afraid this would be the first.
I stared at the screen until the numbers blurred.
Then my phone rang.
It was my sister, Clara, calling from Buffalo. She was three years younger than me and had a gift for knowing when I was upset from the first syllable I spoke.
“Sophie? Are you all right? I saw your name on something online.”
“It’s not true.”
“I didn’t ask whether it was true. I asked whether you’re all right.”
I let out a breath that came dangerously close to a sob.
“I don’t know yet.”
There was silence, and then Clara said, “Come stay with me.”
“I can’t afford the train.”
“Then I’ll buy a ticket.”
“You’re barely making rent yourself.”
“That’s what sisters are for. We’re very bad at budget discipline when it matters.”
The joke made me smile despite myself. I told her about Eleanor, the van, the false signatures, and the little cuts on my arm. I said less about the fear of losing my job than I should have.
“Listen,” Clara said. “If you need to leave, call me. Don’t stay because someone rich says you’re important.”
I promised I would remember.
The next morning I told Maya about the call and the money. She did not respond by offering sympathy alone. She asked practical questions: Was I being paid for the shifts I had worked? Had I received written notice of suspension? Did I have access to my identification documents and personal belongings? Was my temporary room at the Moretti house truly voluntary?
“I’m staying because Eleanor wants me here,” I said. “Not because Luca is making me.”
“Good,” Maya replied. “Keep knowing the difference.”
She contacted the payroll office to preserve my wages and work records. Mrs. Keene provided the schedules showing that Vanessa had kept assigning me duties after my ankle fracture. Maya also arranged an independent follow-up with my orthopedic clinic.
It seemed strange that defending myself required as much paperwork as accusing me apparently had required imagination.
In the afternoon, Luca asked whether I would join Eleanor for tea in the glass conservatory.
The conservatory was one of the few places in the mansion that did not smell of polish or expensive flowers. It smelled of wet soil and lemon trees. Eleanor kept an old wicker basket of sewing supplies beside her chair. Two faded cushions made the room feel less like a display and more like somewhere people actually sat.
I settled into a chair with my cast stretched in front of me.
Eleanor studied my face. “You’ve seen the messages.”
“Yes.”
“Did they frighten you?”
“Yes.”
She nodded as though I had given the only reasonable answer.
“When I started the Sutton House trust,” she said, “people told me I was sentimental. They said garment workers should save their own money, and that I was confusing business with responsibility.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That business doesn’t exist without the people who do the work.”
She picked up a blue square of fabric and began making small neat stitches with a blunt needle. Her hands were slower than they had once been, but they knew what they were doing.
“My husband wanted to help,” she continued. “We bought Sutton House because several retired workers had spent their lives in rooms they could lose with one bad month. The trust was meant to make that less likely. It wasn’t charity, Sophie. They had earned stability.”
I looked at the fabric in her lap. “Why blue?”
“Because the original workshop uniforms had blue hems. We used the leftover cloth for quilts. Every resident who wanted one helped sew a square.”
She turned over the fabric. On the back, in faded ink, was a name: ROSA A.
My throat tightened.
“Rosa Alvarez helped make that one,” Eleanor said. “She’d laugh if she knew Julian thought her apartment was an empty asset.”
The glass door opened. Luca stood in the doorway, phone in his hand and a dark expression on his face.
“We located the source of the audio clip,” he said.
My pulse jumped.
“Was it edited?” I asked.
“Almost certainly. The account that released it used a marketing service paid by Meridian. But the audio analyst says he needs the complete files before he can determine the cuts conclusively.”
Eleanor set down her needle. “Where did they get my voice?”
“One part appears to be from your discussion with Vanessa about maintenance costs. Another may have come from a meeting I had with Julian. We’re checking the recording permissions and device logs.”
She considered this. “I don’t like being used as a puppet.”
“Neither do I,” Luca said.
He sat beside us, the old wicker furniture looking almost comically small under his broad shoulders.
I realized then that I knew more about his reputation than his actual habits. I knew he could silence a ballroom by looking at it. I knew he wore black suits and spoke in short sentences. I did not know that he disliked tea sweetened with sugar, that he reached instinctively to straighten his mother’s blanket before sitting down, or that he looked at her sewing basket with the baffled respect of a child who had once watched her repair everything.
“Why didn’t you come when she wrote about Sutton House?” I asked.
The question startled even me.
He did not seem offended. He looked at Eleanor, then down at his hands.
“Because I gave Julian too much control over the family office,” he said. “I told myself delegating was efficient. I signed a preliminary review authorization without reading every attachment.”
“Did you know it could be used to start a sale?”
“No. But I should have asked.”
Eleanor’s needle stopped moving. “That is what I needed to hear.”
There was a long silence. I realized she had been waiting for him to admit a failure that no one else in the house dared to name.
After tea, Luca found me near the hallway lift that had recently been installed for visitors with mobility needs. He held out a folder.
“Temporary financial assistance,” he said. “No conditions. For your rent and medical bills.”
My heart thudded.
I wanted to accept so badly that for a moment I could not speak.
Then I remembered the anonymous message. The false accusation that I had taken money to influence his mother. The strange thin line between being protected and becoming dependent on the person doing the protecting.
“I appreciate it,” I said, “but I’d rather have my wages paid properly and any medical costs addressed through the appropriate process. Maya can tell us what’s fair.”
He looked at me for a moment.
Then he nodded. “That’s fair.”
I let out the breath I had been holding.
“You’re not angry?”
“Why would I be angry that you want control over your own life?”
The question hung between us, and I thought of Vanessa mocking his mother for exactly that.
“I’m still getting used to people asking,” I admitted.
Luca’s expression softened. “So am I, Sophie. Apparently I have a lot to learn.”
That evening, Maya forwarded a document from the payroll office confirming that my wages would continue through the leave period while employment and injury matters were reviewed. I called my landlord and paid the amount I owed. The balance in my account dropped, but for the first time that day I did not feel trapped.
Then a message arrived on my phone from an unknown number.
STOP HELPING THE MORETTIS. YOU’LL BE PAID TO LEAVE. TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND. SAY YOU LIED.
A second message followed, carrying a photograph of the building where Clara lived in Buffalo.
My hands went cold.
I sent both messages to Maya and Daniel immediately. I did not answer the sender. I did not call Clara until Maya confirmed it was safe to tell her what had happened and she had arranged a report to the appropriate authorities.
When I finally spoke to my sister, she was frightened but furious.
“Someone thinks they can make you disappear by waving money,” she said. “They’ve clearly never met either of us.”
I laughed shakily.
Then I looked down at the blue stitches on Eleanor’s cardigan, folded over the arm of my chair.
The people behind this were willing to falsify records, frighten an elderly woman, and threaten my family.
May you like
But they had made one mistake.
They had assumed everyone who earned a wage could be bought.
