“Ryan will say I lied. He’ll say I caused trouble. Men like him always find a way.”
Mrs. Alvarez closed the kit with a soft snap.
“Ryan Mercer has found ways before.”
I looked up.
She regretted the words immediately. I could see it.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
She folded the cardigan over my shoulders instead of answering.
“It means,” she said slowly, “that some people become skilled at surviving near men other people refuse to examine closely.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“There were others?”
Mrs. Alvarez met my eyes, then looked toward the locked door.
“Not like this,” she said, but the way she said it told me she was choosing each word from a crowded room of unsaid things. “Complaints. Bad tempers. Girls who quit suddenly. A server who transferred after a gala last winter. Nothing anyone could hold in their hands.”
I felt cold.
“And Mr. Caldwell didn’t know?”
She sighed. “Mr. Caldwell knows numbers, contracts, acquisitions, legal threats, and the exact value of every painting in the west hall. He has not always known people.”
That sounded painfully true.
Ethan Caldwell had built towers, bought companies, survived boardroom wars, and appeared on magazine covers with the distant stare of a man already thinking past the photographer. But downstairs, in the staff corridors, small fears had gathered like dust in corners he never entered.
Until tonight.
