“You don’t get called into his office unless something’s wrong,” she replies. “And you don’t come back looking like that unless it was personal.”
1 stare at the table for a moment, gathering my thoughts. Camille waits. She always does.
“I made a mistake,” I say finally.
Her eyes widen slightly. “You don’t do that.”
“Apparently, I do.”
I tell her what happened-about the call, the detective, the misrouted line. I don’t give her names. I don’t need to. The details are enough.
Camille listens without interrupting, fingers curled around her coffee cup.
“And he didn’t fire you,” she says when I finish.
“No.”
She exhales slowly. “That’s… surprising.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Did he ask why you were distracted?”
“No.”
Her mouth presses into a thin line “That’s worse.”
I nod. “I know.”
We sit in silence for a moment. The caf? smells like coffee and bread and normal lives. People laugh at a nearby table Someone complains about the weather.
May
“I hate him,” I say suddenly.
Camille raises an eyebrow. “Hate is a strong word.”
“So is what he does to people,” I reply. “He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t threaten. He just… looks at you like you’re a calculation. Like your entire existence is something he can subtract if it inconveniences him.”
Camille doesn’t argue.
“I know I screwed up,” I continue. “I know the rules. I follow them. I always follow them. And the one time I don’t-because a detective is implying my missing brother might be involved in something criminal-I’m standing in his office explaining myself like I’m expendable.”
“You’re not,” Camille says quietly.
I laugh under my breath. “We’re all expendable there. Some of us just take longer to replace.”
She studies me. “You okay?”
“No,” I admit. “But I will be.”
“That detective,” she says. “You believe him?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “That’s the problem. He didn’t sound like he was trying to help. He sounded like he was waiting for me to slip.”
Camille’s expression hardens. “That’s not fair.”
“Nothing about this is.”
1 take a sip of water, then another. “I hate that Rowan noticed. I hate that he’ll remember it. And I hate that a part of me is relieved I wasn’t fired.”
Camille smiles slightly. “That part makes you human.”
“I don’t have time to be human,” I say. “I have bills. I have a mother who needs care. I have a brother who’s missing. I need that job.”
Camille reaches across the table and squeezes my hand once. “You shouldn’t have to carry all of that alone.”
“I don’t,” I say. “I just don’t have a choice.”
Lunch ends too soon. It always does.
Back at the building, the glass doors slide open and the familiar weight settles over me again. I walk back to my desk, slip on my headset, and reenter the rhythm like I never left.
From the corner of my eye, I see Avery pass by-laughing, phone pressed to her ear, excitement written all over her face.
Of course.
I don’t react.
I answer another call. I log another message. I keep everything contained.But as the afternoon stretches on, I can feel it-a quiet awareness, like a spotlight I can’t see but know is trained on me.
Rowan Ashcroft didn’t fire me.
He didn’t question me.
He didn’t forget.
And that, somehow, is the most unsettling part of all.
I just know somehow this is going to bite me in the ass down the road.
Violet
The police station smells like old coffee and disinfectant.
It’s not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just tired walls and flickering fluorescent lights and a front desk that looks like it’s seen too many people walk in hoping for answers they aren’t going to get.
I give my name to the officer at the desk. He looks me up and down once, then gestures toward a row of plastic chairs.
“Detective Calder will be with you.”
I nod and sit.
I don’t check my phone. I don’t fidget. I don’t rehearse what I’m going to say, because that never helps. Men like Detective Calder don’t respond to rehearsed. They respond to cracks.
I don’t plan on giving him any.
It takes twelve minutes before he appears. I count them without meaning to.
He’s taller than I expected. Broad shoulders under a wrinkled jacket, dark hair starting to gray at the temples. His expression is neutral in the way men learn to make it when they want you to project your own guilt onto it.
“Violet Pierce,” he says.
“Yes.”
He doesn’t shake my hand. Just turns and walks.
I follow.
The interrogation room is small. One table. Two chairs. A mirror on the wall I don’t bother looking at because I already know what it’s for.
He gestures for me to sit.
I do.
He sits across from me and sets a thin file on the table between us. My name is written on the tab in black marker.
He doesn’t open it.
“You work at Ashcroft Industries,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Front desk.”
“Yes.”
O G
“Big company,” he adds.
“Yes.”
He watches me carefully. Waiting for something. I don’t give it to him.
“You’re very composed,” he says.
“I have a job that requires it.”
“That job,” he continues, “puts you in proximity to powerful people.”
I tilt my head slightly. “Is that relevant to my brother being missing?”
He smiles faintly. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Everything’s relevant when people disappear.”
He finally opens the file. Slides out a photo.
My stomach tightens, but I keep my face still.
It’s Drew.
Not recent. Not new. Just the same picture I’ve already given them. The one where he looks alive.
“You said your brother didn’t have enemies,” Calder says.
“I said I wasn’t aware of any.”
“You said he didn’t have debt.”
“I said none that I knew about.”
“You said he wasn’t involved in anything illegal.”
“I said I didn’t believe he was.”
He looks up. “You notice the pattern here, Ms. Pierce?”
I meet his gaze. “That I answered honestly based on what I knew at the time.”
“Or,” he says mildly, “that you left yourself a lot of room.”
Room.
I almost smile.
“What do you think happened to him?” he asks.
“I think he’s missing,” I reply.
He leans back. Studies me. “You don’t speculate.”
“Speculation doesn’t help.”
“No,” he agrees. “But people usually do it anyway.”
I fold my hands on the table. “I’m not most people.”
“No,” he says slowly. “You’re not.”
He slides another paper forward. A printout. Phone records.
“Your brother’s phone pinged two nights ago,” he says. “Near the industrial docks.”
My chest tightens.
I don’t move.
“That area,” he continues, “isn’t exactly known for late-night strolls.”
“Did you find his phone?” I ask.
“No.”
“Then a ping doesn’t tell you much.”
“It tells me he was near a place where people go when they don’t want to be seen.”
“Or,” I counter, “when they’re meeting someone.”
His eyes sharpen. “Meeting who?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “If I did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Silence stretches between us.
Calder watches me like he’s waiting for me to slip. To cry. To beg. To say something reckless.
I don’t.
“You live alone,” he says.
“Yes.”
“No boyfriend.”
“No.”
“No husband.”
Tue, May
“No.”
“No one who’d notice if you didn’t come home one night,” he adds casually.
My jaw tightens. “I think you’re crossing a line.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.