Chapter 3 - THE MIDNIGHT REPORT
The private office on the forty-seventh floor was dark except for the amber glow of a single desk lamp.
Rafael Santoro sat behind his massive walnut desk, reviewing shipping manifests from the northern docks.
The door opened without a knock.
Abel Ferraro stepped inside.
His face was pale, his shoulders rigid under his tailored suit.
Rafe didn't look up from his papers.
"You're back late, Abel."
"Boss," Abel said, his voice unusually strained.
Rafe finally raised his eyes.
The stillness in his face was absolute.
"Speak."
"I was walking past the second-floor service alcove ten minutes ago," Abel began, swallowing hard.
"I saw Miss Whitlock."
Rafe's pen paused over the margin of the manifest.
"Elena?"
"Yes, boss."
Abel took a slow, heavy breath.
"She stopped one of the banquet waitresses. Marin Hollis."
Rafe's eyes darkened by a fraction of a shade.
"And?"
"She struck her across the face, boss."
The silence in the office grew so heavy that the hum of the air conditioning sounded like a roaring engine.
Rafe did not stand up.
He did not smash his fist against the desk.
He simply set his black steel pen down horizontally across the blotting paper, exactly parallel to the edge of the wood.
"Did the girl fight back?" Rafe asked softly.
"No," Abel answered, his voice dropping.
"She took the blow. She didn't say a word. She just dropped her hand behind her back."
Rafe remembered that motion from the bar area.
The quick, defensive slip of the left hand.
The instinctive retreat of a person who had learned long ago that shielding themselves was the only survival skill that mattered.
"Where is Elena now?" Rafe asked.
"In her suite on the third residential floor," Abel replied.
"And the waitress?"
"Downstairs in the staff locker room, finishing her shift."
Rafe stood up slowly.
He buttoned his suit jacket with deliberate, unhurried movements.
He walked around the desk, stopping beside Abel.
"Bring Elena to the ground-floor receiving room in ten minutes," Rafe said.
"And bring Marin Hollis there as well."
Abel nodded once, his expression grim.
"Boss... she's the senator's daughter. The alliance with the Whitlock family—"
"The alliance," Rafe interrupted, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper, "does not exempt anyone from the foundation of this house."
He turned and walked toward the private elevator.
The doors slid open with a soft metallic sigh.
May you like
And as Rafe stepped inside, Abel knew that the peace the Santoro family had maintained for a decade was about to shatter into a thousand irreparable pieces.
THE END OF CHAPTER 3
