Chapter 2 - The Woman Behind the Apron
Chloe did not return with another whiskey.
She returned with the folded piece of paper she had hidden inside her locker three nights earlier.
Adam noticed immediately.
His gaze dropped from her face to the document in her hand.
“What’s that?”
Chloe looked toward David.
The businessman was still sitting across from Adam, his right knee bouncing beneath the table.
“I think you should ask him.”
David stopped moving.
Adam’s expression did not change.
“Sit down, Chloe.”
“I’m working.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
“And that,” Chloe said, “is exactly the kind of sentence that makes people hate you.”
Kareem coughed.
It sounded suspiciously like he was hiding a laugh.
Adam turned his head.
Kareem became stone.
Chloe pulled an empty chair away from the table and sat.
Every instinct she possessed told her this was a terrible idea.
She placed the folded paper between herself and Adam.
“I found this beneath table fourteen Tuesday night.”
David stared at it.
His face changed.
Only slightly.
But Chloe noticed.
So did Adam.
“Open it,” Adam said.
Chloe unfolded the paper.
It was a photocopied cargo manifest.
Most of the document was ordinary English shipping terminology.
Container weights.
Departure dates.
Port codes.
But someone had added handwritten Arabic notes in the margins.
Adam reached for it.
Chloe put her hand over the page.
His eyes lifted.
“You said you wanted me to listen,” she said. “So listen.”
Nobody spoke.
“The handwritten part uses two dialects.”
Adam glanced down.
“One person?”
“Probably pretending to be.”
David shifted.
Chloe pointed to the top margin.
“This phrase is Gulf Arabic. But this one uses a Lebanese construction. Whoever wrote it wanted the notes to look like casual instructions from different people.”
Adam’s face became completely still.
“Why?”
“To make it harder to identify the author.”
David laughed too quickly.
“This is ridiculous. We’re taking intelligence advice from a waitress now?”
Chloe looked at him.
“No. You’re taking linguistic advice from someone with a master’s degree in applied linguistics.”
David’s mouth closed.
Several people stared.
Adam did not look surprised.
That annoyed Chloe.
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“From what?”
“You corrected Kareem’s pronunciation.”
Kareem frowned.
“I said two words.”
“And she looked offended.”
Chloe almost smiled despite herself.
Adam tapped the page.
“Continue.”
She pointed to a handwritten notation.
“This says the containers are supposed to be transferred before you discover the discrepancy.”
David stood.
“That could mean anything.”
Adam raised one hand.
David sat again.
Chloe continued.
“Three nights ago, I didn’t know who Adam was in the note.”
Everyone at the table looked at her.
She shrugged.
“I serve hundreds of people.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed.
“But tonight?”
“Tonight David mentioned the same warehouse number.”
Color drained from David’s face.
Adam slowly turned toward him.
David immediately raised both hands.
“It’s a coincidence.”
“Probably,” Chloe said.
David looked relieved.
Then she added, “Except the customs reference number matches too.”
His relief vanished.
Adam picked up the manifest.
He studied it for several seconds.
Then he handed it to Kareem.
“Call Rafi.”
Kareem moved away.
David leaned forward.
“Adam, listen to me. This woman has no idea what she’s talking about.”
Chloe stood.
“You’re right about one thing.”
David looked at her.
“I don’t want any part of this.”
She removed the five hundred dollars Adam had placed near the spilled glass and pushed it toward him.
“I’m going back to work.”
Adam caught her wrist.
Not hard.
But firm enough to stop her.
Chloe’s eyes dropped to his hand.
He released her immediately.
Something passed through his expression.
Regret.
“Wait.”
“I’ve done enough waiting tonight.”
“If that paper is what you think it is, you’re involved whether you want to be or not.”
Chloe laughed once.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s not.”
“Coming from you, everything sounds like a threat.”
Adam stood.
The room changed when he did.
He was taller than Chloe had realized.
Not huge, but composed in a way that made other men instinctively create space around him.
He lowered his voice.
“If someone knows you found that document, they may assume you understood it.”
“No one knows.”
David stared at the table.
Chloe saw it.
Adam did too.
They both turned toward him.
David swallowed.
“I mentioned the waitress.”
“To whom?” Adam asked.
“No one important.”
Adam’s voice became frighteningly soft.
“To whom?”
David looked toward the exit.
Kareem had already returned.
He positioned himself between David and the nearest path out.
David’s shoulders collapsed.
“My contact.”
“What contact?”
“I don’t know his real name.”
Adam smiled without humor.
“You have ten seconds to remember.”
Chloe pushed her chair back.
“I’m leaving.”
Adam turned.
“You shouldn’t go home alone.”
“I’ve survived three years without your security detail.”
“That was before tonight.”
“What exactly happens tonight?”
Adam looked toward David.
“I intend to find out.”
Chloe should have been terrified.
She was.
But beneath the fear came something else.
Anger.
Not only at Adam.
At herself.
She had spent years pretending that the woman she used to be no longer existed.
Before the Midas Club, Chloe had translated intelligence reports.
She had lived inside shades of meaning.
She knew how a regional phrase could expose where a speaker grew up.
How one misplaced verb could reveal that two messages supposedly written by different people were actually written by the same hand.
She had been good at it.
Very good.
Then one government restructuring eliminated her unit.
Her father got sick six months later.
Medical bills devoured her savings.
By the time he died, Chloe had gone from international analyst to temp worker, then from temp worker to cocktail waitress because rent did not care about pride.
She had told herself that chapter of her life was closed.
Now one stupid whiskey glass had torn it open.
Kareem returned to Adam’s side.
“Warehouse seventeen was emptied twenty minutes ago.”
Adam’s gaze sharpened.
“By whom?”
“Authorization came from your office.”
“I gave no authorization.”
Kareem’s expression hardened.
“Then someone forged it.”
David suddenly stood.
He did not make it two steps.
Kareem caught him by the shoulder and pushed him back into the booth.
Chloe flinched.
Adam noticed.
“Take him downstairs,” he said.
David panicked.
“Adam, please. I have children.”
Adam’s face did not move.
“Then you should have considered them before betraying me.”
Two guards took David away.
Chloe watched until the doors closed behind them.
“Are you going to kill him?”
Adam looked at her.
The directness surprised him.
“You ask dangerous questions.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“No.”
Chloe waited.
Adam sighed.
“No, I’m not going to kill him.”
“Why do I not believe you?”
“Because you decided what kind of man I was before I answered.”
Chloe stared at him.
“You insulted me in a foreign language because you assumed I was too stupid to understand you.”
A flicker of shame appeared in his eyes.
He looked away first.
“That was wrong.”
Chloe blinked.
She had expected denial.
Not that.
Adam continued.
“I was angry about the shipment. I took it out on you.”
“So you’re apologizing?”
His jaw tightened as though the word physically hurt.
“I am stating that I was wrong.”
“That is almost an apology.”
“It is the closest many people have ever received.”
“Then many people should demand better.”
Again, that almost-smile.
Before Adam could reply, Kareem’s phone rang.
He listened.
His expression darkened.
“What?”
Adam asked.
Kareem looked at Chloe.
That was enough to make her stomach drop.
“What happened?”
Kareem spoke quietly.
“Someone accessed the employee records fifteen minutes ago.”
Adam’s eyes hardened.
“Whose?”
Kareem continued looking at Chloe.
“Hers.”
The air seemed to leave the room.
Chloe’s first thought was absurdly ordinary.
Her apartment.
Her cheap building.
The broken lock on the downstairs entrance that the landlord had promised to fix.
Her name and home address were in the employee database.
Adam stepped toward her.
“Where do you live?”
“No.”
“Chloe.”
“I’m not giving you my address.”
“They already have it.”
She froze.
That sentence landed differently.
Adam took his coat from the chair.
“You’re not going home tonight.”
She laughed nervously.
“I absolutely am.”
“Someone involved in stealing from me just searched for you.”
“Your problem.”
“It became yours the moment David told them about the waitress.”
Chloe hated that he was right.
She hated even more that fear was beginning to overpower pride.
“My apartment has nothing worth stealing.”
“They aren’t looking for your furniture.”
The bluntness of it silenced her.
Adam turned to Kareem.
“Have two men check the building.”
Chloe stepped between them.
“No.”
Adam stared at her.
“You don’t get to send armed strangers into my home.”
“They won’t enter.”
“You don’t control my life because somebody spilled whiskey.”
“No,” Adam said. “I’m trying to protect it because someone else may want to end it.”
Chloe’s throat tightened.
He softened his voice.
“You can hate me tomorrow.”
“I already hate you tonight.”
“Excellent. Then your schedule is clear.”
She almost laughed.
Almost.
Instead, Chloe looked around the luxurious room.
Thirty minutes earlier, her biggest problem had been a four-hundred-dollar heating bill.
Now men connected to an international shipping conspiracy might know where she slept.
“How did this become my night?”
Adam looked at the broken crystal still glittering beneath the table.
“You dropped a glass.”
“David hit the tray.”
“Yes.”
“And you insulted me.”
“Yes.”
“And now someone may be coming to my apartment.”
“Yes.”
Chloe stared at him.
“You are the worst customer I have ever served.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I heard.”
That time, Kareem definitely smiled.
Adam picked up the five hundred dollars and held it toward Chloe.
She shook her head.
“No.”
“For the heat.”
Her eyes snapped to his.
“How do you know about that?”
Adam nodded toward Arthur, who stood nervously twenty feet away.
“Your manager was attempting to convince me not to have you fired. He mentioned you needed the shifts.”
Humiliation burned through her.
“I don’t want charity.”
“It isn’t.”
“Then what?”
Adam held her gaze.
“Advance payment.”
“For what?”
He placed the money on the table.
“For helping me understand who is stealing from me.”
Chloe slowly shook her head.
“I’m not joining your criminal empire.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You were about to.”
“No.” Adam looked at the manifest. “I’m asking you to translate one document.”
“And then?”
“We make sure you’re safe.”
“And then?”
“You go home.”
Chloe studied him.
There were men in the city who would have accepted that promise without question.
Those men were afraid of Adam.
Chloe was afraid too.
But fear had never made her stupid.
“One document,” she said.
Adam nodded.
“One.”
“No threats.”
“Agreed.”
“No grabbing me.”
His expression shifted.
“Agreed.”
“No more Arabic insults.”
Kareem looked away to hide his smile.
Adam exhaled.
“Agreed.”
Chloe picked up the manifest.
She read the handwritten lines again.
Then she stopped.
Something had bothered her earlier.
A phrase near the bottom.
She had assumed it was slang.
Now she understood.
“Oh, no.”
Adam stepped closer.
“What?”
Chloe pointed to three handwritten words.
“This doesn’t say warehouse transfer.”
“What does it say?”
“It says funeral transfer.”
Adam’s face lost all expression.
Chloe continued reading.
Her heart began pounding.
“There’s a date.”
“When?”
She looked at him.
“Tomorrow.”
“Location?”
Chloe swallowed.
“The Midas Club.”
Every conversation around them seemed to disappear.
Adam turned slowly toward the ceiling cameras.
Then toward the crowded room.
A club filled with people who knew his routines.
His guards.
His habits.
His table.
Someone had not only been stealing from him.
May you like
Someone was planning to turn the Midas Club into a grave.
And Chloe had just read the invitation.
