Chapter 37 - The Price Family
Roman did not speak during the drive home.
Paige let the silence last until they reached the bakery.
Then she turned off the engine.
“Tell me.”
He looked through the windshield at the glowing shop windows.
“Daniel Price ran a commercial repair garage. Trucks, forklifts, delivery vans. My father’s people collected from businesses along that stretch.”
“And you?”
Roman closed his eyes briefly.
“I collected twice.”
The answer entered the car and stayed there.
Paige had known his history in broad shapes. Violence. Extortion. Fear presented as an operating expense.
A surname made the shape a person.
“What happened to the garage?”
“Daniel fell behind. Someone damaged equipment. After that, he sold.”
“Someone?”
“I didn’t do the damage.”
She waited.
“I knew why it happened,” Roman added. “I kept collecting.”
Outside, a woman hurried past carrying flowers beneath her coat.
Paige watched her until she disappeared.
“Was this included in your disclosures?”
“Yes. The business was identified. My lawyers provided the records we could locate.”
“And restitution?”
“An independently administered claim was offered. Daniel refused it.”
“Did you ever speak to him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“At the time, I told myself respecting his refusal meant leaving him alone.”
“And now?”
“Now I think I was relieved.”
It was not an attractive answer.
Paige trusted it more for that.
Upstairs, Ellie was asleep against Helen’s shoulder.
Roman washed his hands, changed his shirt, and took his daughter carefully.
He looked down at her for a long time.
Paige wondered whether he was imagining the day she became old enough to ask questions.
She was already imagining it herself.
The next morning, the cooperative’s emergency meeting filled every folding chair.
Some workers arrived straight from the overnight shift. Others came with spouses. One man still wore the hospital visitor sticker he had received while checking on Owen.
Paige attended as Roman’s invited support person.
She sat near the back.
Adrian stood at the front beside an insurance representative and Martin Voss, the warehouse operations manager.
Martin had a square face, a reddened neck, and the rigid posture of a man trying not to look frightened.
Adrian opened with concern for Owen.
Then he moved to continuity.
Insurance review.
Customer confidence.
Temporary suspension of receiving operations.
Possible financial exposure.
The words accumulated until Paige felt the room drifting away from the man in the hospital.
A woman in a reflective jacket raised her hand.
“Why was the closed aisle in use?”
Adrian nodded as though grateful.
“That is precisely what the independent investigation will determine.”
“Who reopened it?”
“We should avoid assigning blame prematurely.”
Roman stood.
“My transport approval has been mentioned. I want the scope clear. I approved arrival windows for incoming trucks. I did not inspect or reopen that aisle.”
Martin looked down.
Adrian’s expression remained composed.
“Nobody here is accusing you.”
“Then the board should stop describing a routing document as a safety authorization.”
Murmurs moved through the chairs.
The woman in the reflective jacket nodded once.
Her name was Evelyn Brooks. She drove the early port route and served as the cooperative’s elected treasurer.
“Let’s preserve the original documents,” she said. “All versions. No one should be correcting yesterday’s records today.”
The insurance representative agreed.
Martin’s face lost color.
Paige noticed.
So did Nora, who had come at the request of several worker members to help them understand the records they were entitled to receive.
Nora did not open her laptop.
First, she asked who had retained the outside investigator.
Adrian named a firm.
“Who selected them?”
“The executive committee.”
“Any existing business relationship?”
A pause.
“They’ve worked with our financing partners.”
Nora folded her hands.
“Then disclose that to the members and let the full board decide whether it affects independence.”
Adrian’s smile thinned.
“We are not all enemies here, Ms. Reed.”
“Then that should be a very easy question to answer.”
After the meeting, Evelyn approached Roman near the loading gate.
“You really didn’t know they reopened it?”
“No.”
She studied him.
“I voted against bringing you into this company.”
“I remember.”
“I still think some people liked your name because it scared customers into paying.”
Roman said nothing.
“But Owen voted yes,” she continued. “Said a man ought to be allowed to work differently if he actually worked differently.”
Roman looked toward the damaged warehouse.
“He never told me.”
“Probably didn’t want your gratitude interfering with his lunch.”
That nearly produced a smile.
Then Evelyn handed him a copy of the previous month’s board minutes.
“Read the property proposal.”
He glanced down.
Breakwater Freight Holdings.
A private logistics group interested in acquiring the cooperative’s warehouse lease and contracts.
“The members rejected this.”
“By four votes,” Evelyn said. “Adrian said we’d regret being sentimental.”
Paige read over Roman’s shoulder.
The proposed purchase price had been low even before the accident.
Now the warehouse was closed.
Now customers were nervous.
Now the same offer might look like rescue.
“Has Breakwater contacted the board again?” she asked.
Evelyn’s expression answered first.
“This morning.”
At the hospital, Owen remained sedated.
Mara met Paige in the hallway.
“I didn’t ask you to come.”
“I know. I brought the worker support coordinator’s number. You can contact her directly, or not.”
Paige held out one card.
No basket.
No cameras.
No envelope large enough to change the conversation.
Mara took it.
“Is this Roman’s money?”
“The program has several funding sources and its own rules. Your father’s care won’t depend on speaking to either of us.”
Mara read the card.
Then she looked up.
“My grandfather says your husband came to his garage in a gray coat.”
Paige waited.
“He remembers the coat more clearly than what Roman said.”
“People remember strange things when they’re frightened.”
“He wasn’t strange. He was terrified.”
“I meant the details. Not him.”
Mara’s shoulders lowered a fraction.
Paige accepted that fraction without reaching for more.
“He told Dad not to take the job,” Mara said. “Said men like Roman didn’t change. They changed the sign over the door.”
“What did your father say?”
“That he was tired of letting the Gallows decide where he could earn a living.”
Paige felt that land.
Owen had not joined because he trusted Roman.
He had joined because he wanted his choices back.
There was dignity in that which no redemption story had the right to borrow.
That night, Roman sat at the kitchen table reading the board minutes.
Ellie slept in the next room.
Paige set two mugs down.
“Don’t turn helping Owen into a way of asking his family to forgive you.”
Roman looked up.
“I won’t.”
“You may want to without noticing.”
He absorbed that.
Then he nodded.
“You’re right.”
His phone vibrated.
A message from Evelyn.
A reporter has something. Call me.
Before he could dial, Paige’s phone lit up too.
Nora.
Below her name was a link to a video.
Roman appeared on the screen inside the warehouse, wearing the blue shirt Paige had ironed the previous Tuesday.
His voice was unmistakable.
“Keep it moving. We cannot afford another shutdown.”
The clip ended.
Beneath it, a headline was already gathering comments.
GALLOW ORDERED OPERATIONS TO CONTINUE BEFORE WORKER WAS CRUSHED.
Roman stared at the screen.
Paige looked at him.
“Tell me there’s more.”
“There is.”
May you like
Outside, the bakery pulled down its metal gate.
The sound rolled through the apartment like thunder.
