Chapter 3: Her Father's Name
Richard stared at the photograph for a long time.
His hand moved toward it, then stopped.
"What is your name?" he asked.
His voice came out smaller than he intended.
"Elena," she said.
"Elena Voss."
The name hit him like a door swinging open onto a room he had sealed shut.
Voss.
He hadn't heard that name spoken aloud in fifteen years.
He had made sure of it.
"You need to leave," he said.
"I'm not going anywhere, Mr.
Calloway."
"I'll call the police."
"Go ahead." She folded her hands in front of her, perfectly still.
"Tell them a maid disarmed an intruder in your hallway.
I'm sure they'll find that very interesting.
And while they're here, I can show them what else I found."
Richard's jaw tightened.
"What does that mean?"
Elena reached into her apron again.
This time she placed a folded document on the table beside the photograph.
Richard didn't touch it.
He didn't need to.
He could see enough of the letterhead to know what it was.
"Where did you get that?" he said.
"My father kept copies of everything," she said.
"He trusted the wrong people his entire life.
But he wasn't careless."
Richard looked at her for the first time as something other than a maid.
She was in her mid-thirties.
Dark eyes.
Completely composed.
She had the stillness of someone who had rehearsed this moment so many times that the real version no longer frightened her.
"Your father was a business partner," Richard said carefully.
"What happened to him was a tragedy.
I had nothing to do with it."
"You were the last person in the building that night."
"That was investigated.
I was cleared."
"You were protected," she said.
"There's a difference."
Richard moved toward the side table where his phone sat.
Elena didn't stop him.
She simply said, "Before you call anyone, you should know that I'm not alone in this."
He stopped.
"There are two other people who know I'm here tonight," she continued.
"If I don't contact them within the hour, everything I've collected goes directly to the county prosecutor's office.
Every document.
Every record.
Every conversation your assistant thought he was having privately for the last six months."
Richard turned slowly.
"You've been recording my household."
"I've been doing my job," she said.
"Very thoroughly."
The intruder on the floor groaned and shifted.
Neither of them looked at him.
"Who sent you?" Richard asked.
Elena picked up the photograph and slid it back into her pocket.
"No one sent me.
I came here because fifteen years ago, my father walked into a meeting with you and never came home.
His company was dissolved the next morning.
His accounts were frozen by the afternoon.
And by the time I was old enough to ask questions, every person who might have answered them had either moved away, changed their story, or stopped returning calls."
"That is not what happened."
"Then tell me what did."
Richard said nothing.
Elena nodded slowly, as though his silence was the answer she had expected all along.
"I'll be in the kitchen," she said.
"When you're ready to talk, you know where to find me."
She walked down the hallway without looking back.
Richard stood alone beside the table, the document still sitting where she had left it, and realized that for the first time in fifteen years, someone had walked into his house knowing exactly what they were looking for.
And she hadn't left empty-handed.
He picked up his phone.
His first instinct was to call his lawyer.
May you like
His second instinct made him put the phone back down.
Because if Elena Voss had been inside this house for three months, she had already heard every call he'd made.
