Rafa places the hard drive beside it.
“You have one chance to be useful,” you tell Esteban. “Open the cabinet.”
He laughs, but it is thin now. “You can’t just storm in here and play vigilante because some sob story in the lobby upset you. This is a business. People get disciplined. People get docked when they violate procedure. Maybe the mother taught the kid what to say.”
You stare at him.
Then you walk around the desk, lift the framed golf photo, and smash it down hard enough that the glass breaks across the wood. Esteban jumps. The room goes silent except for the dying grind of the shredder.
“I am the business,” you say.
For the first time all night, he believes you completely.
He opens the cabinet.
Inside are files, envelopes, staffing reports, payroll adjustment forms, photocopies of IDs, signed blank disciplinary notices, and a lockbox with cash bands wrapped around bills in amounts too small to belong to hotel executives and too large to belong to chance. There is also a stack of forms marked voluntary scheduling flexibility, each one a maze of legal language designed to look harmless to exhausted workers signing under fluorescent lights at 2:00 a.m.
One of them bears Carolina Reyes’s name.
Unsigned.
You pick it up.
Under the fine print, it authorizes unpaid shift changes, retroactive attendance penalties, and “temporary housing deduction” fees that have nothing to do with any staff member sleeping in any hotel room. Whoever wrote this document built it like a trap, something broad enough to steal from anyone and confusing enough to survive a frightened signature.
You set it down very carefully.
“Who drafted these?”
Esteban tries to recover a shred of arrogance. “Everything goes through approved channels.”
“Names.”
He says nothing.
Rafa opens the lockbox and whistles once under his breath. Cash. More envelopes, each labeled with a first name and a number smaller than the wages likely owed. Petty mercy money. Just enough to keep people from exploding, not enough to free them.
Teresa appears in the doorway. “Ximena wants her mom.”
“Can Carolina move?”
“Barely. Medics want to transport her.”
You nod. “Bring them up through the lobby, not the service exit.”
Esteban hears that and turns toward you sharply. “That will create a scene.”
You almost admire the consistency. Even now, his primary concern is the elegance of the surface.
“That’s the point,” you say.
Continued on the next page
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