Chapter 1 - THE MAN BEHIND THE GLASS
The bowl of soup struck the floor before I had taken my third spoonful.
Hot broth scattered across the black and white tiles. The spoon spun beneath an empty chair. Every conversation inside the Northstar café stopped.
The manager stood over me with one hand still wrapped around the edge of the tray.
His name tag read Calvin Ross.
“I told you this is not a shelter.”
I looked down at the ruined meal.
“I told you this is not a shelter.”
I looked down at the ruined meal.
Mark Sullivan had paid for it with the last seven dollars in his account.
I did not know that yet.
At that moment, I knew only that a tired employee with a worn jacket had noticed me standing outside in the Chicago rain and brought me inside.
He did not know my name.
He did not know that I owned Northstar Table Group, the building around us, and two hundred and eighty seven restaurants across the country.
He believed I was simply hungry.
That had been enough.
Mark rose slowly from the table beside mine.
His six year old daughter, Lucy, sat beneath the window holding a paper cup between both hands. She wore a gray cardigan, scuffed shoes, and an expression far too serious for a child.
“She paid for nothing,” Calvin said. “People like her drive away customers.”
“I paid for the soup,” Mark answered.
“You have been warned.”
“For feeding someone?”
“For ignoring policy.”
Calvin grabbed Mark’s employee badge and ripped it from his jacket.
Lucy stood immediately.
“Dad?”
Mark looked toward her.
“It is all right, sweetheart.”
Calvin threw the badge onto the floor.
“No, it is not. You are fired. Take your charity case and leave.”
Mark did not argue about the job.
He stepped between Calvin and me.
“She is coming with us.”
Outside, the rain fell hard enough to blur the headlights moving along the street.
Mark opened a damaged black umbrella over Lucy and me. Half his shoulder remained exposed.
Lucy took a wrapped sandwich from her backpack and held it toward me.
“You can have mine.”
Mark’s face tightened.
“That is your dinner.”
“She does not have one.”
I accepted the sandwich.
“Thank you.”
Lucy looked at the wet sleeve of my beige suit.
“My mom used to say hungry people should not have to prove they are good.”
Mark turned away.
The grief in his face lasted less than a second.
It was still enough for me to see.
Inside the café, Calvin stood beside a man in a charcoal overcoat.
The second man kept his back toward the window.
I recognized the silver cuff links first.
Malcolm Voss.
Northstar’s chief operating officer.
My mother had trusted him.
I had trusted him.
He was supposed to be in New York negotiating a distribution contract.
Instead, he was hiding inside a Chicago café while one of my managers humiliated a woman beneath the company plaque that read:
Everyone deserves a place at the table.
I removed the black phone from my purse.
Dana Brooks answered on the first ring.
“Evelyn?”
“Shut down the North Wells location.”
Silence.
“Do you need security?”
“I need every camera recording preserved. Freeze the manager’s computer. Lock the financial system before Malcolm leaves the building.”
Mark stared at me.
Calvin pushed through the café door.
“You need to leave the property.”
Headlights turned around the corner.
Three black executive vehicles stopped at the curb.
Calvin laughed once.
The sound died when Dana stepped from the first vehicle.
Corporate attorney Nora Bennett followed her and opened a large umbrella above my head.
“Ms. Hart,” Nora said, “we found the person who buried the complaints.”
Calvin took one step backward.
Mark looked from Nora to me.
“My name is Evelyn Hart,” I told him. “I own Northstar.”
Through the café window, Malcolm finally turned.
His eyes met mine.
He did not look surprised.
He looked frightened.
Nora opened the file in her hands.
“There is another problem. The complaints were submitted under Mark Sullivan’s employee number.”
Mark shook his head.
“I sent one complaint.”
“There were twenty three.”
Nora turned the final page.
“The first was filed by your wife three days after the company reported her death.”
May you like
Mark stopped breathing.
Continue to the next part: Mark discovers that his dead wife had uncovered a secret hidden inside Northstar’s employee medical fund.
