Chapter 3 - Six O’Clock Without the Uniform
The message should have ended Petra’s new career before it began.
Instead, it made her angry.
Fear came first.
It tightened her stomach, dried her mouth, and sent her eyes automatically toward the nearest exit.
Anger followed.
Anger was easier.
She had spent too many years being afraid because other people had more money, more influence, more physical strength, more official titles, or simply louder voices.
She was tired of giving strangers that kind of ownership over her body.
Cassian took the phone back.
“Who knows you’re here?”
“My mother.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“Your cleaning supervisor?”
“She thinks I called out sick.”
Mara was already typing.
“Security footage from the lobby. Executive elevator. Service corridor. We’ll determine who could see her arrival.”
Petra looked at Cassian.
“You’re treating this like an internal threat.”
“It is.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The message referenced your job.”
“Anyone who saw me in the lobby could know I work here.”
Cassian shook his head.
“Front-desk security doesn’t know what position you have.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I own the building management company.”
Of course he did.
Petra rubbed her forehead.
“I’m beginning to miss the mop.”
“You can leave.”
Cassian said it without challenge.
That irritated her even more.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep looking at the door.”
“I look at exits automatically.”
Cassian studied her, apparently filing that information somewhere.
Mara interrupted.
“Lobby video is clean. Petra entered alone. Nobody appears to photograph her.”
“What about the sixty-eighth-floor cameras?”
“Checking.”
Petra returned to the documents.
Cassian stared at her.
“What are you doing?”
“Working.”
“You just received an anonymous message.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“If whoever sent it wanted me gone, they could have written ‘leave.’”
Cassian’s head tilted slightly.
“They wrote ‘she doesn’t clean.’ That isn’t a threat. It’s an observation.”
Mara stopped typing.
Petra continued.
“They’re telling someone I’m not here as cleaning staff.”
Cassian’s eyes narrowed.
“A report.”
“Exactly.”
“To whom?”
“That seems like the important question.”
Cassian looked at Mara.
“Find the destination chain.”
“I’ll try.”
For three days Petra read.
The first day she worked at Meridian until two in the morning.
The second she returned at noon.
By the third, she had developed a system.
She marked ordinary linguistic errors in blue.
Cultural distortions in yellow.
Changes that benefited Drolett Maritime in green.
Changes that harmed it in red.
By Friday evening, the folders looked wounded.
Red everywhere.
Not enough to be obvious.
That was what frightened her.
No interpreter had repeatedly invented entire conversations. No one had mistranslated simple numbers or company names.
The distortions appeared at pressure points.
When a foreign partner demanded guarantees, the wording became softer.
When Cassian offered conditional concessions, his conditions disappeared.
When rivals hinted at knowledge they should not possess, those hints were transformed into vague industry gossip.
Someone was not merely changing sentences.
Someone was managing Cassian’s understanding of the world.
Petra spread the documents across the boardroom table.
“There’s a system.”
Cassian stood opposite her.
“Show me.”
She pointed to a Portuguese negotiation.
“Porto. Eleven months ago. Your representative said terminal expansion depended on local approval. The interpreter translated it as expansion was already authorized.”
“That mistake nearly cost us a government contract.”
“Same pattern here.”
She opened a Ukrainian transcript.
“The Odessa discussion. They warned you one subcontractor had political exposure. The English version says ‘regulatory complexity.’”
“Who translated?”
“Different person.”
Cassian folded his arms.
Petra opened the Serbian file.
“Belgrade. Two years ago. The shipper said someone was asking questions about your container routes. The translator called them routine compliance inquiries.”
“Different interpreter again.”
“Yes.”
“So how can it be coordinated?”
“Because interpreters don’t choose what meetings they attend.”
Mara, standing near the screen, immediately understood.
“Scheduling.”
Petra nodded.
“Someone doesn’t need nine corrupt interpreters. They need control over which interpreter gets which meeting and what briefing that interpreter receives beforehand.”
Cassian looked at Mara.
“Who manages language vendors?”
“International relations.”
“Under?”
Mara hesitated.
“Victor Saye.”
There it was again.
Victor.
Petra remembered him more clearly now.
Early forties.
Perfect posture.
Silver tie.
The kind of face that appeared sympathetic without revealing actual sympathy.
Cassian pulled out a chair.
“Victor has been with me twelve years.”
Petra heard something beneath the sentence.
Not disbelief.
Injury.
She chose her words carefully.
“Twelve years gives someone more opportunity, not less.”
Cassian’s eyes met hers.
“You think he did it.”
“I think his department sits at the intersection of every suspicious translation.”
“That isn’t proof.”
“No.”
“What would be?”
“A mistake.”
“Whose?”
“His.”
Petra leaned back.
“People who manipulate communication eventually assume nobody else is listening.”
Cassian glanced toward the papers.
“What do you suggest?”
“Nothing.”
That surprised him.
“Nothing?”
“If Victor is involved and you change procedure now, he’ll know you found the pattern.”
“So we continue as usual.”
“Yes.”
“And wait.”
Petra nodded.
Cassian’s expression said he disliked waiting.
Petra almost smiled.
“You hired someone who listens. Listening requires patience.”
“I’m reconsidering the arrangement.”
“No, you’re not.”
This time he actually smiled.
It was brief.
It changed his face enough that Petra understood why so many newspapers used older photographs where he looked severe.
A smiling Cassian looked younger.
More dangerous in a different way.
Mara’s phone rang.
She answered, listened, then turned toward them.
“Security traced the anonymous Polish message.”
Petra straightened.
“And?”
“It came from a prepaid device.”
“Useless,” Cassian said.
“Not entirely.”
Mara walked to the display and opened a building access log.
“The device connected briefly to Meridian’s guest Wi-Fi when the message was sent.”
Cassian’s eyes hardened.
“What floor?”
“Sixty-seven.”
Petra looked upward instinctively, though only the ceiling was there.
“What’s on sixty-seven?”
“International relations,” Mara said.
Victor’s department.
The room went silent.
Cassian’s phone vibrated again.
Another message.
This time the sender was known.
Branko Tomic.
Cassian read it.
Then handed the phone to Petra.
The Serbian was short.
Ne veruj čoveku koji ti daje reči koje želiš da čuješ.
Petra translated.
“Don’t trust the man who gives you the words you want to hear.”
Cassian looked toward the windows.
“Branko enjoys being cryptic.”
“He thinks direct warnings get people killed.”
Cassian turned.
“How do you know?”
“Because that sentence is something older Serbian men say when they believe the listener is already in danger.”
Mara exhaled.
“Wonderful.”
Cassian typed a response.
Petra watched.
“What did you write?”
“That I want to meet.”
A reply came almost immediately.
Cassian handed it back.
Petra read.
Her pulse slowed.
“What?”
Cassian asked.
“He says no.”
“Why?”
Petra read the second sentence.
Then the third.
“He says the last meeting was already seen by the wrong people.”
Cassian went still.
“And?”
Petra looked at him.
“He says if he meets you again, somebody will interpret it as choosing sides.”
Mara frowned.
“Against whom?”
Petra continued reading.
There was one final line.
She wished there were not.
“Branko says he will speak to only one person.”
Cassian’s expression hardened.
“Who?”
Petra did not need to translate the name.
It was written plainly.
Petra Vance.
That was how, less than seventy-two hours after being told not to wear her cleaning uniform, Petra found herself scheduled to meet one of Eastern Europe’s most feared freight magnates alone.
May you like
And Branko Tomic had requested that Cassian Drolett not be told where.
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