Chapter 2 - The Contract on His Desk
The next afternoon, Lucy was organizing housekeeping invoices when Dante entered the service office.
Every employee disappeared within thirty seconds.
Lucy looked around.
“You scare people.”
“They’re busy.”
“They were folding towels.”
“They became busy.”
He placed a document beside her hand.
Lucy stared at it.
“What’s this?”
“Employment agreement.”
She opened it.
Her salary had nearly tripled.
Her debt payments were frozen while she worked directly for him.
Her responsibilities were limited to translation, document review, and negotiation support.
Most surprisingly, there was a clause allowing her to refuse assignments outside those duties.
Lucy turned another page.
Then another.
Dante waited.
“You read everything?”
“My father once signed something without reading everything.”
Dante’s expression changed slightly.
“That explains the debt.”
“It explains why I read.”
She found the termination clause.
Dante could dismiss her without cause at any time.
Lucy picked up a pen.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing something.”
She crossed out the clause and rewrote it.
Either party could terminate employment with notice unless there was documented misconduct.
Dante looked at the page.
“You’re negotiating my contract?”
“Mine.”
A beat passed.
Then he took the pen.
Signed beside the change.
Lucy looked up.
“That easily?”
“If I objected, I wouldn’t have signed.”
Two hours later, she sat across from him in his study while a Corsican supplier spoke through a secure video call.
Dante’s French was good.
His coastal dialect was not.
The supplier smiled pleasantly.
Then quietly called Dante a chained dog and suggested they add customs “adjustments” hidden inside warehouse fees.
Lucy wrote one line on a notepad.
He is insulting you because he thinks you cannot hear the trap.
She slid it across the desk.
Dante read it.
His expression remained unchanged.
“Pierre,” he said in French, “the arrangement is finished.”
The supplier’s smile faltered.
“Dante, perhaps you misunderstood—”
“No.”
Lucy translated the rest.
“You have twenty-four hours to recover the deposit.”
Pierre switched rapidly into regional slang.
Lucy answered him in the same dialect.
His face went blank.
Dante glanced at her.
Lucy translated.
“He says he suddenly regrets insulting the chained dog.”
Dante ended the call.
By Thursday evening, Lucy had corrected his Russian, French, and Spanish.
At ten that night, she was seated beside him in the glass-walled boardroom at Moretti Tower.
Below them, Manhattan burned with millions of lights.
Across the table sat two German importers who believed the Moretti organization had become desperate after the Eastern Docks incident.
They switched into German.
Lucy let them.
One whispered, “Push twenty percent.”
The other replied, “He has nowhere else to go.”
Lucy leaned toward Dante.
“They think you’re trapped.”
“Am I?”
“No. Yesterday you told Enzo the Southern Railway could carry half the volume.”
Dante’s eyes moved to her.
“You remembered that?”
“I was in the room.”
“So were six other people.”
“That doesn’t mean they were listening.”
Dante turned back to the Germans.
“We’ll move the shipment south.”
Both men stiffened.
One switched immediately to English.
“Perhaps we could reconsider.”
They settled at ten percent.
Near midnight, the final negotiator arrived.
Tariq Hassan.
Expensive suit.
Gold watch.
Smile that never reached his eyes.
He slid a Mediterranean shipping proposal toward Dante.
Then looked at Lucy.
And spoke in Arabic.
His smile made her skin crawl.
He called Dante a fool.
Said the Moretti organization had grown soft.
Said he planned to bury hidden fees in the shipping contracts until Dante was paying for warehouses that barely existed.
Then he described Lucy as though she were something available for purchase after the meeting.
Dante noticed her face.
“What did he say?”
Lucy placed her pen down.
She looked directly at Tariq.
Then answered in flawless Arabic.
His smile vanished.
The Germans stopped packing their papers.
Lucy’s voice remained calm.
“You have insulted the man you came here to negotiate with, admitted your intention to manipulate the agreement, and spoken about me as though I am property.”
Tariq stared.
“You speak Arabic?”
“Better than you assumed.”
He looked toward Dante.
“Mr. Moretti, your employee has misunderstood—”
Lucy switched to English.
“No. I understood perfectly.”
She pushed the folder toward him.
“We’re finished.”
Tariq scoffed.
“You don’t have authority.”
Everyone looked at Dante.
He could have corrected her.
Instead, he stood.
“You heard my advisor.”
Tariq’s face hardened.
“You would kill a major shipping agreement because a woman became offended?”
Dante walked around the table.
“No.”
He stopped beside Lucy.
“I’m ending it because you admitted you intended to steal from me.”
Tariq gathered his papers.
At exactly midnight, the glass doors shut behind him.
Lucy reached for her notepad.
Dante reached at the same time.
His hand stopped inches from hers.
“Five,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Russian. French. Spanish. German. Arabic.”
Lucy met his eyes.
“What do you want, Dante?”
His jaw tightened at his first name.
“For once?”
“Yes.”
“I want to know who you are when you stop trying to disappear.”
Lucy picked up the notepad.
“That answer isn’t yours just because you asked.”
She walked toward the doors.
Dante followed.
Neither noticed the man standing in the security room one floor below, watching the boardroom feed.
Felix Grant.
And Felix was no longer afraid of losing his job.
May you like
He was afraid Lucy would discover why he had really mistranslated Ivanov.
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