Chapter 4 - The Locker That Wouldn't Stay Closed
Bruno met Alessia and Rosa at the depot at eight the next morning. He wore the expression of a man who had spent the night deciding whether to lie and had not yet made up his mind. Behind him, cleaners were wheeling carts to vans, speaking in subdued voices. The depot smelled of detergent and yesterday's coffee.
"I told the visitor he needed a written request," Bruno said. "He showed me one. I thought it came from Vieri Tower."
"You thought my signature was genuine?"
"I didn't look that closely."
"That's how people like him count on getting away with it."
Rosa put a steadying hand on Alessia's elbow. They had already reported the forged authorization at the station; a police officer had given her a reference number and asked that no one handle the papers unnecessarily. Bruno led them to his office, where the original visitor sheet was sealed in a clear document sleeve.
The visitor had written MATTEO RINALDI, SECURITY CONSULTANT. Alessia did not recognize him. Marco Bellini had supplied the access-log accusation, but someone else had tried to remove her belongings. The relationship between them remained a question, not an answer.
Bruno opened a filing cabinet and showed her the depot's inventory record. Two days before the elevator stopped, somebody had requested a spare uniform in Alessia's size, an extra employee badge and a replacement cleaning cart. The badge request was marked "urgent—client instruction." Bruno's initials were beside it.
"You authorized that?" she asked.
He dropped into his chair. "I was told your old badge didn't work. We lose the tower contract, twenty people lose shifts. You think I never feel that pressure?"
"I feel it every time I count the coins for my grandmother's groceries. Why didn't you ask me?"
Bruno covered his face. "Because I was in a hurry. And because nobody usually asks the cleaners."
The extra cart on the record was yellow. Alessia placed her copy of the corridor photograph beside the sheet. Rosa drew a circle around the supplier's code. The cart had been delivered to Vieri Tower directly, not to Milano Cleaners.
"So someone ordered a uniform and a badge in my name," Alessia said. "Now they're trying to remove the rest of my things. Why?"
"What were you keeping in your locker?" Rosa asked.
"A change of shoes, tea bags, and a notebook."
Bruno fetched the notebook. Its cover was wrinkled and damp at the corners. Alessia used it to record the hours she worked, the floor she'd cleaned, and every missed break. She had begun doing that after her paycheck came up forty euros short the previous summer. On a back page she'd written an observation she had almost forgotten: a contractor carried a yellow bucket into the service lift on Monday, although there was no repair scheduled on her floor.
Beside the note was the time and a description: dark scarf, silver ring, one red shoelace.
"You remember every detail," Rosa said.
"No. I write them down because I'm tired."
The depot door banged open. A woman in a gray coat rushed toward Bruno's office. It was Giulia Ferraro, a cleaner Alessia had worked beside for two years. Giulia had supposedly transferred to another site the week before, yet she looked as if she hadn't slept in days.
"Don't give them my hours," she said. "I didn't sign anything. I didn't ask to leave."
Alessia moved a chair toward her. Giulia refused to sit until she saw the office door close. She explained that she had complained about missing overtime and had photographed an invoice listing shifts for workers who weren't employed by Milano Cleaners. The next day, a security consultant warned her that continuing to ask questions could cost the whole team its contract.
"Was it Matteo Rinaldi?" Alessia asked.
Giulia nodded. "He had a silver ring. And he said Mr. Vieri wouldn't tolerate disloyalty."
"That might have been a lie," Rosa said. "We can't know what Vieri said from what this man told you."
Giulia took a folded photocopy from her coat. It listed twenty-six night shifts billed to Vieri Tower under employees' names, including Alessia's, on nights they had not worked. Someone was invoicing the tower for labor that had never happened. The extra money had to be going somewhere.
Bruno read the sheet and sat heavily. "That invoice came to me last week. I asked questions. They threatened to move the contract."
"And you didn't tell us," Giulia said.
"I didn't think—"
"You did," Alessia interrupted. "You decided the next shift mattered more than our right to know. Those are different things."
She called the officer handling her statement and described the new documents. Nobody opened lockers again. Rosa suggested they contact an independent workers' adviser instead of relying on either employer. Giulia knew a woman named Nadiya Conti who had helped cleaners recover unpaid wages in another building.
Nadiya answered Giulia's call with a list of practical questions: who held the original invoice, who could confirm the dates, and whether anyone was in immediate danger. She did not ask the women to meet a lawyer they couldn't afford or promise that the police would make the matter disappear. "Photograph what you lawfully have and write down when you received it," she said. "Then stop sharing it around. We can ask an adviser to help you request the payroll records formally." Alessia appreciated the plainness. For a full day, men with money had been telling her they knew what was best. Here was a woman who asked what Alessia knew. She wrote Nadiya's number inside the notebook next to Rosa's and the police reference number. Even in a frightening morning, there was something solid about having three names she had chosen for herself.
As the others made calls, Alessia looked at her notebook's Monday entry. She remembered something about the man with the yellow bucket: he had asked which lift the owner used, then corrected himself and said the executive.
Before she could speak, a message appeared on Giulia's phone from an unknown sender. It contained a photograph taken through the depot's front windows. All four of them were visible around Bruno's desk.
Underneath, one sentence appeared.
May you like
THE NEXT ELEVATOR WILL NOT STOP BETWEEN FLOORS.
Giulia shoved the phone toward Alessia with a shaking hand. The threat was no longer a rumor passed through an office. Someone outside knew exactly where they were standing.
