Chapter 3 - The Price of Staying Invisible
Dr. Bellini arrived carrying a black medical case and the expression of a man who had learned not to ask Zo Rossi unnecessary questions.
Tessa asked plenty of her own.
“Why is a private doctor here?”
“Because you fainted.”
“I stood up too fast.”
“You collapsed.”
“Semantics.”
Zo watched from the doorway while Bellini checked her blood pressure and temperature. Mia sat beside Lucas at the table, both children eating slowly from the containers Tessa had brought home. Neither wasted a bite.
Bellini finally looked up.
“Dehydrated. Fever. Exhaustion. Probably a respiratory infection. She needs rest, fluids, and actual food.”
Tessa crossed her arms. “I have work tomorrow.”
“No,” Zo said.
She turned on him.
“I can’t miss a shift.”
“You can if I own the shift.”
“That’s not how hourly work works.”
“It is in my house.”
The words sounded arrogant even to him.
Tessa’s eyes narrowed.
“You don’t own my time because I clean your floors.”
Zo forced himself not to react defensively. She was right, and the fact that he had to remind himself of it irritated him.
“Fine,” he said. “Then I am telling your supervisor that your paid sick leave begins tomorrow.”
“I don’t have paid sick leave.”
Zo looked at Gabe.
Gabe’s face changed.
That was the second clue.
The staffing agency billed the estate for a benefits package.
Tessa watched both men.
“What?”
Zo’s voice became quiet.
“How much are you paid?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I literally pay the agency.”
“You pay them. They pay me.”
“How much?”
She hesitated.
“Sixteen fifty an hour.”
Gabe swore.
Zo said nothing for several seconds.
The estate was being billed forty-two dollars an hour for temporary domestic staff. According to the contract, workers assigned to high-security residences were supposed to receive a minimum of twenty-eight dollars, health coverage after ninety days, and paid sick leave.
Tessa had been there a month.
Still, sixteen fifty was not even close.
“Name of the agency manager who hired you.”
“Why?”
“Because someone is stealing from both of us.”
Her shoulders stiffened.
“Please don’t get me fired.”
Zo almost laughed at the absurdity of it.
“Tessa, I am not angry at you.”
“You were thirty minutes ago.”
“I thought you were smuggling something out of my house.”
“I was. Dinner.”
“Apparently.”
Mia looked up from her plate.
“Are we in trouble?”
Tessa immediately moved to her.
“No, baby.”
Zo felt the room rearrange itself around that one sentence. Tessa’s anger disappeared whenever the children were afraid. She became gentle instantly, no matter how exhausted she was.
He noticed the cardiology bill again.
“What does Lucas need?”
Tessa’s jaw tightened.
“Nothing from you.”
Lucas answered anyway.
“A procedure.”
Tessa closed her eyes.
“Mister, you talk too much.”
The boy shrugged.
Zo sat across from him.
“What kind?”
“I have a hole.”
“Lucas.”
“In my heart,” the boy added helpfully. “Not like feelings. A real one.”
Bellini quietly asked permission to review the paperwork. Tessa refused twice before finally handing it over.
The defect was treatable. The problem was not medical possibility.
It was money.
Tessa’s mother had died after a stroke the previous winter. Their father, Calvin Cole, had disappeared when Tessa was nineteen, leaving behind debts and rumors. Tessa had become legal guardian to the children only after a court fight that consumed the last of their savings. Lucas’s insurance covered most of his care but not enough of the specialist costs, transportation, and missed work. Tessa had taken the Rossi job because the agency promised better pay.
The promise had been a lie.
Zo looked around the apartment again.
Every object suddenly became evidence.
The repaired backpack.
The thrift-store coats.
The envelope of medical receipts beneath a fruit bowl.
The refrigerator with almost nothing inside except milk, mustard, and half an onion.
“You should have told someone at the estate,” he said.
Tessa laughed without humor.
“And said what? ‘Hello, powerful crime family. I’m poor. Can I have some of your leftovers?’”
“The staff meals are part of compensation.”
“Exactly. So I took mine.”
“You starved yourself.”
“I made a choice.”
“A bad one.”
“A necessary one.”
Zo leaned back.
“Those are not always the same thing.”
Her eyes softened for half a second, then hardened again.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
That hit a nerve.
“You think I’ve never had to protect family?”
“I think your version of poor is probably only having one driver.”
Gabe choked on his coffee.
Zo shot him a look.
Tessa realized she had gone too far and looked away.
But Zo surprised them all by smiling.
It was brief.
“You’re not entirely wrong.”
The room grew quieter.
Bellini packed his case and handed Tessa medication with instructions. Before leaving, he told Zo privately that she needed at least several days off.
Tessa heard him anyway.
“I can’t afford several days.”
“You can now,” Zo said.
She looked at him.
“I am not taking charity.”
“Good. Because I am not offering charity.”
He pointed toward the agency paperwork.
“I am correcting theft.”
Gabe’s phone buzzed.
He stepped toward the window, listened, and his expression turned hard.
“Boss.”
Zo stood.
“What?”
“I had the office pull the staffing invoices.”
“And?”
“The agency is owned through three shell companies.”
Tessa went still.
Gabe continued.
“The final beneficiary is Dominic Varese.”
Zo’s face changed.
Tessa did not know the name.
But she knew the reaction.
“Who is that?”
Zo looked at her slowly.
“A man who has been trying to get someone inside my house for two years.”
The apartment suddenly felt smaller.
Tessa stared at the food containers on the table.
“You thought I was the spy.”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
Zo’s gaze moved to the children.
“Now I think someone expected me to think you were.”
That night, long after the children fell asleep, Zo stood in the hallway outside apartment 3C and made one call.
“Lock down every personnel record tied to that agency,” he told Gabe. “No one touches Tessa’s file.”
“Why?”
Zo looked back through the open door.
Tessa had fallen asleep sitting at the table, one hand still resting near Lucas’s medication.
May you like
“Because if Varese put her in my house on purpose, I want to know why.”
And for the first time, the question frightened him more than the answer.
