I accidentally entered the mafia boss’s meeting in wet clothes — but instead of getting angry, he came straight toward me, and everyone’s faces changed

At the moment when eight armed men pointed their weapons at me, I realized that the water leak was the smallest problem of my evening.

It all began at eight o’clock in the evening, on the second floor of the Moretti mansion, in the bathroom whose marble cost more than all the houses in the neighborhood of my childhood. The pipe under the sink suddenly roared, and water burst out with such force as if a monster hidden in the walls had decided that I was precisely the one to punish.

“No, no, no!” I shouted and pressed a towel against the pipe.

The towel became soaked in a second.

The second towel too.

Then the bucket slipped from my hand, hit the bathtub, bounced against the wall, and fell upside down onto my foot. For several seconds I simply stared at it.

But the water kept coming.

“Very good, Maia,” I muttered. “Exactly what your career was waiting for.”

I barely shut off the valve. When I came out of the room, my hair was stuck to my face, my white shirt was clinging to my shoulders, and there was so much water in my left shoe that a small fish could have lived freely.

I ran toward the hall, because water was already creeping under the bathroom door toward the stairs. I held a bucket in one hand, a bent floor mop under my arm, and a wet towel over my shoulder. The worst thing was that the little copper bird hanging from the mop’s wooden handle struck my hand hard with every step.

This bird was my mother’s only possession. In childhood she told me that the bird showed the way only to the one who was not afraid of the truth. That evening it was simply hurting my wrist.

The mansion was unusually quiet. Usually, the noise of the kitchen, the guards’ radios, and quick footsteps could be heard from below. Now only the wet squelching of my shoes broke the silence.

“If you make noise one more time, I’ll leave you here,” I whispered to the shoe.

It made noise again.

The absorbent cloths were kept in the western corridor, at least that was how I remembered it. It was the eleventh day since I had started working at the Moretti house, and there were so many doors in this building that sometimes I thought half of them existed only to confuse new employees.

I pushed against a large double wooden door with my shoulder. The door opened immediately.

Far too easily.

I took two steps inside and froze.

This was not a storage room.

Eight men were sitting around a long black table. Black suits, expensive watches, cold eyes, a map spread across the table, and several folders. Their faces looked as if smiling were a violation of safety regulations.

Adrian Moretti was sitting at the head of the table.

His face was calm. That was precisely what frightened me most.

An open folder lay beside his left hand. His fingers rested on a white sheet, as if with one light movement he could change someone’s fate.

All eight men turned toward me.

I gripped the bucket more tightly.

“Please tell me that you at least have towels here,” I said.

Silence completely occupied the room.

“No?” I added. “I can tell from your faces that you don’t.”

One man lowered his head. The corner of his lip moved slightly, as if he were trying to hide a laugh.

Adrian looked up at me only then.

“What happened?” he asked.

His voice was low, but it reached everyone in the room.

“A pipe burst in the upstairs bathroom.”

He was looking at me.

“And?”

“I objected.”

The man to his right lowered his eyes.

“The pipe did not take my position into consideration,” I added.

This time something changed on Adrian’s face. Not a smile. More like a quick, almost imperceptible movement.

He rose from his chair.

All eight men reached for their weapons at the same time.

But Adrian came straight toward me. I instinctively stepped back, but my wet shoe slid on the floor. The bucket fell from my hand, my body tilted backward, and then I felt only Adrian’s arms wrap around my waist.

My face collided with his chest.

His shirt carried the scent of expensive perfume and cold smoke. There were eight guns pointed in the room, but I heard only the sound of his heartbeat.

“Don’t move,” he told me near my ear.

“I wasn’t planning to,” I barely said.

His hand suddenly stopped at the sleeve of my wet shirt. His eyes shifted behind me, toward the door.

“Maia,” he said, “where did you get this item?”

His gaze was fixed on the little copper bird hanging from the mop handle.

Adrian slowly reached toward it…

Adrian’s fingers touched the copper bird, and such silence fell over the room that it seemed everyone had stopped breathing at the same time.

I was still standing in his arms. Water dripped from my wet shoe onto the floor, but nobody cared about the marble anymore.

“It belongs to my mother,” I said. “I have had it since childhood.”

“What was your mother’s name?” Adrian asked.

His voice was still calm, though something sharp was now hidden inside it.

“Elena.”

The man to his right raised his head.

“Elena Collins?” he asked.

I turned toward him.

“You knew her?”

Adrian looked at the man in such a way that he immediately fell silent. Then Adrian took the mop from my hand and examined the copper bird carefully.

“Where did you find it?” he asked me.

“I didn’t find it. It is mine.”

“Who gave you this bird?”

“My mother. When I was nine.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened.

At that moment footsteps sounded from the corridor. A tall, gray-haired man entered. His name was Victor Hale. He was in charge of running the house and during my eleventh day had always been excessively kind to me. Now his gaze fell on the bird, and all color disappeared from his face.

“What is Mrs. Collins doing here?” he asked.

“Fighting a pipe,” Adrian answered.

“This room is secured.”

“The door was open,” I said.

Victor looked toward me.

“An employee must not know where this room is.”

His words did not sound like a simple remark. They sounded more like a warning.

Adrian enclosed the bird in his palm.

“Everyone leave the room,” he said.

“Adrian, this is not reasonable,” Victor immediately objected.

“I told you, everyone leave.”

One of the men took a folder. Another put his phone into his pocket. Victor, however, did not move from his place.

“If this is what I think it is,” he said, “leaving the woman here is dangerous.”

Adrian slowly looked toward him.

“No one can endanger an employee of my house.”

“She herself may be the danger.”

My stomach clenched.

As soon as everyone left, Adrian locked the door. Only he, Victor, and I remained in the room. Red marks were placed on the map lying on the table. Several of them matched the streets where my mother had worked years earlier.

“Give me the bird,” I told Adrian.

“First tell me when your mother died.”

“Eight years ago.”

“How?”

“Officially, in an accident. Unofficially, after she told the police that some people were hiding money in her accounts.”

Victor lowered his eyes.

I noticed it.

“Do you know something?” I addressed him.

“I am only saying what is written in the records.”

“Do the records also say that my father died by suicide?” I asked. “Or did your people write that too?”

The air in the room grew heavy.

Adrian looked sharply at me.

“What was your father’s name?”

“Samuel Collins.”

Adrian was silent for several seconds.

Then he placed the copper bird on the table and pressed a small groove under its wing with his fingernail. The bird’s belly opened. A miniature memory card was hidden inside.

I took a step back.

“That was not there,” I said.

“It was,” Adrian replied. “You simply did not know.”

Victor immediately looked toward the door.

“This must be destroyed,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because there will be nothing good in it.”

Adrian took the card between his fingers.

“Or because everything in it is against you.”

Victor lost his composure for the first time.

“Adrian, think. This woman has been working in the house for eleven days. Exactly eleven.”

“I did not count the days,” I said.

“Someone else did,” Victor answered.

Adrian opened the door and called the guards. At that same moment the entire mansion went dark. Outside the windows, the sound of car brakes came from far away, and then there was a gunshot.

Victor drew a weapon.

Adrian took a position in front of me.

“Stand behind me,” he told me.

“First explain what is happening!”

“Now is not the time.”

His phone rang in his pocket. Adrian answered, but only a few words came from the other side.

His face immediately hardened.

“Who is it?” I asked.

He slowly lowered the phone.

“Your brother Leo.”

My blood froze.

“What happened to Leo?”

Adrian put the phone on the table. An unknown number was still glowing on the call.

“Someone called us and said that if we do not give them this card by morning, your brother will not be returned to us alive…”

“No,” I said. “Leo is at home. I spoke to him this morning.”

Adrian picked up the phone again and called. It rang for a long time, but nobody answered. In my ears I heard only my own breathing.

“His phone stayed at home,” I suddenly said.

Adrian looked at me.

“How do you know?”

“When I left for work, I saw it on the kitchen table. Leo never leaves the house without his phone.”

Victor quietly chuckled.

“Then this message was not from him.”

“And you realized that very quickly,” I said.

His smile disappeared.

Adrian ordered the guards to lock the yard. Then he inserted the memory card into a small device. An old audio recording appeared on the screen. The date was eight years earlier.

The voice hissed at first, then my mother’s voice sounded.

“If anyone is listening to this, let them know that Samuel did not die by his own hand. Money was going to Victor Hale’s accounts. He took our records and blamed Adrian’s father for them.”

My knees gave way.

“No…”

The recording continued.

“Adrian Moretti then stood only in his father’s shadow. He did not know that Victor served both sides. If my daughter ever comes to this house, tell her the truth. The copper bird is the evidence.”

Nobody moved in the room.

There was no color left in Adrian’s face.

“You knew,” I told Victor.

“This is a forged recording.”

“Your name was in it!”

“Anyone can record a name.”

Adrian switched off the device.

“Did Victor betray my father?” he asked.

Victor did not answer.

“I asked you.”

“Your father was weak,” Victor said, and for the first time removed his mask. “And I did what was necessary.”

Adrian’s hands clenched into fists.

“Did you kill Samuel?”

“He knew too much.”

Tears came to my eyes, but I did not cry. For eight years I thought that my father had abandoned the family and that my mother had lost her life in an accident. Now both lies belonged to one man.

Victor raised his weapon toward Adrian.

“Give me the card.”

“No,” Adrian said.

“Then your guard will not make it in time.”

“Maia, step back,” Adrian told me.

Victor put his finger on the trigger, but the guard behind the door struck his hand. The shot went into the ceiling. Adrian leapt forward, took the weapon from Victor, and threw him onto the floor.

I leaned against the wall. The copper bird still lay on the table, and its open belly revealed the little black card.

Victor was handcuffed. His voice could still be heard.

“You will not win, Adrian. The money has already been transferred. The papers are signed. Half of your people belong to me.”

Adrian did not answer anything.

At that moment my phone rang.

An unknown number.

When I answered the call, I heard Leo’s voice.

“Maia, do not trust Adrian. He is not alone.”

“Leo, where are you?”

The voice cut off. After a few seconds another voice sounded, a woman’s—calm, almost cheerful.

“Your mother left you half the truth, Maia. The other half is in Adrian’s safe.”

The call ended.

Adrian looked toward me.

“We will find your brother.”

“And what is in the safe?”

For the first time his gaze escaped mine.

It was then that I realized the recording was not only about the past. My mother had hidden something bigger.

Adrian looked toward the safe’s door and said quietly:

“There is something in there for which your mother chose death…”