Part 4 — After the Four-Hundred-Lari Dinner, the Clients Disappeared Without a Trace, the Manager Charged Me for the Bill, but the Next Morning His Face Turned Pale

Outside, a car door slammed shut as if someone had crashed it with all their strength.

Julian rushed to the window.

“Did you bring the police?”
“No,” Lea replied. “We called the police before us.”

Julian took out his phone and quickly dialed a number.

“Pick up, pick up,” he whispered.

No one answered.

He called a second time.

Then a third time.

His face slowly collapsed. For the first time, I realized that the person who had controlled others through fear for months had now himself been left without an answer.

Miranda picked up the folder.

“Julian, from this moment on, you are no longer the manager.”
“I saved this restaurant.”
“You took money from your employees.”
“Didn’t everyone do that?”
“No,” I said. “Not everyone did.”

Just then two police officers and a woman carrying Chloe’s blue backpack entered.

My heart rose into my throat.

“Chloe!”

My sister was standing behind them, pale, but firmly on her feet. Beside her stood our neighbor, Mrs. Eliso.

“That man came to the door,” Chloe said. “Eliso saw him and called the police. Then he tried to escape.”

Julian looked toward me.

“Anna, this is a misunderstanding.”
“It isn’t.”
“You don’t know what will happen if you continue all this.”
“I know. For the first time, I know.”

His lawyer called half an hour later. Julian was standing in the corner, clutching the phone with both hands.

“You have to say that you obtained the recording illegally,” he was telling him.

Silence followed.

“What do you mean, you won’t defend me anymore?”

The lawyer told him that the recording contained his own voice, while the accounts contained his own signature. The case was no longer only about the stolen money. An investigation into intimidating employees and fraud would begin.

Julian slowly lowered the phone.

“They are arranging everything against me.”
“No,” Miranda replied. “You left everything on the table yourself.”

That same evening, the investigators watched the restaurant’s camera recordings. It could be seen how the couple left through the left exit and how Julian called them several minutes later. Then it could be seen how I took the earnings of the entire month from my wallet.

I saw this footage on the screen for the first time.

I could barely recognize myself.

Then I understood why the woman had the golden clasp around her neck. The clasp had actually been a small recorder. All of Julian’s words had also been saved there.

“They came to protect your sister,” Lea told me. “When they found out that someone had gone to Chloe, we sent a security officer.”

That night Julian was taken away.

I stayed in the police room and wrote a statement. The pen was slipping in my hand, but this time my hand was no longer trembling from fear.

“They will return the money to you,” Miranda told me.
“I didn’t lose only money.”
“I know.”

The next day I opened my locker at the restaurant.

There I found only one plate, two receipts, and the copper crescent keychain Chloe had given me. The small letters “C-17” were still written on the keychain. It had tapped in my pocket for the entire month, when I thought that everything was slipping from my hands.

Now, for the first time, I was no longer afraid of its sound.

In Julian’s empty office, however, his chair remained. On the desk there was still the pen with which he marked the employees’ names. No one touched it. It was as if the room were waiting for the person whom his own lies would no longer protect to return.

Two weeks later I went to the preliminary hearing at the court. Journalists stood outside, but I said nothing to them. I did not want to turn his downfall into my victory.

My victory was that on that day I had the rent money at home.

Three months later I began a study internship in the restaurant’s financial department at the university. Miranda offered me the position. Now every bill was checked twice, and nothing was taken from the employees’ salaries anymore.

Chloe bought a new backpack and left the house earlier than me every morning.

One morning I found her in the kitchen. The first snow was falling by the window.

“Anna, can we go to the sea in the summer now?”
“We can.”
“Really?”
“Really.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck.

“Are you still afraid?”

Small snowflakes stuck to the window. The keychain shifted slightly in my pocket.

“Sometimes,” I told her. “But fear is no longer sitting at the wheel.”

Several days later I received a letter from Julian. Not an apology. Nor an admission.

“You can say that Lea planned everything. If you change your statement, they will protect you too. You can still work here. A person like you needs this job.”

I held the letter in my hand for a long time.

Then I took it to Miranda.

“What should I reply?” I asked.
“Whatever you want.”
“For the first time, I don’t want to answer anyone out of fear.”

I took a new sheet of paper and wrote only one sentence:

“I no longer pay the price for the people who hid my life.”

I sent the letter back.

That evening Chloe found my old work apron. A small drawing had been sewn into the pocket — a house, two windows, and a large crescent on the door.

“I drew this when I was worrying about those four hundred dollars,” she told me.
“Why a crescent?”
“Because I could hear the sound of your keychain and I knew you would return home.”

We attached the drawing to the refrigerator.

Then I opened the window. The street was quiet. In the distance, the restaurant sign was shining, but its light no longer seemed like the bars of a prison to me.

The copper keychain touched me again in my pocket.

This time its sound no longer resembled a bill.

It resembled the key to a home.

And the door was already mine.