Part 4 — The New Boss Made Me Hide My Daughter’s Existence at Work, but Her Face Suddenly Turned Pale During the Meeting with the School Principal

Evelyn’s last words remained in the room like a locked door.

The police officer immediately took Marko away, but Evelyn did not move from the spot.

Calls were coming to her phone one after another. The principal was closing the school. Security officers were checking the corridors. And Chloe clung to my coat and would not let me go.

“A car is waiting for you at the rear exit,” the police officer told me. “The child must not remain here.”

“I am coming with him,” Evelyn said.

“You are also in danger.”

“I know.”

At that moment her phone rang again. The company lawyer’s name was visible on the screen.

“Answer it,” I told her.

Evelyn turned on the speaker.

“Mrs. Cross, the board has called an emergency meeting,” the lawyer said. “After Marko’s arrest, all the contractors are demanding guarantees that the company is stable.”

“Tell them that it is stable.”

“They say that if you resign, the share price—”

“I do not intend to resign.”

“Mrs. Cross, this is a personal scandal.”

Evelyn looked at Chloe, who was leaning against my chest.

“No. This is a crime hidden by our company.”

“The board will turn against you.”

“Then for the first time they will have the right to do so.”

She ended the call.

I looked at her.

“Who is the author of that message?”

Evelyn said nothing for several seconds.

Then she took an old, scratched phone out of her bag.

“My brother, Niko.”

“You said that he was dead.”

“I said that he died in an accident three years ago. That was true. But his data and archives remained in the company. Someone is entering the system under his name. Marko was only an intermediary.”

Mrs. Harper looked fearfully toward the window.

“Why did you hide so much about your own brother for so long?”

Evelyn tightened her lips.

“Niko founded my company. He managed the money, while I managed the people. After his death I discovered that he had transferred the employees’ personal data into a secret archive. Families’ addresses, children’s schools, medical records. At first I believed that he was using it for fraud. Then I realized that someone was still using his system today.”

“And Marko knew this?”

“Marko knew only part of it. The person who controls things from above was watching him too.”

At that moment the police officer heard something on the radio and his face changed.

“They saw a car beside the school. The plates are false.”

Evelyn immediately moved toward me.

“Chloe in the middle. David, behind me.”

“Are you giving me orders now?”

“No. Please.”

This was the first time I heard that word from her.

We went out through the rear door. The sharp smell of floor-cleaning product stood in the corridor. Chloe’s yellow fabric moon swung on the bag and flashed like lightning at every step.

When we reached the car, the black automobile on the other side of the street began to move.

The police officer shouted:

“Down!”

Evelyn lifted Chloe into her arms and pressed herself against the wall. The car passed us and disappeared around the corner.

Then Evelyn heard everything in her own voice.

The police officer turned on a recording from his car camera. On the screen it was visible how Evelyn was saying one month earlier:

“If an employee’s family gets in the way, he is useless to this company.”

These were her words. Exactly her voice.

Evelyn was looking at the screen.

“I said this,” she uttered quietly.

“Yes,” I answered.

“And people worked according to these words.”

“Me too.”

She lowered her eyes.

“I thought I could control everything through fear.”

“Fear is not control.”

“I know.”

It was the first answer she did not defend.

That night I took Chloe to a safe house. Evelyn stayed at a hotel at the other end of the city, where security officers were stationed. She called me at four in the morning.

“Niko activated the file,” she told me. “Now I know who the third person is.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

I sat up on the bed.

Evelyn’s father had died ten years earlier, but the company’s main archive had been created in his name. Before his death, Niko had left a video there in which he said that their family had controlled the employees’ private lives for years.

The heaviest thing was that Niko had not done this only for profit. He had set people against one another so that no one in the company would dare to oppose him.

Marko turned out to be a continuation of his old system.

Evelyn watched the video to the end and handed it over to the police.

Then she called her board.

“All personal archives are being deleted,” she told them. “Today.”

“You cannot do this,” the chairman of the board answered. “This will cost us billions.”

“You have already cost us our humanity.”

“You can no longer manage this company.”

“Then you should ask the employees whether they can remain with me.”

That same day she organized a general meeting at the company.

Hundreds of people stood in the large hall. Some were silent, some were looking at their phones. I also saw Tommy there, still holding the same small pink hat that he had been unable to throw away three months earlier.

Evelyn went up onto the stage.

“I forced employees to hide their families,” she said. “An apology will not be enough for this. Therefore the change will not be only in words.”

She offered every unfairly dismissed employee their job back. She created a childcare program. She allocated paid leave in the company for sick children.

Then she called me.

“David Meladze, I want you to take charge of the internal control department.”

Silence fell over the hall.

“Why me?” I asked.

“Because when others were looking at numbers, you saw a person.”

Tommy was the first to applaud.

Soon the whole hall joined in.

I did not leave the job, but for the first time I was no longer hiding that I was a father.

I placed Chloe’s photograph on my work desk. Beside it I attached the little yellow fabric moon that had hung on the bag for three months.

The investigation against Marko began. His wife was also arrested when the school camera recordings confirmed that she had approached Chloe. Niko’s old archives were handed over to the court. Evelyn’s father could not be punished, but the system he had created was finally shut down.

Evelyn remained at the company, although she no longer walked around with a closed face. Sometimes she herself prepared coffee for the employees. Once Chloe called her and said that she did not understand her mathematics homework.

Evelyn explained fractions to her for twenty-five minutes.

At the end Chloe told me:

“Dad, your boss is less frightening now.”

“Is that good news?”

“Yes. But I still will not let her sign my drawings.”

Three months later the first snow came to Seattle. Chloe and I moved into a new apartment, close to the school. In the morning I no longer woke to the sound of an alarm. Chloe packed her own bag, while I spread butter on the bread and no longer cut off the crusts. Once I quietly left them on, and she ate everything.

A new clock hung in the kitchen. It was no longer the cheap plastic alarm clock that made the sound of a dying insect every morning.

But I did not throw away all the old things.

One evening, while Chloe was drawing a snow figure by the window, I found an unfamiliar envelope on my work desk.

It was from Evelyn.

Inside there was only one sheet of paper:

“If you ever want to return, your place still exists here.”

On the back of the sheet there was another sentence:

“This time the choice is yours.”

I called Evelyn.

“I am not planning to return to work,” I told her.

“I know.”

“But I will help you with project control if everything is transparent.”

“It will be.”

“And no one will come near Chloe’s school without my consent again.”

“Never.”

“Then we can cooperate.”

There was a long silence on the other side of the line.

“David?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for speaking to me at all.”

I went to the window. Snow was quietly falling on the yard.

“No more thanks are needed. You must follow the rules.”

“I will.”

The call ended.

Chloe handed me her drawing. Three people were standing in the snow on it: me, her, and Evelyn. A large yellow moon was drawn above.

“Why did you draw us together?” I asked.

“Because sometimes you are not a bad person. You simply make a bad choice.”

“And then?”

“Then you must make a good choice.”

I attached the drawing to the refrigerator. And I took the yellow fabric moon off the bag and hung it by the door of the new apartment.

Now it was no longer a sign of fear.

It was a reminder that once I chose the truth to protect my daughter, and afterward I protected myself as well.

The light of the snow fell on the door, and the little moon slowly lit up.

This time I was no longer hiding.