Every night he took a different woman home, but one question of mine suddenly erased his confidence

That evening I entered the billionaire’s mansion when only three days remained before my mother’s operation and I had twenty-nine dollars in my account.

A black car stopped by the house at ten fifteen in the evening. The door handle was cold, while my palms were sweating as if I were about to run away. Marcus opened the door for me and pointed toward the stairs.

“You can still refuse,” he told me.

“And then?”

He did not answer me.

That was exactly why I went inside.

A small copper pendant hung on my coat, which Mother had given me on the day I graduated from school. With every step, the pendant knocked against the button, and in that monotonous sound I tried to make myself brave.

The living room was so large that all the furniture from my small apartment would have disappeared in one corner there. A fire burned quietly in the fireplace. The clock hanging on the wall had golden hands, but there was no warmth at all in the room.

David stood by the window.

“You’re late,” he told me without even turning around.

“Hello to you too.”

He slowly approached me and looked me over. His eyes were calm, almost boring, but something tired was hidden beneath that calmness.

“Do you want water?”

“If it isn’t poison.”

David looked at me for the first time.

“Do you often say things like that?”

“Only when a rich strange man invites me to his house at night.”

Marcus began coughing, as if hiding laughter. David handed me water.

“Why did you come?”

“Your assistant invited me.”

“That is not what I asked.”

I put the glass on the table. The bottom of the glass rang sharply against the stone surface.

“My mother needs an operation. Eighty thousand dollars. I do not have that money.”

David raised one eyebrow slightly.

“And that is why you came?”

“No. I came because the doctor told me that if the money was not transferred tomorrow morning, they would remove her from the surgery list.”

He looked at me for a long time.

“Are you expecting charity from me?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I do not know exactly. Your assistant did not explain either.”

Marcus looked toward the door.

“The rules are simple,” he said. “Dinner, conversation, a car in the morning. If you feel uncomfortable, you leave immediately.”

“And the money?”

David answered:

“Nobody is offering you money in exchange for this.”

I laughed, but the laughter caught in my throat.

“Interesting. Then why did Marcus tell me that eighty thousand dollars was needed for being beside you?”

A silence suddenly fell over the room, as if the fire in the fireplace had gone out too.

Marcus lowered his eyes.

“I told her that she needed that amount.”

David looked toward him.

“And you offered it in my name?”

“No. I simply told her whom she would meet.”

“Marcus, wait for me outside.”

“David…”

“Right now.”

The door closed. David and I were left alone.

“Do you do this every day?” I asked.

“What?”

“Call different women, have dinner, and send them away in the morning.”

“They agree.”

“That is not an answer.”

“For me it is.”

David went to the fireplace and poured water into his glass. An expensive watch flashed on his fingers, but his hand trembled slightly.

“I trusted one woman,” he said. “Her name was Victoria. I gave her everything. Time, money, trust. But first she deceived me, then she betrayed me.”

“Do you punish everyone now?”

“I punish no one.”

“You simply do not let anyone become important to you.”

He raised his head.

“You talk too much.”

“And you say too little.”

For the first time, something resembling a smile appeared on his face.

“Stay for dinner.”

“On one condition.”

“What condition?”

I grasped my copper pendant and held its cold edge between my fingers.

“If I feel uncomfortable even once, I will leave immediately. I am no longer interested in the money either.”

David nodded.

“I agree.”

But at midnight, when I went to the kitchen to get water, I saw Marcus standing by a closed study, holding a brown folder. He did not notice me. My mother’s name was written on the folder.

Marcus inserted a key into the lock, the door opened, and he stopped with his hand inside. Then he slowly turned toward me, as if he were about to say something, but at that moment David’s voice sounded in the corridor:

“Maya, what are you doing here?”

Marcus hugged the folder to his chest, and David reached out toward him…

David’s hand reached the folder, but Marcus stepped back. His face changed at that moment as if the apparent calm of the entire evening had been only a thin mask.

“This is my business,” he said.

“In your room? In my house?” David’s voice was low, but more frightening than shouting.

I stood between them and felt the pendant trembling in my fingers.

“Why is my mother’s name written on that folder?”

Neither of them answered me.

“Marcus.”

“Not yet,” Marcus said.

“What does ‘not yet’ mean?”

David snatched the folder from his hand. The edges of the papers scattered across the floor. On one sheet was my mother’s full name, on another the hospital stamp, and on the third the amount that was exactly eighty thousand dollars.

My knees gave way.

“You knew,” I whispered.

“I knew that she needed an operation,” David answered.

“From where?”

“I should have explained this.”

“When? In the morning, when you sent me away like another woman again?”

Irritation flashed in his eyes.

“You are not like the other women.”

“Do not tell me that now.”

Marcus picked up the documents from the floor.

“Maya, we know your mother.”

“Who are ‘we’?”

David closed his eyes. For several seconds, only the ticking of the wall clock could be heard in the room.

“Your mother worked in my company years ago,” he said. “In the finance department.”

“I knew that.”

“No, you do not know everything.”

Marcus held out a sheet to me. I recognized my mother’s handwriting on it: thin, slanted letters with which she used to write fairy tales in my notebooks in childhood.

“She did not take money from me,” David continued. “On the contrary, she discovered that Victoria was hiding money from the company accounts.”

Victoria’s name changed the room.

“Your former girlfriend?”

“My fiancée.”

“And my mother knew?”

“She knew that Victoria was not acting alone.”

The sheet froze in my hand. My mother’s voice came back to me: “Sometimes you should believe a person most when they are defending themselves.” I had never known what she meant.

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

David looked away.

“Because your mother asked me not to interfere.”

“Why?”

“She was afraid.”

“Was she afraid of you?”

“Of the people who were helping Victoria.”

Marcus locked the door and lowered his voice.

“This story does not end here. Three days ago Victoria contacted us.”

“What did she want?”

“She said that your mother still had the last piece of evidence.”

David stiffened.

“Marcus.”

“She does not know that Maya is already here.”

“Now she knows,” I said.

My phone lit up on the table. It was an unknown number. First one message appeared, then another.

“Ask your mother where she hid the small wooden box.”

The second message said:

“If the money is not transferred in the morning, you will not attend the operation.”

David took the phone from me.

“We are going to the police.”

“Not yet.”

“Maya, this is a threat.”

“My mother is in the hospital. If they have someone there, they may harm her before we go to the police.”

“You do not know whom you are fighting.”

“And you do not know whom you trust.”

His face hardened.

“I am offering you protection.”

“Protection or control?”

“You cannot see the difference now.”

“Because all your life you have called women over, set rules for them, and sent them away in the morning. And now you are surprised when one of them does not obey you by your own rules.”

Marcus raised the window blind. A black car stood in the street. Its engine was running.

“She is here,” he said.

David immediately picked up the phone.

“I am calling the security team.”

The car’s headlights came on outside. Then someone knocked on the door three times.

David stood in front of me.

“Step back.”

“Who is it?”

The knocking was repeated, this time more strongly.

Marcus raised the phone to his ear, but a woman’s voice sounded from the other side of the line, suddenly coming through the house’s intercom:

“David, this time you have to open the door for me yourself.”

It was Victoria.

David gripped the phone so tightly that his fingers turned white. I realized that not only my mother’s money was hidden in this house. And when the lock clicked from inside, Marcus whispered to me:

“Maya, if she comes in, do not mention your mother’s name until I tell you why…”

“Maya, if she comes in, do not mention your mother’s name until I tell you why…”

But it was too late. The door handle went down, and Victoria entered the house as if she were returning to her own room left years ago.

It was two o’clock at night. Outside, rain struck the roof, while the white umbrella in her hand slowly dripped onto the marble floor.

“The same house again,” she said. “Only now you are looking at another woman with the same eyes.”

David stepped in front of me.

“You have no place here.”

“My place is wherever your hidden money lies.”

Marcus locked the doors.

“You should wait for the police.”

Victoria smiled.

“And you are still playing the loyal servant.”

I looked at her.

“What do you want from my mother?”

Her smile disappeared.

“You understood nothing from her, did you? She always thought only about your bills, medicines, and small apartment.”

David told me:

“Do not listen to her.”

“I listened all my life while all of you were silent,” I told him.

Marcus put the folder on the table and opened the lock. From inside he took a small wooden box. It was plain, made of dark walnut, with one word carved on the lid: “Truth.”

My breath caught.

“This belongs to my mother.”

“She left it with me,” Marcus said. “A few days before the operation. She told me that if anything happened to her, I should give it only to you.”

“Why now?”

“Because this morning Victoria told me that if she did not have the box by tomorrow morning, she would send people to the hospital.”

Victoria snickered.

“That sounds overly dramatic.”

“You left the voice message yourself,” Marcus said.

He played the recording on the phone. Victoria’s own voice sounded in the room:

“If the money is not transferred and you do not bring me the box, the girl’s mother will not make it to the operation. I do not care who gets hurt.”

The color disappeared from Victoria’s face.

“It is edited.”

“It is a message sent from your number,” David said.

I looked at the box.

“Open it.”

David nodded. He lifted the lid. Inside were a small memory card, a letter written in my mother’s hand, and several bank statements.

Marcus put the card into a device. My mother’s face appeared on the screen. She was younger, her hair cut short, and in her eyes was that tired warmth I had rarely seen after her illness.

“Maya, if you are watching this, I probably was no longer able to tell you everything,” she said. “Do not be afraid. David Prescott did not abandon my daughter, as you may think now. He secretly paid for your treatment for years because I asked him not to connect your life with my past.”

David lowered his head.

I turned toward him.

“You knew she was my mother when you saw me today?”

“I knew.”

“And you still brought me here?”

“Not for what you think. I wanted to transfer the money directly to you, but you would have refused. I wanted you to choose for yourself whether you would stay.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because for the first time in my life I wanted someone to stay with me without a reason.”

This confession hurt more than any lie.

Victoria suddenly took the box from the table and ran toward the door. Marcus blocked her way. The box fell to the floor, but it did not break.

“It is over, Victoria,” David said.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

At that moment David’s phone rang. He answered, and after a few seconds his face changed.

“It is from the hospital,” he said. “Your mother’s operation has been postponed. The doctor said someone requested your medical files.”

I looked at Victoria.

“Did you do this?”

She said nothing.

The doctor’s voice could be heard from the phone:

“Her chart states that the patient refuses the operation. But the signature is in your name.”

David slowly raised his eyes.

That night we already had the main evidence in our hands, but someone else stood behind Victoria. And when Marcus took a second folded sheet from the bottom of the box, only one sentence was written on it: “If anything threatens my daughter, find the person David trusts most…”