Part 4 — My Uncle Refused Me a Job, but When the Contract Was Cancelled, His Face Lost Color

Going to the basement alone was the worst idea that could have occurred to me that night.

But I could not get my father’s photograph out of my head.

At ten o’clock at night I called Tako, the head of our legal team. She answered after three rings.

“Where are you?”

“At the office.”

“Do not stay alone. Richard’s people have already tried to enter the server room.”

“I have to go down to the basement.”

She was silent for several seconds.

“No.”

“They sent me a photograph connected to my father.”

“Then all the more no. First we notify the police.”

Melissa locked the door and ordered security to lock all the entrances. David, meanwhile, sent the report simultaneously to four different addresses: the regulatory body, the police, the insurance company, and an independent investigative group.

Richard called me eleven times over twenty minutes.

I did not answer the first call.

Nor the second.

On the eleventh Tako made me pick up.

“Listen to me, Luka,” Richard said. His voice was almost calm now. That was exactly what frightened me most. “You think you are the winner because you found several reports.”

“I do not think anything.”

“You can lose everything.”

“I have already lost the family I thought I had.”

“Your father would not have done this.”

“Do not mention my father.”

“You did not know him at all.”

Those words pierced my heart as if an old wound had been opened.

“Tomorrow morning I will send lawyers to you,” he said. “They will prove that you obtained the audit illegally.”

“Bring them.”

“Luka, please.”

It was the first time I heard pleading in his voice.

“For years you told everyone that numbers feel nothing,” I told him. “Now you will see what numbers do when they speak instead of people.”

I ended the call.

The next morning Richard’s lawyer came to our office. He had a black leather bag and such a confident expression, as if he had already won the case.

“My client denies all the accusations,” he said.

“Does your client deny his own voice too?” I asked.

David played the recording.

Richard’s voice sounded in the room: “Give him the position, as long as the audit files disappear.”

The lawyer lowered his head.

After the recording ended, he closed the bag.

“I can no longer represent your uncle in this case,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because yesterday evening I discovered that transfers had been hidden from me. I cannot involve myself in a criminal case.”

We called Richard. He was on the line, but at first he said nothing.

“You too?” he asked at last.

“I did not leave you,” the lawyer answered. “You simply left me no place where I could defend the truth.”

That same day Richard came to the facility’s conference hall to explain everything before the employees. The cameras were on. I was there too, as were Melissa and David.

He tried to bring back the old Richard.

“This is all Luka’s personal revenge,” he said. “I did not give him a job, and now he wants to destroy the company.”

David turned on the audio.

Richard’s own voice sounded.

“Give him the position, as long as the audit files disappear.”

Someone in the hall exhaled.

Richard raised his head and for the first time heard his own words the way others heard them. His face slowly grew pale.

“This is taken out of context,” he said.

“Which part?” Melissa asked. “The position or the disappearance of the files?”

“You do not understand how many people will be left unemployed!”

“We understand,” I told him. “That is exactly why we transferred the company to temporary independent management. The employees will remain. Only the people who endangered their lives will leave.”

Richard took a step toward me.

“You are my family.”

“I was your family until you used people’s fear for your profit.”

That same evening the investigative service arrested Richard and his financial director. I was not there. I did not want to see his face at the moment when he first realized that control was over.

Three days later the police opened the basement of the old facility.

There they found my father’s records.

My father had opposed Richard for years. He had discovered fictitious invoices and safety violations, but Richard had used his signatures to shift the responsibility onto him. My father recorded everything, but one day before his death he hid a copy of the material in the basement.

The photograph had been taken on the night my father went to the facility for the last time. The next day he died in an accident, and Richard told everyone that it was an accident.

In reality, a problem with my father’s car’s brakes had been discovered in advance, and Richard postponed the repair.

This was the truth I was most afraid to hear.

Richard did not directly plan my father’s death, but his greed knew that danger existed and still did nothing.

A few months later the court sentenced him and his financial director to long imprisonment. The money taken from the foundation was returned to the affected families. Harrison’s company changed its name, created an independent safety board, and established new rules in all the facilities.

I did not become its director.

I did not accept, even of my own will, the position Richard had refused me.

I opened a small industrial consulting company on the other side of the city. My first employee was Melissa, and the second was David’s young assistant, who had discovered the servers.

In the mornings the smell of coffee filled my office. A new map of the facilities hung on the desk, this time without red dots. Each dot marked only a place where we had installed a new safety system.

Six months later my niece, Nina, came to the office. She was eight years old, and colored pencils had spilled from her bag.

“What do you do now?” she asked me.

“I try to make companies not put profit before people.”

“Is it difficult?”

“Sometimes.”

She drew a large facility, and next to it a small man holding a yellow paper.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“Yes. The paper says that the door is open.”

I smiled, but my eyes filled with tears.

That same week I received a letter from Richard. It was short.

“Luka, I know that I do not deserve forgiveness. Come just once. I want to explain what happened to your father.”

I read the letter several times.

Then I wrote a reply.

“My father’s final records have already explained everything to me. I am no longer waiting for your explanation. I may achieve forgiveness someday, but I will not return to your life.”

I sent the letter and for the first time felt neither anger nor victory.

Only peace.

Among the things found in my father’s basement, one small object remained with me—the old copper ship that Richard used to turn on his desk. My father had given it to him in his youth, and Richard had returned it to him on the same day their argument took place.

I placed the ship in my office, by the window.

Every morning, when the sunlight touches its rusted mast, it turns slightly. It no longer moves by someone else’s will.

It searches for its own path.

And I did the same.

The ship went out of the harbor alone for the first time.