Part 4 — After the Four-Hundred-Dollar Dinner, the Manager Charged Me the Bill, but an Object Found in the Morning Changed His Face

The sound of car brakes was heard outside the clinic door.

Jet looked toward the window.

“They are here.”

“Who?” I asked.

A strong banging on the door gave the answer.

Mariam put the recorder into her bag. Giorgi took out his mobile phone and called the police.

“I am sending you the address. Come urgently. The danger is real.”

They knocked on the door once more.

“Nino, it is me,” I heard my mother’s voice. “Open up, child.”

I went toward the door, but Giorgi blocked my way.

“First confirm the voice. Your mother always pronounces your name in full.”

Silence fell behind the door.

Then a man’s voice was heard.

“Open up, or you will not see Luka.”

My knees gave way.

Mariam squeezed my hand tightly.

“They will not get in here.”

“What if something happens to my brother?”

“It will not. The police are already on the way.”

Jet looked toward the room’s back door.

“I have to leave.”

“You are going nowhere,” Giorgi told him.

“You have no idea who you are fighting.”

“We know. That is why we are no longer alone.”

Jet picked up a chair and swung it toward the window. The glass shattered, and cold air rushed into the room. He climbed onto the windowsill, but the police officers outside immediately caught him.

The two men standing behind the door were also arrested within a few seconds.

My mother and Luka were found in a police car. They were frightened, but unharmed.

When Luka came to me, he said nothing at first. He simply hugged me and pressed his little copper rabbit against my chest.

“Was it with you?” I asked.

“No. I left it at home. But I made another one.”

In his hand lay a brooch exactly like it.

That same night Jet called me several times.

I did not answer the first call.

On the second call, a lawyer called.

“If you change your testimony, everything will be settled peacefully,” he told me.

“Was threatening my family also a peaceful settlement?”

“Nino, you do not understand how large a company you are opposing.”

“And you do not understand how large my fear has become.”

I hung up the phone.

Several days later the restaurant’s camera recordings were published. It could be seen how, on Jet’s instruction, an employee left an empty tray at the table. It could be seen how Jet pointed out to each waiter the amounts they had not paid. The couple could also be seen leaving the recording behind the chair.

But the courtroom turned out to be the hardest thing for me.

Jet sat behind glass. For the first time he no longer looked strong. His hands were placed on his knees, and he nervously intertwined his fingers.

The prosecutor turned on the recording.

“Nino will pay. I make every waiter do this.”

His own voice sounded in the courtroom.

Jet lowered his head.

I looked at the lawyer standing beside him. He whispered something in his ear.

“I will no longer defend this,” the lawyer said and took a file from the table.

For the first time Jet heard his own words as we heard them.

His face collapsed.

The court determined that the money illegally taken from the employees had to be returned. The restaurant owner and Jet were charged with threats, fraud, and financial crime. They could no longer pressure the employees, because all the recordings and bank documents were in the case.

I did not feel victory.

Only exhaustion.

When I returned home, my old room was almost empty. University books lay in one corner, and a rabbit drawn by Luka hung on the wall. On the bed lay the small copper brooch, the one that had fallen from my apron that night.

I picked it up.

There was a small scratch on one of its ears.

Exactly like the one that appeared in my heart that night.

Three months later I was working in a café, but this time I chose the shifts. In the morning I went to lectures, and in the evening I prepared the café’s menu. My mother no longer lacked medicines. Luka began attending breathing exercises and gave me a new drawing every week.

One morning the first snow came.

Luka stood by the window and drew a small rabbit on the glass with his finger.

“Now you will not have to return late?” he asked me.

“No. Now my time belongs to me.”

He watched me for a long time.

“Was Jet a bad person?”

White lines of snow were falling down the window.

“He made a bad choice. But I will no longer spend my life thinking about why he made it.”

Several weeks later I received a final letter from Jet. He wrote in the letter that the company had fabricated everything against him, that he held me in his heart like a member of his family, and that he wanted only one conversation.

I put the letter on the kitchen table.

My mother asked me:

“Will you not answer?”

“I already answered.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing.”

For the first time in my life, silence did not mean fear.

It meant that I was no longer obliged to prove my truth to anyone.

That evening Luka put something into my work bag. It was his new drawing: a small rabbit standing before an open door. Below it was written only one sentence: “There is always a way back home.”

I attached to the drawing the copper brooch that I had first seen before Jet on that four-hundred-dollar night.

Then I threw the bag over my shoulder and went out into the street.

Snow was falling quietly.

This time I chose the way.