She only checked her watch and asked, “How much longer is he going to be like this? I have a meeting in an hour.”
Five minutes later, she was gone.
Alexander felt his blood boil, but he stayed still. He couldn’t make a mistake now. Not when he was this close to learning who had pulled the strings.
And then, just when he thought that room would hold nothing but betrayal and calculation, something happened that he never expected. Something small, quiet… and more powerful than any confession.
That afternoon, a woman in a gray uniform walked in carrying a bucket, a mop, and the weariness of too many shifts in her shoulders.
Without knowing it, she was about to say the words that would change everything.
She moved slowly, carefully, trying not to make noise. Her hair was pulled back in a rushed ponytail. Her hands were rough. Her face carried the look of someone who had worked too many long days and still kept going. She wore no perfume, no jewelry. She didn’t have the mechanical air of someone who was “just doing her job.”
She stepped closer to the bed and looked at him for a few seconds.
“Oh, you poor man…” she murmured.