busboy was staring at the floor, trying not to make a sound.
She could not allow him to become another person caught in a family war.
Matteo noticed her expression.
He quietly indicated a service passage leading toward the employee stairwell.
Talia helped Ben through the narrow opening while Matteo remained near the pantry entrance.
They moved into a dim corridor lined with cleaning equipment and storage cabinets.
At the stairwell, Ben tried the door.
Locked.
“They’ve blocked it,” he whispered.
Talia turned back.
“There has to be another way out.”
“The private dining room has a separate entrance,” Ben said.
“But we’d have to cross the lower corridor.”
From the pantry came Dorian’s voice again.
“You think the police will save you, Matteo? Half the people who handled those records have already been paid to forget what they saw.”
Matteo answered coldly.
“Then perhaps you should stop talking.”
The corridor fell silent.
Talia knew they could not remain hidden forever.
She looked down at the envelope Matteo had given her to carry.
A photograph slipped partly free.
It showed the eastern warehouse gate.
And beside the gate stood a delivery truck bearing a distinctive blue shipping seal.
Her breath caught.
She knew that seal.
It was the one Gabriel had circled in the photograph he gave her before his death.
She pulled the image closer.
The original photograph showed only the corner of the truck and part of its registration number.
The photograph in Matteo’s envelope showed the entire vehicle.
Suddenly, Gabriel’s warning made sense.
He hadn’t merely photographed a suspicious delivery.
He had photographed proof that a truck entered the warehouse after the official inspection records claimed all cargo had been removed.
And somebody had lied about the building being empty.
Talia looked at the shipping manifest attached behind the image.
The truck was listed as having departed the warehouse at 7:40 p.m.
The company’s security camera record, printed on the next page, showed it entering at 10:26 p.m.
Almost three hours later.
“Matteo,” she called softly.
He entered the corridor moments later, having escaped through the pantry’s adjoining storage passage.
“What is it?”
She showed him the two photographs.
“Gabriel photographed this truck.
I have another picture at home.
It proves that vehicle was there after the records say it left.”
Matteo studied the images.
“That truck belonged to Dorian’s private logistics contractor.”
“Then Gabriel wasn’t stealing supplies.”
Matteo looked at her sharply.
“Why would you say that?”
Talia swallowed.
“The company accused him of taking inventory before the fire.
That’s what they told my mother.
They said he was being investigated.”
Matteo’s face hardened.
He took another page from the envelope.
“This report was prepared after the fire.
It accused Gabriel of falsifying shipment numbers.”
“He didn’t.”
“I believe you.”
Talia almost laughed.
“Four years late, Mr.
Varela.”
He accepted the words without protest.
Then he turned the report over.
On the reverse was an internal note approving the accusation as the company’s official explanation.
The name at the bottom belonged to Dorian.
And above it was a handwritten instruction concerning the surviving security footage.
Archive separately.
Do not include in insurance submission.
Talia understood that Gabriel had not died because of an ordinary electrical malfunction.
He had died inside a building whose exits were secured,
