Chapter 5 - The Brother Who Sold Her Name
Charmian found Tommy outside her apartment at six the next morning. He was sitting on the steps with his red baseball cap pulled down and a paper cup of coffee untouched between his shoes. For one wild second she was relieved. Then she remembered the men who had hit her because they couldn't find him.
“Get up,” she said.
Tommy raised his head. He looked older than twenty-three. “Charm. I didn't know they'd go after you.”
“Don't call me that.”
“I swear I didn't.”
“You gave them my campus schedule.”
His silence answered before he could.
Charmian stepped back. It wasn't dramatic. Her whole body seemed to go quiet, as if she needed every scrap of strength to remain standing. “You told them where I was.”
“They said they only wanted to talk to you. They said you'd have one day to persuade me to pay.” He rubbed his face. “I thought I could get the money by then.”
“You didn't even call me.”
“I was scared.”
“So was I.”
Tommy looked at the bruises on her face. His eyes filled, but Charmian would not comfort him. She had spent too many years cleaning up after her brother's apologies. When their mother died, he'd been the boy who stole bread from the group home kitchen so she could eat. He'd also become the man who pawned her laptop last winter. Love hadn't made either fact disappear.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“I came back yesterday. Aleandro told me to come here.”
Charmian's stomach dropped. “Why?”
“He wants the little notebook. Says you took something that doesn't belong to you.”
She took out her phone. “I'm calling my lawyer.”
Tommy caught her sleeve and immediately let go when she flinched. “Please. They said they'll put me in the river.”
“Then tell the police. I'm not hiding this for you.”
He stared. “You're serious?”
“I've never been more serious.”
Leila Brooks answered on the second ring. She told Charmian to move to a public place if she felt threatened, then helped arrange a meeting where Tommy could speak with an attorney of his own. Charmian walked past him to the street. She would not invite him into her apartment. She would not get in his car. When Tommy followed, he kept several feet behind her.
By noon, he had made a statement to Detective Elena Morales, the investigator assigned after Maribel reported Rosa missing. Tommy admitted he'd borrowed eight thousand dollars, that the Petrovs had inflated the debt through threats, and that he'd shared Charmian's class schedule. He also admitted something Charmian hadn't known: he had signed her name on an agreement after Aleandro promised to make the debt disappear.
“I thought it was a job application,” Tommy said, unable to look at her.
“For me?” Charmian asked.
He nodded.
“Did you ask me?”
“No.”
She wanted to scream. Instead she stood, walked into the police station restroom, and cried with both palms braced against the sink. When she emerged, Leila was waiting with a bottle of water and no speech about forgiveness. Charmian appreciated her more for that silence than she could explain.
Tommy's statement gave Elena a second lead. Aleandro had promised him work on a foundation-funded property, an old caretaker's cottage on the far side of the Costa estate. The cottage had been closed for renovations for months. Tommy had seen a blue delivery van there on Friday night. A woman had been in the back, conscious and protesting.
Vincent learned that detail from Miriam rather than Charmian. He was standing in the mansion's sunroom, staring out at the gardens, when Miriam called. “Do not send your people over there and start a confrontation,” she said before anything else.
“It's my property.”
“Then cooperate with the detectives. A missing woman is not an inconvenience you get to handle privately.”
He wanted to argue. Rosa was somewhere within the reach of his own fences, and every minute felt like an accusation. But Miriam was right. He told Frank to preserve the cottage cameras and keep ordinary staff away from the area without touching any evidence. He provided the police with access and disclosed the security records already recovered.
Charmian arrived with Maribel and Leila while officers were searching the cottage. No one allowed them inside the cordon. The waiting was worse than Charmian expected. A helicopter passed far overhead, not connected to them, and she caught herself believing every sound was a sign of disaster.
Then a paramedic emerged from behind the cottage carrying a medical bag. An officer walked beside a woman wrapped in a thermal blanket. Her hair was matted. One wrist was bandaged. She was walking on her own.
Maribel made a sound that seemed to come from the bottom of her life. “Rosa!”
The woman looked up and ran the last few steps into her sister's arms. Charmian turned away, suddenly unable to watch. She had thought of Rosa's bleeding hand each time she closed her eyes. Seeing her alive did not erase the warehouse. It changed what might happen next.
Rosa asked for Charmian before the ambulance left. “You remembered the plate?”
“I did.”
“Good girl.” Rosa winced as a paramedic adjusted the blanket. “I kept telling myself somebody would remember.”
The doctor at the hospital later confirmed Rosa was stable, though she needed treatment and rest. With her attorney present, she told investigators that she'd discovered fictitious names on cleaning rosters billed to St. Jude's. When she protested, a Petrov associate assaulted her and Aleandro had her moved to the estate, where two men kept her inside the cottage. One had threatened her family. Rosa had hidden a copy of a payroll summary in the lining of her work bag before she was taken, but the bag was still at the warehouse.
The detective returned to Vincent with a different question. “Are you aware that your foundation issued payments under Charmian Flannery's name?”
Vincent shook his head.
Elena showed him a printed account summary. Someone had listed Charmian as a paid administrator for the same phantom-worker program Rosa had discovered. The transactions were dated during hours she was in class or working at the diner.
May you like
Charmian took one look and understood the next move in the plan. “That's why they made Tommy sign my name,” she said. “They weren't only trying to make me work. They were setting me up to take the blame.”
Outside the interview room, her brother stood with his own attorney, waiting to speak to her. She walked past him. There would be time for whatever relationship survived the truth. First she wanted her name back.
