Chapter 4 - The Doctor and the Dossier
The guest suite inside Ethan Hayes’s townhouse looked like a five-star hotel suite designed by an interior architect who specialized in minimalist luxury. A crackling gas fireplace cast a warm, amber glow across the hardwood floors, and the scent of fresh lavender filled the air.
Dr. Sterling, an elderly man with kind eyes and a well-worn leather medical bag, finished taking my blood pressure and shook his head gently.
"You're suffering from acute exhaustion, severe caloric deficit, and a borderline systemic crash," Dr. Sterling announced, packing away his stethoscope. "You need twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, three square meals a day consisting of actual protein, and zero stress. Which, considering who your host is, I assume is entirely impossible."
"She'll get the sleep and the meals, Doctor," Ethan said from the doorway, stepping into the room carrying a steaming mug of herbal tea. "Just make sure she takes the iron supplements you prescribed."
"I'll see myself out," the doctor chuckled, gathering his coat. "Mr. Hayes, try not to dismantle any multinational corporations before morning, if you can help it."
Once the doctor left, Ethan placed the mug of tea on the bedside table and pulled up a sleek leather armchair, sitting down directly across from me. He placed a thick, leather-bound folder on his lap—not mine, but a completely different one bearing a red classified tag across the top.
"Your babysitter and your son, Leo, are currently settled in the west wing playroom," Ethan said, anticipating my immediate anxiety. "My staff has prepared a nursery next door. You can see them in a few minutes. But first, we need to talk about what you found at Le Gabriel."
I wrapped my hands around the warm mug, letting the heat seep into my fingers. "I didn't find anything major, Mr. Hayes. Just schedules, time-cards, and delivery logs. I kept copies in my bag because Gregory had a habit of altering our hours on the digital portal after we clocked out."
Ethan opened the folder on his lap, revealing a series of printed bank statements, corporate registry documents, and high-resolution photographs.
"Those time-cards and delivery logs are the exact puzzle pieces my forensic accountants have been trying to locate for six months," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a sharp, analytical register. "For over a year, Le Gabriel has been receiving weekly shipments of high-grade wagyu beef and imported truffles billed to my commercial real estate holdings as part of an anchor tenant subsidy program. Except... Le Gabriel doesn't serve wagyu or truffles."
My eyes widened. "No... they don't. The menu says they do, but the kitchen uses frozen distributor meat with a heavy marinade to mask the quality. I saw the boxes in the walk-in freezer myself. They had different labels stuck right over the original shipping barcodes."
"Exactly," Ethan nodded, turning a page to reveal a scanned signature on a customs invoice. "Gregory has been redirecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in subsidized luxury goods to a shell company registered under a fake name, then selling them on the black market to competing restaurants across New Jersey and Brooklyn."
He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my breath catch.
"And when you started asking for your three hundred dollars in back pay," Ethan continued, "you weren't just an annoying, broke waitress to him. You were a walking, breathing paper trail who had access to the physical shift logs that proved the deliveries didn't match the kitchen inventory."
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A cold shiver ran down my spine. "He didn't just refuse to pay me because he's cheap," I whispered. "He refused to pay me because he wanted me gone. He wanted me desperate enough to pack up and leave the city so I'd never look twice at those invoices."
"Instead," Ethan said with a faint, dangerous edge to his voice, "you walked straight into the most expensive restaurant in Manhattan, collapsed at my table, and dropped his entire criminal enterprise onto my shoes."
