Chapter 8 - THE STAFF MEETINGAlessandro did something nobody remembered happening in the Moretti mansion.
He invited the household staff into the private study.
Not one at a time.
All of them.
Thirty-one people from the primary estate.
Kitchen.
Housekeeping.
Grounds.
Drivers.
Maintenance.
Laundry.
Marco stood at the back.
The walnut desk remained unused.
Alessandro stood in front of it.
Employees lined the room awkwardly.
Some had never crossed those doors.
Many looked nervous.
Alessandro noticed.
“Sit.”
Nobody moved.
There were not enough chairs anyway.
“Okay.”
He almost smiled.
“Bad instruction.”
A few people relaxed.
Then he began.
“I learned this week that wages may have been improperly withheld.”
Faces changed.
“I learned some workers were threatened with losing housing or jobs if they used sick leave.”
More reactions.
“I learned safety complaints may have been ignored.”
A woman near the back looked down.
Alessandro continued.
“I want information.”
Silence.
Nobody volunteered.
He expected anger.
Instead, fear.
Of him.
Finally he said:
“Denise Kessler cannot discipline anyone.”
“Victor Salerno has no access to estate operations.”
“Crestline cannot terminate anyone assigned here during the investigation without independent approval.”
Still silence.
A maintenance worker raised a hand.
“Will they know who talks?”
Alessandro looked at Marco.
Marco answered:
“No complaint will be routed through former supervisors.”
The worker lowered his hand.
Nobody spoke.
Alessandro felt frustrated.
Then remembered Sofia.
People like me do not walk into rooms with people like you.
He tried again.
“Maybe I’m the wrong person to ask.”
That changed the room.
He continued.
“You don’t need to tell me.”
An outside labor investigator would meet privately.
Anonymous written statements accepted.
No Moretti management in the room.
Paid time to participate.
That was better.
Then Rosa raised her hand.
Alessandro nodded.
She spoke.
“Can we say something now?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you know?”
No one breathed.
Marco looked toward Alessandro.
He answered:
“Because I didn’t ask.”
Rosa waited.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
He thought.
“Because I let contractors create distance between me and people working in my home.”
“Because I read reports instead of talking to workers.”
“Because Victor gave me clean numbers and I liked clean numbers.”
“And because nobody wanted to bring me bad news.”
Rosa nodded.
“Because you get angry.”
Alessandro almost objected.
Stopped.
“Probably.”
A driver spoke from the wall.
“You don’t yell at us.”
“No.”
“You fire executives.”
Alessandro looked at him.
“So?”
“So when Denise says you’ll replace somebody, people believe it.”
Another worker:
“You sent a chef home once because dinner was late.”
Alessandro remembered.
Seven years earlier.
He had not fired him.
He had told him to go home after an argument.
The chef resigned the next day.
In staff mythology, Alessandro had fired a chef over a late dinner.
Stories traveled downward.
Power magnified them.
He could not control every rumor.
But he could stop benefiting from fear.
A housekeeper named June Ellis spoke.
“I called out when my mother died.”
Alessandro looked at her.
“Denise asked whether I really needed three days.”
Someone muttered.
June continued.
“She said Moretti people don’t miss work for personal problems.”
Alessandro’s face hardened.
“I have never said that.”
June shrugged.
“We didn’t know.”
Exactly.
The meeting lasted ninety minutes.
Once one person spoke, others followed.
Unpaid travel time between properties.
Buying uniform shoes out of pocket despite contract reimbursements.
Being told not to use guest bathrooms.
Working through meal breaks.
One employee paying for taxi rides after late-night shifts because the promised shuttle had stopped running.
No single horror.
Dozens of smaller indignities.
That made Alessandro angrier.
Systems hurt people most efficiently through ordinary repetition.
Afterward, employees received confidential investigator contacts.
Then everyone left.
Except one woman.
Her name was Lena Ward.
Laundry staff.
She stood near the door.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“Yes?”
“Denise wasn’t the worst.”
Alessandro stopped.
“Who was?”
Lena looked toward Marco.
Then back.
“Victor.”
“What did he do?”
“He made people disappear.”
Marco’s face changed.
“What does that mean?”
“If someone complained too much, a week later they weren’t on the schedule.”
“Fired?”
“Sometimes transferred.”
“To where?”
Lena swallowed.
“The Bronx warehouse.”
Alessandro frowned.
Crestline operated a central linen facility there.
“What’s wrong with that?”
Lena looked at him.
“They call it the freezer.”
“Why?”
“Because once you get sent there, you don’t come back.”
Within three hours Marco obtained records.
Fourteen Moretti-property employees had been transferred to the Bronx facility after complaints.
Eleven quit within sixty days.
The warehouse paid less.
No housing.
Longer commute.
One worker had been transferred two days after reporting chemical exposure.
Another after asking for overtime.
Retaliation hidden as reassignment.
Victor had approved every transfer.
The anger in Alessandro became colder.
Someone had built an entire system for removing people without technically firing them.
Emma had been right.
May you like
Her mother was afraid.
The only thing Emma got wrong was who she should have been afraid of.
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