Chapter 2 - THE TRANSLATOR
I couldn’t breathe. The air in the narrow service corridor felt suddenly too thin, too hot.
"Mia?" he repeated, his voice dropping an octave.
It wasn't a question anymore. It was an anchor dropping into twelve years of dark, heavy water.
I forced my face into a mask of blank confusion. "I'm sorry, sir. My name is Anna. Now, if you'll excuse me, my manager will fire me if I'm away from the floor too long."
I turned for the heavy metal door, my hands trembling. But before my fingers could graze the handle, his palm planted flat against the steel, right above my head. He didn’t touch me, but he trapped me all the same. I could smell his cologne—cedar and cold rain—a scent that suddenly made my knees feel terrifyingly weak.
"I buried an empty casket twelve years ago," Julian Vance said, his voice a lethal whisper. "My family told me you died in the coastal highway pileup. I spent three years looking for a ghost. And now she's pouring my Cabernet."
Panic clawed at my throat. If Julian knew I was alive, then he would find out. And if he found out, the fragile, hidden life I had built for my sick mother and my eleven-year-old son would be destroyed.
"You're confusing me with someone else," I lied, looking him dead in the eye. "But you are about to lose a fifty-million-dollar deal if you don't go back in there."
Julian stared at me. The ruthless, brilliant CEO he was known to be clicked back into place, masking the haunted man I’d just seen.
"Fine. Anna," he said, tasting the fake name like bitter ash. "You’re going to march back to that table with me. You’re going to sit in my chair, and you are going to tell Herr Weber exactly what his translator has been hiding. Do that, and I won't call the police to run your fingerprints."
It was extortion. It was also my only way out.
I nodded once.
When we re-entered the private dining room, the silence was deafening. The corrupt translator, a man named Sterling, looked up with a strained smile. "Mr. Vance. Is everything all right?"
Julian didn't sit. He pulled out the chair next to his. "Sit," he commanded me.
Sterling’s smile faltered. "Sir? The waitstaff isn't allowed—"
"Shut up, Sterling," Julian snapped. He looked across the table at the German executive.
I sat down. My apron felt absurd against the mahogany table. I took a deep breath, looking directly at Herr Weber.
“Mr. Vance understands that you are unhappy with the arbitration clauses,” I said in flawless, unaccented German. “He also knows that this man has been lying to both of you for the last hour.”
Herr Weber’s eyes widened in shock. He looked from me to Sterling, then back to me. Rapidly, furiously, he unleashed a torrent of German.
“He says Sterling told him you were forcing the seventy-thirty split, refusing to negotiate,” I translated for Julian. “He says Sterling threatened that you would pull the patent rights if he didn’t sign tonight.”
Julian’s face turned into carved stone. "Sterling. You're fired. Get out before I have you arrested for corporate espionage."
Sterling scrambled up, his face pale, muttering empty threats as he fled the room.
Herr Weber, realizing the depth of the deception, slowly put his pen down. He looked at Julian with newfound respect. Through me, they spent the next twenty minutes ironing out the real terms. The fifty-fifty split was restored. The contract was signed.
When Weber finally left, I immediately stood up to flee.
"Sit down, Mia," Julian commanded.
"The deal is done. Let me go."
Julian reached into his tailored suit jacket. He didn't pull out a phone or a checkbook. He placed something small and silver on the dark wood of the table.
It was a tarnished silver bracelet with a tiny, cracked turquoise stone.
May you like
My breath hitched. I had lost that bracelet the night I ran for my life.
"Sterling was hired by my stepbrother, Marcus," Julian said softly. "The same stepbrother who handed me this bracelet twelve years ago and told me you burned in that car. So, you're going to tell me exactly what happened that night. Or I'm going to ask Marcus."
