Chapter 3 - THE DISCREPANCY ON THE GLASS SCREEN
The morning after the engagement party, the Hudson River was blanketed in a cold, slate-gray November mist. Heavy rain tapped against the leaded glass windows of Grant’s private corner office on the second floor of the estate. The room was dominated by dark mahogany shelving lined with rare legal volumes, an unlit stone hearth, and a massive antique desk carved from a single slab of black walnut.
Grant sat alone behind the desk, wearing a charcoal wool sweater pushed up to his forearms, revealing the dense tactical tattoo work covering his wrists. In front of him lay a sleek, high-security tablet displaying the estate’s operational expense ledgers, domestic payrolls, and security logs.
His dark eyes were narrowed, fixed on a spreadsheet that dated back twenty-four months.
For two years, Hannah Brooks had been logged on the official books as a full-time residential housekeeper, contracted for forty-five hours per week at twenty-eight dollars an hour—a living wage standard Grant personally mandated for all estate staff to ensure absolute loyalty and discretion.
Yet, as Grant swiped through the actual electronic disbursement records, his expression hardened into pure, glacial anger.
Beginning fourteen months ago—coinciding exactly with the week Celeste Rowan moved her personal belongings into the estate’s master suite—Hannah’s direct deposits had been methodically altered. Deductions labeled administrative uniform fee, broken glassware indemnity, unexcused facility absence, and mandatory insurance pool had reduced her actual bi-weekly take-home pay by more than sixty percent. For the last four months, Hannah had been taking home less than seven hundred dollars a month for sixty hours of grueling physical labor per week.
Grant’s finger tapped the screen, bringing up the authorization log. Every single reduction was stamped with a digital override signature: C. ROWAN – EXECUTIVE HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT.
Grant picked up his personal phone from the desk. He dialed a direct line, his call answered on the second ring.
"Grant, darling," Celeste’s voice purred through the speaker, silky and bright against the quiet room. "I’m in the city at the florist’s on Madison. The white calla lilies for the winter gala are simply—"
"Why did you cut Hannah Brooks’s hours?" Grant interrupted.
His voice was entirely flat, devoid of anger or accusation, carrying only the terrifying, clinical precision of an investigator reviewing a fraudulent bill of lading.
The line went silent for three full seconds. The ambient street noise of Manhattan on Celeste's end seemed to recede.
"Grant, really?" Celeste let out an airy, slightly defensive laugh. "You’re auditing the domestic staff payroll the morning after our engagement? The girl is clumsy. She broke two pieces of nineteenth-century crystal in the conservatory during the summer, and her attendance has been erratic. I simply adjusted her compensation to reflect her actual output."
"Her contract stipulates that all disciplinary docking passes through my desk," Grant said softly. "You bypassed the security office. You reduced her pay by two-thirds."
"Grant, trust me," Celeste replied, her voice dropping into a lower, slightly irritated tone that strained against her usual elegance. "I manage the household so you don't have to waste your time on petty staff grievances. She’s an uneducated girl from the flats. If you give people like that too much rope, they steal from the pantry. Just let me handle it."
Grant did not answer. He slowly moved the phone away from his ear, watching the digital ledger on his tablet screen, and ended the call without saying goodbye.
He stared through the tall office window at the gray rain washing over the bluffs. His instincts—the sharp, lethal intuition that had kept him alive through a decade of gang wars and corporate takeovers—were screaming. Celeste was arrogant, vanity-driven, and ambitious, but she was not stupid. She did not risk manipulating financial logs over broken crystal.
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She was starving the girl out. She was systematically suffocating her, driving her toward a breaking point while keeping her on a short, terrified leash.
Grant picked up his keys, grabbed his tailored gray wool overcoat from the leather armchair, and walked out of the office.
