Chương 9 - THE DEMAND FOR ANSWERS
Roman stopped three feet from David Kesler.
Despite the thick white bandages beneath his open shirt, Roman towered over the restaurant manager. His dark eyes locked onto David’s trembling face with a cold, terrifying stillness.
"I asked you a question," Roman said softly, his voice cutting through the silent room like a razor through silk. "Why is she holding a final check?"
David’s breath came in fast, shallow gasps. Sweat broke out across his forehead, running down his carefully styled hair and dripping off his twitching chin.
"S-She... she was late, sir!" David stammered, his fingers clutching his clipboard as if it could shield him from Roman’s gaze. "She... she came in soaked, covered in filth, her uniform ruined... she... she disrupted the standard of our establishment—"
"Her uniform is ruined," Roman interrupted quietly, stepping an inch closer, "because she spent ten minutes kneeling in a freezing alley, pressing her apron against my bleeding chest while I was dying."
The silence in the kitchen deepened into something suffocating.
David’s jaw fell open. He looked from Roman’s dark, cold eyes down to Naen’s bloodstained blouse, then back to the massive security detail standing behind them.
His mind finally connected the dots.
The blood on Naen’s hands wasn't garbage grime. The man she had saved in the rain wasn't a nameless vagrant.
"I..." David choked out, his knees shaking so hard he had to lean against the wall to stay upright. "I... I didn't... I didn't know, Mr. Roman... I swear to you, I didn't know!"
May you like
"You didn't ask," Roman said coldly.
He reached out his right hand—the back of it covered in dark black tattoos—and took the silver clipboard from David’s trembling fingers. Without looking at it, Roman let it fall from his hand, letting it slam onto the floorboards with a loud, echoing crash.
