Her cheek was still burning.
That was the first thing Nora registered, the heat spreading like a brand under her palm while Victor’s hand hung in the air between them, his fingers still slightly curled from the force of the slap, his breath coming shallow and fast.
She didn’t lower the notebook.
“I want you to say his name,” she said.
The words came out low but every table heard them because the ballroom was that quiet, the kind of quiet where the ice shifting in a forgotten glass sounded too loud.
Victor blinked.
“What?”
“My father’s name,” Nora said, and now her voice did shake, just at the edge. “You haven’t said it once. You hit me for saying it. So now you’re going to say it. Daniel Bellweather. You will say that you knew him. That you owed him. That he worked for you until his lungs gave out from the chemicals on Pier Nine that you never reported.”
Victor’s jaw worked. Sweat had started to bead at his hairline despite the cold air pouring from the vents above the chandeliers.
Around them, phones had begun to appear. Not openly. A woman in emerald silk pretended to hold her clutch while her camera lens caught the light. A young man near the quartet had his phone on the table, recording, his hand trembling.
“You think this is a negotiation?” Victor hissed, leaning in just enough that only Nora and the two men closest to him could hear. “You think you can walk in here with some dead man’s diary and extort me?”
Nora didn’t flinch. She let him see the red mark blooming across her cheekbone.
“This isn’t extortion,” she said, loud enough for the phones. “I want what the law says you owe. Four months back pay for my father, at the rate you were actually paying him off the books. Back pay for every other dock worker you shorted when you reclassified them as contractors. And I want you to establish the fund my father wrote to you about three times. The medical fund. For the men who breathed what you told them was safe.”
Victor let out a short, ugly laugh that didn’t reach his eyes.
“You want me to bankrupt myself for dock trash? Sweetheart, do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”
“I know exactly who I’m talking to,” Nora said. “A man who thinks a ballroom full of witnesses will protect him if he hits a girl quietly enough that no one wants to get involved.”
For a second Victor looked like he might hit her again. His shoulder twitched.
That was when the silver-haired man finally moved.
He set his champagne glass down on the linen-draped table with a soft, deliberate clink. He had not taken a single sip since Nora had opened the notebook.
“Victor,” he said. His voice was even, cultured, tired. “Don’t.”
Victor turned his head sharply.
“Stay out of this, Lawrence.”
Lawrence. Nora filed that away too, the way her father had taught her to file everything, names, dates, times, the small things people say when they think no one is listening.
Lawrence stepped forward into the light. He was in his late sixties, silver hair cut neat, a navy suit that was expensive but worn like he didn’t care about it. His eyes were not on Victor. They were on Nora, and on the notebook in her hands, and his hands were shaking.
“You shouldn’t have come here like this,” he said to her. It wasn’t unkind. It was almost anguished. “Not alone. Not like this. Daniel would never have wanted you to do this.”
Nora’s throat closed.
The way he said her father’s first name, familiar, grief-stricken, like he had said it a hundred times before in a quiet office with the door closed.
“You knew my father,” she whispered.
Victor’s head snapped between them.
“You know this girl?” he demanded of Lawrence.
