Chapter 6

The hearing was scheduled for a Tuesday, three weeks after the wedding.

Naomi arrived at the county courthouse at 8:15 a.m., an hour early. She wore her best black suit, the one she'd bought for funerals and law school graduation parties that had never happened. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. Her hands were steady.

In the backpack slung over her shoulder: the signed invoice, three years of receipts for ingredients, the printout of every text message her sister had ever sent about the wedding, and a USB drive with the security footage burned to it.

She sat in the hallway, on a bench outside the hearing room, and watched people walk past. Lawyers with briefcases. Families with babies. The hum of a building where people's lives got decided by strangers in robes.

"Naomi."

She looked up. Derek stood at the end of the hallway, a folder tucked under his arm.

He walked over and sat down next to her on the bench. He wasn't wearing the black polo shirt today. He was wearing a navy suit, a white shirt, a tie. He looked different—more formal, more serious.

"You didn't have to come," Naomi said.

"I said I'd be there." He set the folder on his knee. "I brought a copy of my statement. And the full, unedited footage."

Naomi looked at the folder. "Did your job—"

"I quit."

The words landed like a stone in still water.

Naomi stared at him. "You quit?"

"There was a meeting. After the wedding. The venue's corporate office called me in and explained that I'd violated my contract by releasing footage without authorization." He said it calmly, evenly. "I explained that I'd violated an unwritten policy but followed the law. They weren't interested in the distinction."

"So they—"

"I quit." He shrugged. "Turns out I've been helping enough people get away with things. I didn't want to help them with this one."

Naomi sat back against the bench. She looked at the folder in his hands. At the badge clipped to his belt that no longer said RED OAK VENUE.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be." He looked at her. "I've watched a lot of people get treated like they're invisible. I've watched families do worse to each other than strangers would. And I've always had a policy of not getting involved."

"Until now."

"Until now." He smiled. "Maybe I was just looking for a good reason."

They sat in the hallway in silence for a while. The courthouse hummed around them.

"You know," Derek said, "I've done this before. Not a wage theft hearing—but I've sat on the other side. I was a witness."

Naomi turned to look at him.

"I was nineteen," he said. "Working at a warehouse. My supervisor was taking money from the till and blaming it on the night crew. One guy got fired. Another got suspended. I didn't say anything, because I was scared I'd be next."

His voice was quiet now, the professional tone gone.

"Took me three years to tell anyone. By then, the supervisor had moved on to another warehouse and done the same thing to a new crew." He paused. "I've carried that around for twelve years. Wondering if I'd said something—one sentence—whether all those people would have kept their jobs."