“I understand.”
She cleaned the kitchen, the living room, the glass walls, the halls. She moved quietly and carefully, even when dizziness made her grip the wall for support.
Later that morning, Damien returned.
He noticed everything.
He noticed that the apartment was spotless.
He noticed that she never complained.
He noticed, too, that her exhaustion was not ordinary.
In the following days, he began to watch more closely.
Nadia arrived before sunrise, worked with discipline, left in the afternoon, then disappeared into the city. She never asked for help. She never explained herself. She never tried to gain sympathy.
One afternoon, after she requested permission to leave early, Damien stood by the window and watched her stop a taxi.
“Moussa,” he said through the intercom.
“Yes, sir?”
“I want to know where she goes.”
That evening, Moussa returned with the answer.
“She goes to Cocody Hospital,” he said. “Her mother is there. Very sick. She needs surgery for a tumor. The hospital wants three million five hundred thousand francs before they operate.”
Damien said nothing.
Moussa continued, “And after leaving here, she works at another small restaurant. Then she goes back to the hospital. Then at dawn, she returns here.”
The office became silent.
For Damien, three million five hundred thousand francs was less than what he sometimes spent on a single business dinner. But for Nadia, it was the difference between life and death.
“Has she told anyone?” Damien asked.
“No, sir.”
“Not even me?”
“No.”
Moussa hesitated before leaving.
“Sir, that girl is different.”
Damien looked toward the city lights.
“I know.”
The next morning, Nadia entered Damien’s office to clean. On the desk, near a file, sat an envelope. When she moved it carefully to wipe beneath it, the flap opened.
Inside were thick bundles of cash.
Her heart stopped.
It was more money than she had ever held in her life.
For one dangerous moment, she thought of her mother. The hospital. The surgery. The ticking clock.
No one was in the apartment.
No one would know.
Her fingers trembled.
Then Nadia closed the envelope and placed it back exactly where it had been.
“This money is not mine,” she whispered.
She did not know Damien had left it there deliberately.
He had wanted to know whether desperation would change her character.
It had not.
A little later, Damien returned.
Nadia came out of the office and greeted him quietly.
He looked at her for a moment, then asked, “How is your mother today?”
The question startled her.
“How do you know about my mother?”
“When something catches my attention, Nadia, I try to understand.”
Her eyes lowered. The secret she had carried alone suddenly felt too heavy to hide.
“The doctors say the operation must be done quickly,” she said, her voice shaking. “But I don’t have the money. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. But I may not find it in time.”
Damien listened.
And for the first time in years, a memory he had buried came back with painful force.
His own mother.
A small room.
Her voice asking when he would visit.
