I stop reading and check the number again. Almost half a million dollars. On a kindergarten teacher’s salary.
I turn the page.
The debt traces back to a man named Landon Webb. Thirty-one. Runs an unlicensed lending operation on the South Side. Microloans with predatory interest rates, primarilytargeting gambling addicts and the financially desperate. Webb identified Calloway’s father — Thomas Calloway, deceased — as the initial owner of the debt.
I go back to the page containing the photo and eye her again.
Twenty-six years old with a half-million-dollar chain around her neck.
“She’s the weakest candidate on paper,” Mikhail points out. He’s been watching me, always tracking my reactions. “Least experience. Least stability. Highest risk profile.”
“She’s also the most motivated,” I counter.
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
My eyes meet his. We’ve been having these silent conversations for twelve years, where what’s said carries about ten percent of the meaning and the rest lives in the negative space.
“A candidate with no money, no alternatives, and a debt she’ll never outrun will not leave,” I explain. “She won’t negotiate or make demands. She’ll show up every day and do the job.”
“That’s not motivation, Rolan. That’s desperation.”
“In my experience, desperation is the most reliable form of motivation.”
Mikhail is quiet for a moment. When he speaks, his tone is carefully measured.
“And if she’s good with Anya? If she’s what your daughter needs? What then?”
“Then she stays.”
“And the debt?”
“What about it?”
“You could clear it. With a phone call. Half a million is nothing to you.”
“I know.”
“But you won’t.”
I straighten the folders, aligning them with the edge of the desk. A precise, meaningless gesture to steady my temper.
“The debt will keep her here,” I tell him. “If I clear it, she has no reason to stay. She’ll leave the moment another opportunity comes along, just like?—”
I stop myself.
“Schedule all three interviews for tomorrow,” I order. “Plus Calloway. She goes last.”
Mikhail nods and picks up the folders. At the door, he pauses.
“Your father,” he says, “used to say that the difference between a good leader and a dangerous one is whether he uses people’s weaknesses to protect them or to keep them.”
“My father is dead.”
“Yes,” Mikhail mutters, lips stretching tight. “He is.”
He leaves, and the door closes with a soft, definitive click behind him. I sit in the silence of my office, eyeing the space where the folders sat. The desk is clean. Polished wood, not a mark on it. Everything in its place. Everything controlled.
I continue to work. After a few hours, I stand and check my watch.
