RING OF POWER

Chapter 8 Not a Temporary Job

Alphonsus didn't call Eleanor back. Instead, he blocked the number and deleted the messages.

He didn't know who she worked for or what they wanted, but he knew that answering would mean stepping into something he couldn't control. Not yet. Not until he understood what his mum had been hiding.

On Monday morning, he reported to the warehouse at seven a.m. for his first shift.

Dwight Torres shook his hand and introduced him to the supervisor for the regular crew, a woman named Lillian, who was competent and treated people like human beings instead of replaceable parts.

She assigned Alphonsus to work alongside David on inventory management.

“You two work well together,” Patricia said. “That counts for something.”

By midday, Dwight pulled Alphonsus aside and offered him an additional six hours on Wednesday and Thursday.

That would bring his total to fifty-two hours, which meant overtime pay.

At eighteen pounds an hour, plus overtime, it was close to enough. Not enough to solve everything, but enough to buy time. Daniel didn't look well on Tuesday.

He was moving more slowly, his shoulders hunched, his usual focus replaced by something that looked like desperation.

When they took their lunch break at noon in the warehouse office, Daniel got a phone call.

Alphonsus watched him listen for thirty seconds, then end the call without speaking.

“Everything okay?” Alphonsus asked.

Daniel looked at his phone as if it had betrayed him. “My landlord gave us until Friday. If the rent isn't paid by Friday, we're out.”

“How much?”

“Thirty-two thousand pounds. Three months behind.” Daniel set the phone down carefully.

“I was hoping to catch up this month, but with my wife's job situation and the kids' school expenses...” He trailed off. “I'm thinking about picking up a night shift somewhere. Security work or something, just to get us through until things stabilise.”

Alphonsus understood the logic. He also understood why it was dangerous.

“If you take a night shift, you won't sleep,” Alphonsus said. “You'll work here all day, work nights, and eventually you'll break. The job will end, and you'll be back where you started, just more broken.”

“So what? I just let my family get evicted?”

“No. But there has to be another way. You need to talk to your landlord and see if there's a payment plan. You need to look at what expenses you can cut.”

“I need money,” Daniel said flatly. “Nothing else matters until I have that.”

Alphonsus didn't argue, because he understood that too.

When you were drowning, advice about swimming technique wasn't helpful.

Daniel finished his lunch without talking and went back to work.

Cindy's first shift at the restaurant was on Thursday evening.

The restaurant was called The Meridian, a small place in a neighbourhood that had seen better days.

The owner, Laura, was in her early forties and looked like someone who'd poured everything into a business that wasn't paying her back.

She showed Cindy around quickly, explained the register system, then left her to shadow another server for the night.

That server, a guy named Holman, called in sick at five forty-seven p.m., thirty minutes before opening.

Laura's face went pale. “Can you handle a full shift alone?”

Cindy had handled busy retail shifts before. But restaurant service was different: orders came faster, customers grew impatient more quickly, and there was no pause button.

“I'll try,” Cindy said, because she needed this job.

By eight p.m., she was drowning. A table of six wanted separate checks.

Another table sent back their appetisers, saying they were cold, even though Cindy had just picked them up from the kitchen.

The register kept jamming. One customer tipped her one pound on a forty-pound meal and left a comment card saying the service was slow.

Cindy kept moving. She smiled. She apologised. She didn't cry until her shift ended at ten thirty p.m.

Laura was counting the register when Cindy came to clock out.

“We're short,” Laura said, not looking up from the till.

Cindy's stomach dropped. “What do you mean, short?”

“Seventy-five pounds is missing.”

“I didn't take anything,” Cindy said immediately, which sounded defensive even to her own ears.

Laura looked at her. “I know you're new. I know you had a hard night. But money is missing, and you're the only one who used the register tonight.”

“Holman was working earlier...”

“He called in sick before his shift. You were the only one on the register.” Laura set down the money she was holding.

“I'm not saying you did it on purpose. Maybe you rang something wrong. Maybe you gave someone too much change. But seventy-five pounds is seventy-five pounds, and I can't afford to lose that.” Cindy thought about arguing. She thought about explaining that she'd been careful, that she knew how to work a register, that she wasn't a thief.

But something in Laura's expression—not anger, just tiredness and fear—stopped her.

“What do you want me to do?” Cindy asked.

“Come back tomorrow. Work another shift. We'll call it even if the register balances tomorrow night.” Laura paused. “But if this keeps happening, I can't keep you on. I can barely keep this place open as it is.”

That night, Alphonsus sat in his apartment checking his bank balance.

With the regular shifts, overtime, and the money he'd made from day labour, he had two thousand eight hundred and forty-seven pounds.

His mum's hospital bills for next week would be eight hundred pounds. Rent was due in nine days: eleven hundred pounds.

That left him with less than a thousand pounds for food, petrol, and everything else. His phone buzzed with a text from Cindy: “Can we talk? Tomorrow after school?”

He typed back: “What's wrong?”

Her response came after two minutes: “Nothing. I just need to talk.”

Nothing meant something.

But Alphonsus didn't push. He just confirmed that he'd meet her at the hospital, where they could both see their mum.

At eleven forty-seven p.m., a different number texted him: “Your silence is noted. But it won't change what's coming. We know about your mother. We know about your sister. We know where you work. Call me back, or decisions will be made for you.” Alphonsus read the message three times.

They knew about Cindy. They knew about his mum. They knew about the warehouse.

He deleted the message and turned off his phone.

On Friday morning at work, Daniel didn't come in.

Patricia told Alphonsus that Daniel had called in and said he needed to handle something personal.

Dwight didn't look surprised.

“He's going to burn out,” he said to Alphonsus during a break. “Good guy, but he's carrying too much. I've seen it before: a man gets desperate, and he makes decisions that feel right in the moment but destroy him in the long run.”

“What should he do?” Alphonsus asked.

“I don't know. That's above my pay grade. But if you're his friend, tell him that working himself to death won't save his family. It'll just make him dead sooner.”

By Friday afternoon, Daniel still hadn't shown up.

Alphonsus finished his shift and drove directly to the hospital.

Cindy was sitting in the hallway outside their mum's room, still wearing her restaurant uniform. She looked exhausted.

When she saw Alphonsus, she stood and hugged him, something she rarely did.

“The restaurant money came up short,” she said without preamble. “Seventy-five pounds. My manager thinks it was me.”

“Was it?”

“No. I was careful. But she's scared, and I'm the new person, so...” Alphonsus understood all of it: the desperation that made people suspicious, the way fear turned good people into versions of themselves they didn't recognise, the way everything was connected to money and the lack of it.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Go back tomorrow and work another shift. Prove it wasn't me. Try to keep the job.”

“And if she fires you anyway?”

Cindy's jaw tightened. “Then I figure out something else.”

They went into their mum's room together. She was sitting up, looking stronger than she had all week.

When she saw both her children, something shifted in her face: relief, maybe, or fear.

“Both of you,” their mum said. “Something's wrong. I can see it.”

“Nothing's wrong,” Alphonsus said, which was the most transparent lie he'd ever told. His mum looked at Cindy, then back at Alphonsus. She reached out and took his hand.

“There are people who won't stop looking for you,” she said quietly. “People who know you exist and want something from you. I've kept you safe as long as I could, but I don't know if I can anymore.”

“Who are they?” Alphonsus asked. “And why are they looking for me?”

Before his mum could answer, there was a knock on the door.

A woman in her fifties stood in the doorway, professional and composed.

She wore an expensive suit and carried a leather portfolio. Behind her stood a younger man in a security uniform.

“Alphonsus Jameson?” the woman said. “My name is Eleanor Voss. I represent certain interests that are very eager to speak with you. I think it's time we had that conversation.”