Reborn to Marry the Rival Mafia Boss

Chapter Five

I opened Tessa's question in the dispatch group. She wanted to know why B-418 had two different delivery instructions: the driver sheet named the east terminal, but the gate booking sent the truck through an older service entrance. Marco's reply told her to leave the route alone. It didn't answer what she had asked.

I remembered the first report because I'd signed off on the driver's suspension. Luis Ortega had been accused of leaving the approved road with a loaded truck. The company claimed the cargo was stolen during his detour, though six months later I'd found payments attached to that loss that made no sense. Luis had told me someone at dispatch directed him to the service entrance. I'd believed the version of the route my father gave me and let the suspension stand.

That choice had cost him his job. I hadn't learned who gave him the direction before I died. I called Tessa instead of replying in the group. She answered over the hum of the depot ventilation.

"Are you still there?" I asked, pulling my notebook from my bag.

"For another hour. Marco's message didn't clear anything up." Tessa lowered her voice; a metal door closed somewhere behind her. "Are you calling about the shipment?"

"Yes. I want to see both sheets and the gate booking. Can I come in?" I put the notebook on the hotel desk.

"You're the operations director, Sofia. I wasn't sure you wanted to get involved after this morning." Tessa paused while someone spoke near her, then waited for the person to move on.

"I should have looked at your route notes sooner. I'm coming now." I closed the notebook without writing in it. Tessa had sent me those notes last week, and I had set them aside.

"Come through the staff entrance. I'll be in dispatch." Tessa ended the call after I repeated the entrance back to her.

The depot sat behind a row of repair shops, with the eastbound trucks parked nose out beneath floodlights. By the time I arrived, the office windows were lit against the dark yard. Diesel hung in the air, and a forklift beeped inside one of the loading bays. I showed my company badge to the guard at the staff entrance. He marked my arrival in the log, as he always did, and let me through.

Tessa had the sheets spread across the dispatch counter. She wore the same dark work trousers as she'd worn at the house, but she'd exchanged her jacket for a company fleece. A paper cup of coffee sat beside the printer, untouched.

"This is what I asked about." Tessa drew the driver sheet toward me. "Luis is assigned the east terminal. No stops between here and the fuel point. The gate booking has him entering through Spur Nine first. Nobody's given me a reason."

I checked the shipment number and date at the top of both pages. B-418 carried packaged machine parts for an inland customer. The cargo was due at the east terminal tomorrow night, after a long day on the road. The service entrance was several miles short of the terminal, on a road that ran past empty storage yards. A driver unfamiliar with it could turn in from the highway and lose sight of the main gate.

"Who made the booking?" I asked, setting the driver sheet beside the gate record so the two addresses stayed in view.

"The Rinaldi logistics desk. It came through this afternoon, after I sent the roster to your father." Tessa pointed to the time printed in the corner. "I asked them to correct it before Luis got his papers. Then Marco answered in the group."

"Did anyone ask Luis to use Spur Nine directly?" I looked toward the yard, where a driver was securing a trailer door.

"Not from my desk. He's just back from another run, and he isn't assigned B-418 until the early shift." Tessa flattened the gate record with her palm. "I don't want someone telling him one thing on the phone while my sheet says another."

Luis had said almost those words to me the first time. I could still see him standing outside my office while my father waited inside, holding an incident report ready for my signature. Luis had worked for us for nine years. He'd asked me to check the call log before I put him on leave. I hadn't.

I moved my phone over the documents, then stopped. If I kept a record of Tessa's objection, her name would be attached to it. I needed to tell her what I was doing.

"I'm going to save the version history through my own company access. Please keep these originals here." I met her eyes across the counter. "If someone replaces a page, I want to know when it happened."

"You think they will?" Tessa took her hand off the booking.

"The instructions conflict, and Marco just told everyone to leave them alone. I want the record we have now." I took out my badge to sign in at the terminal beside her.

Tessa opened the dispatch portal and stepped back. I used my own login, pulled up B-418, and saved the two current entries and their revision times to my authorized work folder. The booking showed a Rinaldi desk account as its source. It did not identify the person at the keyboard. I recorded the time on my phone and sent Adriana a message asking her how to preserve the records without taking files I shouldn't. I didn't send Tessa's printed sheets.

A driver came through the office door with his keys looped around one finger. Luis looked from Tessa to me, then at the papers on the counter. He had grease across the cuff of his jacket and a tired crease between his brows.

"Was there a problem with my load?" Luis asked, staying beside the door.

"There are two addresses on the paperwork," I explained, turning the driver sheet toward him. "Which one were you given?"

"East terminal. Somebody from the Rinaldi office rang me an hour ago and said there might be a gate change. They'd call again before I left." Luis rubbed the grease from his cuff with his thumb. "I told them to put it through dispatch."

"Who called you?" Tessa asked, taking a pen from behind her ear.

"A man. He didn't give a name. The number came up as the Rinaldi office." Luis unlocked his phone and showed Tessa the call entry without handing it over.

I wanted to tell him to stay home tomorrow. If I did, my father could replace him, and whoever planned the loss would still have a truck on the road. I couldn't promise Luis that I understood all of it, either. What I could do now was make sure he knew which instruction came from us and had someone to call if it changed.

"Don't take a route change by phone, even if the caller knows the load number," I told him, keeping the two sheets on the counter where he could see them. "Call Tessa and me before you turn off the approved road. If you can't reach either of us, go to a staffed stop and wait. I'll put that in writing tonight."

"Am I in trouble for the call?" Luis looked at me, then at Tessa.

"No. You did the right thing by asking for the instruction through dispatch." Tessa wrote the number and call time in her log. "I'll attach a note to your trip sheet."

"We'll review the gate booking before you leave," I added, though I knew tomorrow's meeting with my father could complicate that promise.

Luis nodded and went to return his keys to the night supervisor. Tessa waited until he was out of earshot before closing the office door.

"What's going on, Sofia?" Tessa asked, leaving the pen on the counter between us.

"I don't know enough yet. These papers disagree, and someone has already called Luis about a gate change." I kept my hand on the driver sheet. "If the load goes missing, he could be blamed whichever way he drives. I want to know who gave the other instruction."

Tessa studied me for a moment. Then she turned to the terminal to add the warning to the trip sheet. I approved it under my own login and made a note of the entry number. On the screen above it, the departure field updated. The previous schedule had shown a morning release, after the office meeting. A Rinaldi desk account had changed it two minutes ago.

Tessa leaned closer to read the change. B-418 was due out at four twenty tomorrow morning, nearly five hours before I was expected in my father's office.