She returned to the pantry, where the refrigerator motor buzzed and someone was slicing oranges. Her phone lay beside the employee time clock. A message from Isaiah waited on the lock screen: Dad says don't forget the Thursday prescription. I'll pick it up if you're late.

She typed, Thank you. Home after midnight. Then she opened an old folder of documents on her phone, one she had not touched for four years. Its title was KOBE / FINAL TRANSLATION / DO NOT DELETE.

The restaurant hummed outside. The acquisition papers whispered beneath Voss's confident hand. And Evelyn, who had spent four years trying not to think about what had happened in a Japanese testing laboratory, knew that somebody at the table had just described exactly the mistake she had once refused to conceal.

Before she could close the folder, Caleb Sloan appeared in the doorway. "Evelyn. Graham wants you back."

"Did he say why?"

Sloan looked miserable. "He says he has a little test for you."

Chapter 02  —  The Bet Nobody Could Take Back

Graham Voss was holding a silver pen between two fingers when Evelyn returned. Every chair faced him. It was the arrangement of a classroom in which the teacher had already chosen whom to embarrass.

"We've been talking about languages," he announced. "Miss Price, I understand you were listening."

Evelyn stopped at the edge of the table. "I listen when guests speak, sir."

"So you understand Japanese?"

Caleb Sloan, standing beside the door, let out the smallest sound. Evelyn could almost hear him calculating how a perfectly good dinner had become a disciplinary matter.

"I speak Japanese," she said.

Voss's smile widened. "Of course you do. Where'd you learn it? Watching cartoons?"

Jun's face changed. Emi laid down her chopsticks. Kuroda did not move.

"In Japan," Evelyn replied.

"Convenient answer. Well, I have four Japanese experts right here. We can settle this quickly."

"Mr. Voss," Kuroda said, "we have a contract to discuss."

"And we will. But first a little entertainment. Everyone could use a laugh." He turned back to Evelyn. "Say something impressive."

Evelyn thought of how easily a person who owned an enormous company could make a stranger's workday into a spectacle. She thought of her father limping to the kitchen table each morning, insisting on making his own coffee because independence was one of the few comforts pain had not taken.

"If you want a translation," she said, "tell me what needs translating."

Voss tapped the silver pen against his napkin. "That's bold. How about a wager? Ten thousand dollars says you can't manage a real conversation."

"Graham," Emi said clearly, "please do not turn this into a bet."

"I didn't ask the lawyer." Voss gave her a quick, dismissive look.

Evelyn saw the moment Emi chose not to reply. A salary, like a uniform, could make a person smaller in a room when the wrong man was watching.

"A conversation isn't a spectacle," Evelyn said.

"Then prove it. Fifty thousand."

He expected either laughter or anger. Evelyn gave him neither. "No."

That interested him more than submission would have. "No?"

"You have already decided I'm incapable. Anything I say will become a trick you can dismiss. That's not a test."

Reina Kuroda spoke in Japanese, quiet enough that only the nearest people would hear: "She understands the difference between performance and evidence."

Evelyn kept her eyes on Voss. "If you want an honest test, there should be an independent judge. And the language should concern something meaningful, not a greeting."

"There it is," Voss said to the others. "The demands. This is what happens when you give someone a little attention."

"You're welcome to end the discussion," Evelyn said. "I'd be glad to serve the main course."

The door opened behind her. A waiter carrying plates paused at the sight of the room. Voss waved him away without looking.

"A hundred thousand," Voss said. "Real money. One conversation."

"I won't bargain over my dignity in installments."

Kuroda's mouth moved fractionally, a reaction that could have been amusement or approval. Voss interpreted the same sentence as a challenge to his authority.

"One million dollars," he said. "There. Enough money for you? I'll put it in writing. If you can translate whatever technical passage my guests select, accurately, without notes, I pay you one million. If you fail, you apologize for wasting our time."

It was an ugly condition. Evelyn looked at each investor in turn. "I would have a right to ask for the context of the passage? Technical language can be misleading without its surrounding clauses."

"No tricks," Voss warned.

When Graham announced that he wanted the Japanese passage read aloud, Evelyn noticed he kept the page facedown. It was the gesture of a man protecting a card before a game, not a businessman reviewing a document. She did not move closer until Emi, one of Kuroda's advisers, turned the sheet over herself.

"One rule," Evelyn said. "The complete passage remains visible to everyone. No sentence removed from its heading or its conditions."

Voss smiled at the nearest diner who had begun filming. "Listen to her. A waitress negotiating the terms of her own humiliation."

"I'm negotiating the terms of the translation," she answered. "If you want entertainment, the piano starts at eight."

Somebody near the door laughed and quickly stopped. Emi read the Japanese page with growing concentration. The blue triangular mark Evelyn had glimpsed earlier sat beside a date and a handwritten reference. It was there in the original; in the English summary, there was only a square green box labeled APPROVED.

"May I ask who prepared the English version?" Evelyn said.

"Professional people," Graham replied.

"Then the professional people won't mind us comparing it with what was actually written."

Kuroda intervened before Voss could object. "She may ask questions. Accuracy is not disobedience."

That simple statement changed the way Evelyn stood. She straightened, folded her hands in front of her and regarded the document as a professional would. For a few seconds, she forgot the apron, the phones and even the absurd amount of money. A sentence needed protecting. The room could watch if it wished.