Nobody answered. Nobody wanted to be the next target.
The employees lining the edges of the hallway had that particular corporate expression people wear when they are relieved that disaster has chosen someone else. A few glanced at Doña Elena with sympathy, but it was the weak kind, the kind that never gets close enough to become action. Most looked at Patricia, waiting for instructions the way people watch a storm and pretend they didn’t help make the weather.
Patricia turned toward the front desk.
“Call Security,” she snapped. “Now.”
“Patricia,” one of the analysts said softly, “it was an accident.”
She swung toward him so fast that he took a half-step back.
“Then maybe you want to pay for it.”
That ended the conversation.
Doña Elena lowered her gaze to the shining floor. The coffee stain on the bag was ugly, yes, but there was something uglier hanging in the air: the delight of power when it finally gets to perform in public. Patricia was the administrative director for that branch, the queen of calendars, invoices, access badges, and small humiliations. She could make a receptionist cry over a typo. She could make a vendor wait three months for a payment if she felt disrespected. And now, in front of half the floor, she had been embarrassed by the one woman in the building nobody thought mattered.
That, much more than the bag, was what she could not forgive.
