"I'm sorry, sir," she said to David, her voice steady only because she concentrated on keeping it so. "What he did was wrong. I'll call the person in charge and ask them to resolve this." David turned toward her with a look so gentle that her eyes nearly filled, and that kindness made her angrier on his behalf.
"Emma," Victor warned. He stepped closer, keeping his voice low enough to suggest private discipline but loud enough for the watch-counter associate to hear. "If you keep defending him, don't bother coming to work tomorrow."
She stared at him. Her paycheck paid most of the rent on the small apartment she shared with her mother, and her evening classes had already forced her to give up hours she could barely spare. She knew exactly what losing the job would mean: canceled tuition, a difficult conversation at home, weeks of applying to stores that might call Victor for a reference. Fear came quickly, sharp and completely reasonable, and for one brief second she understood why people had stood quietly while he treated others this way.
Then she looked at David's photograph lying beside the necklace. The face in it was young and laughing, and a blue gemstone gleamed at the woman's throat. Emma imagined the older man telling his wife why he had come home empty-handed, and she heard again his careful explanation that the necklace was connected to a promise made when their workers needed to be paid. She could not ask him to pay another price simply because she was afraid of paying one herself.
"He's just buying a gift for his wife," she said. "We haven't even checked the card. You can't call it fake without checking." Victor's face darkened, but she went on before he could interrupt. "And you can't destroy something a customer handed you for a transaction. That's not store policy."
Victor laughed once. "Now you're teaching me policy?" He had been at Bellweather for seven years, and he considered seniority sufficient proof that his instincts were more reliable than Emma's evidence. "I hired you to sell jewelry, not to contradict me in front of a shoplifter."
"He hasn't taken anything," Emma replied. "You have." She looked at the fragments on the counter, then at Victor's face. "His card was intact when you accepted it. Everyone here saw that."
The remark landed harder than she expected. Victor's eyes darted toward the other employees, and Emma understood that he had not yet considered the possibility of being remembered accurately. He expected subordinates to protect him with silence. David noticed the same shift and felt an unexpected admiration for the young woman, who had no reason to know whether standing up for him would help her in the end.
"You should call whoever can help," David told her. "But don't put yourself in unnecessary danger on my account." Emma shook her head slightly. "You aren't the one putting my job in danger, sir," she said. "The person threatening me is standing right here."