Chapter 40 - The Name on Marco's Phone
Marco had never locked his phone around Dante.
That was why the message on its screen hurt before anyone understood it.
Transfer confirmed. Your sister will remain comfortable if you honor our understanding.
Elena saw it while carrying tea into the study. Marco's phone lay beside the maintenance reports, bright beneath a lamp.
She stopped.
Marco saw her expression and looked down.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then he picked up the phone and placed it in Dante's hand.
“I should have told you yesterday.”
Dante read the message.
“Where is Sofia?”
Marco's younger sister lived in a supported residence after a serious car accident. Dante knew her love of terrible game shows, her insistence on birthday balloons, and the way Marco softened whenever she called.
“Her residence changed management last month,” Marco said. “The new operator received an investment from a Mercer affiliate.”
“What did they ask?”
“Your schedule. Elena's movements. Access to the foundation server room.”
Elena set down the tray very carefully.
“What did you give them?”
“Nothing.”
Dante's eyes remained fixed on him.
Marco removed a second phone from his pocket.
“I saved the calls. I contacted June yesterday afternoon. We were arranging a safe transfer before we told you.”
Dante called June.
She confirmed the timeline and explained what she could share. Sofia had been moved that morning with her consent and professional assistance. Investigators were reviewing the threats.
The transfer in the message referred to an attempted payment Marco had refused and reported.
Relief came slowly.
It had to pass through the place where twenty years of Victor's friendship still hurt.
He remembered mornings when Marco had arrived before dawn and left after everyone slept. Dante had called that devotion without asking what it displaced. A sister's appointments. An unanswered message. A life held patiently somewhere outside the gates. The realization made him ashamed, but shame alone would serve nobody. He needed to become a man whose friends could tell him no and still expect his hand to remain open.
Dante handed back the phone.
“You thought I'd go after them.”
Marco looked at him.
“Yes.”
The answer landed harder than an accusation.
Elena sat beside the window.
Dante looked from her to his oldest friend.
“Would you have been wrong?” he asked quietly.
Nobody hurried to comfort him.
Finally, Marco said, “I needed Sofia safe before finding out.”
Dante nodded once.
It took courage to hear what love had become afraid to tell him.
That evening, they visited Sofia at her new residence. She greeted Dante by complaining that Marco had packed the wrong slippers.
“Brown ones make me look ninety,” she said.
“You're thirty four,” Marco answered.
“Then stop aging me.”
Elena laughed and helped unpack a framed photograph.
Dante sat where Sofia could see him comfortably.
“I'm sorry you were pulled into this.”
She studied him with the directness her brother rarely permitted himself.
“Then don't make Marco choose between us.”
“I won't.”
“Good. He gets dramatic when he's tired.”
Marco rolled his eyes.
For an hour, they watched contestants guess the price of a refrigerator. Nobody discussed Mercer. Sofia ate two chocolates and insisted Elena take the third.
In the parking lot, Dante stopped beside Marco's car.
“You don't owe me the kind of loyalty that costs your sister.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Marco looked away.
Dante waited.
At last, Marco nodded.
Back home, June sent a new development.
Lighthouse's financial records showed payments to a security contractor involved in both the tower closure and Sofia's residence acquisition.
The same contractor had submitted the harbor's alarming risk report.
One company. Three pressure points.
Elena read the summary aloud.
“They aren't finding weaknesses,” she said. “They're creating them.”
Dante looked at the rain against the kitchen window.
May you like
“Then we document every hand on the wall before it falls.”
Marco took out his phone, checked for a message from Sofia, and finally smiled. She had sent a photograph of the correct slippers beside the chocolates Elena left. Beneath it she had written, Tell your boss I expect better television next time. Dante read the message and laughed softly. Trust had survived the evening, changed by honesty into something stronger and less obedient.
