Chapter 10 Five Words

Marcus stood outside the storage facility gate for a long time, looking at the five words on the screen.

‘We need to talk. Now.’

In four years of working for the Moretti family, Rafael had communicated with Marcus through Sal, through Jake, through anonymous texts to a burner he rotated every ninety days. Never directly. Never from a number that traced back to him. Rafael Moretti did not call fixers. Rafael Moretti sent people who called fixers.

Which meant one of two things. Either the situation had deteriorated so badly overnight that Rafael was breaking his own protocols , which was dangerous. Or this was a trap dressed up as urgency , which was more dangerous.

Marcus turned the phone over in his hand, glanced back at the storage facility where his mother was presumably explaining forty-eight missing minutes to Agent Whitfield, and made a decision the way he’d learned to make decisions overseas: imperfectly, fast, with incomplete information, because the alternative was standing still and standing still got you killed.

He called back.

Rafael picked up on the first ring. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to call.”

“It’s been a long night, Rafael.”

“For both of us.” A pause. In the background Marcus could hear something , a television, low, or traffic through an open window. “Where are you?”

“Not somewhere you’d send Sal to,” Marcus said. “If that’s what this is.”

“Marcus.” Rafael’s voice shifted , dropped the pleasantness like a coat coming off, and what was underneath it wasn’t anger exactly. It was something more controlled and therefore more alarming. “I’m going to say something and I need you to hear it without doing anything stupid. Can you do that?”

“That depends on what you say.”

“I know you have the ledger.”

Marcus kept his voice completely level. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Stop.” The word came out quiet and absolute. “Just stop. I’m not Sal. I’m not interested in whether you can maintain a cover story under pressure. I know you have it because I know what my father’s accountant built over fifteen years, and I know where he would have sent it, and I know your car was at that house for an hour the night we were there and that you were not at the restaurant you told Sal you went to because I had someone check. So let’s not do the part where you deny it. It wastes both our time and I am very short on time tonight.”

Marcus said nothing. Saying nothing was the only move that didn’t cost him anything.

“I want to make you an offer,” Rafael continued. “A real one. Not a threat. Not Sal knocking on your door at two in the morning. A number, in cash, wired to whatever account you want to name, in exchange for the drive and the box and your word that the conversation about your father’s files ends tonight permanently.”

“What number?” Marcus said. Not because he was interested. Because the number would tell him how scared Rafael actually was.

“Two million.”

Marcus let the silence sit for four full seconds. “That’s a lot of money to pay for paperwork.”

“You’re a smart man,” Rafael said. “Don’t make me explain why the paperwork is worth that to me.”

“I need to think about it.”

“You have until six AM. After that the offer changes and the conversation changes and I don’t think you want to be part of that second conversation.” A pause. “Marcus. Your father worked for this family for fifteen years. He was respected. His death was…” Rafael stopped, and Marcus heard something in the hesitation that he hadn’t expected to hear: something that might have been genuine. “His death was not ordered by me. I want you to know that.”

“Was it ordered by you?” Marcus said.

The silence this time lasted seven seconds. Long enough that Marcus understood exactly what Rafael was not saying.

“Six AM,” Rafael said, and ended the call.

Marcus stood in the dark outside the storage facility, the music box under his arm, the phone still warm in his hand, and understood three things at once.

First: Rafael hadn’t denied it. He’d stopped just short, with an answer so carefully constructed it was its own confession to anyone listening for the shape of what wasn’t said.

Second: two million dollars was not what you paid for paperwork. Two million dollars was what you paid when the paperwork was an existential threat , when the alternative to buying it was losing everything, including your brother’s protection and your freedom and the operation you’d spent years building. Rafael was terrified. And terrified men with resources were the most dangerous version of any man.

Third: it was currently twelve forty-seven AM, which meant Marcus had five hours and thirteen minutes to figure out what he was going to do with a USB drive that everyone in the city apparently wanted, a half-brother he’d never met, a mother he’d only just reacquired, and a best friend whose last known location was his apartment couch being surveilled through the window by people Marcus still hadn’t fully identified.

He started walking.

Five hours and thirteen minutes. He had survived two days on less.