Chapter 2 - The Price of Keeping Me Safe
“Where is your brother?”
Dante’s voice sharpened.
I already had my phone out.
“Evanston.”
“Call him.”
“Don’t give me orders while I’m doing the thing you’re ordering.”
My hands shook so badly I tapped the wrong contact twice.
Leo answered on the fourth ring.
“Em? You sound like you’re walking.”
“I’m sitting.”
“You breathe differently when you’re walking.”
He had always noticed small things. Before his illness, before the hospitalizations, before people began speaking around him instead of to him.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
A pause.
“Did something happen?”
“No. I need to talk to your nurse.”
“Emily.”
I shut my eyes.
Someone had photographed him because of me. He deserved more than another protective lie.
“There might be a security problem connected to my job.”
He was quiet.
Then he said, “I told you twelve thousand dollars was a suspicious amount for answering phones.”
Despite everything, I laughed once.
“I do considerably more than answer phones.”
“Apparently.”
With Leo’s permission, I spoke to the facility director. No unfamiliar visitors had signed in. No one had requested his records. She agreed to tighten visitor verification and talk directly with Leo about what would help him feel secure.
When I hung up, Dante was reaching for his coat.
“My men will move him.”
“No.”
He stopped.
“He is in danger.”
“And moving him without his agreement would terrify him. His treatment team knows his history. His routines matter. You do not get to relocate my brother like office furniture.”
Nico became intensely interested in the ceiling.
Dante stared at me.
I stared back.
Finally, he put down his coat.
“What do you need?”
The question landed harder than the order had.
“First, permission to panic for thirty seconds.”
“Granted.”
I pressed my palms against my eyes.
For thirty seconds, I thought about every bill, every overnight call, every time I had told myself that a good salary could make an ugly job acceptable.
Then I lowered my hands.
“I need an independent security consultant working with the facility. No weapons in his hallway. No strangers looming outside his room. And I need the truth about that company.”
Dante nodded to Nico, who left to make arrangements.
Then Dante sat across from me instead of behind his desk.
“Nine years ago, Clara borrowed my car.”
“Why?”
“Hers was in the shop. She had a meeting downtown.”
His gaze fixed somewhere beyond my shoulder.
“She kissed me goodbye. I was on the phone. I held up one finger.”
He lifted his hand.
One finger.
A small gesture. A terrible inheritance.
“I never looked up.”
I had no comforting sentence adequate to that.
So I said nothing.
After a while, he continued.
“Victor Bellini told me a rival crew had planted the bomb. We found men who confessed.”
“Did the police investigate?”
“Yes. They never brought a homicide case against anyone.”
“And the men who confessed to you?”
His silence answered.
Cold moved through me.
I stood.
He didn’t try to stop me.
“Emily.”
“I need air.”
On the other side of the office door, the building continued being ordinary. Phones rang. Someone complained about toner. A delivery driver asked where to leave a box.
I went to the stairwell and sat on the concrete steps.
A minute later, the door opened.
Dante stayed at the landing.
“I won’t ask you to excuse it.”
“Good.”
“I believed them.”
“That doesn’t make them guilty.”
“No.”
That single word carried more weight than any defense could have.
I looked up.
“Who is Victor Bellini?”
“My father’s oldest friend. He helped me take over the business.”
“Does he know about Lakefront?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep it that way.”
Dante studied me.
“You think he’s involved?”
“I think someone kept a dead company alive for nine years. Someone knew exactly where my brother lives. Whoever this is has access, patience, and money.”
“And you want to investigate.”
“I want to stop being the easiest person in this building to threaten.”
He sat two steps below me, leaving space between us.
“You can leave this job.”
“Can I leave the photograph?”
His jaw tightened.
“No.”
“Then don’t offer me choices that only work on paper.”
For a moment, we listened to rain tapping the stairwell window.
Then Dante took out his phone.
“Marianne,” he said when she answered. “Emily needs her own attorney.”
A pause.
“No. Someone who doesn’t work for me.”
That evening, I left with a lawyer’s number, a security plan I had helped choose, and an envelope from Dante’s private files.
Inside was a copy of Clara Marino’s final calendar page.
May you like
Her last appointment wasn’t with a friend.
It was with a federal prosecutor.
