Chapter 2 The Message

Engel’s was nearly empty. In the back booth, facing the door, sat a woman Marcus had never seen before , dark blazer, a manila folder under one hand like she was holding it down against a wind only she could feel.

“Sit down, Marcus. You’re making the trucker nervous.”

He sat, the table between them. “You know my name. I don’t know yours.”

“Dana Holt. FBI.”

“You’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?” She slid the folder an inch closer to herself, unopened. “Your father was a confidential source for the Bureau for eight months. Did you know that?”

“No. My dad worked for the Morettis for fifteen years. He didn’t talk to anybody.”

“He talked to me. Twice a month, this booth. He was scared , not of prison. Of something he found in the books he wasn’t supposed to find. He told me there was a second set of records. Something Rafael Moretti was hiding from his own brother.”

Marcus said nothing.

“Three weeks ago he told me he’d found it. Said he was going to put it somewhere safe. Two weeks later he was dead. Heart attack , sixty-three, no cardiac history, found by a neighbor.” Holt looked up. “Does that sound like a heart attack to you?”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want to know if he gave it to you.”

“He gave me an envelope with a key in it. The key was to an old music box. The music box was empty.”

Holt looked at him for a long moment , long enough that Marcus understood she didn’t believe him, and had decided, for now, to let him think she did.

“Okay.” She slid a card across the table. Just a number, no name. “If that changes , or if Rafael’s people come asking the same question, and they will , call that number before you do anything else. Before you talk to them. Before you talk to Dante. Before you talk to your friend Jake.”

“What does Jake have to do with anything?”

Something flickered behind Holt’s eyes , surprise, fast and covered. “Nothing. I’m just telling you not to trust anyone right now.”

She stood, dropped a ten on the table, and paused at the door without quite turning around.

“Your father loved you enough to die keeping you out of this. Don’t make that mean nothing.”

Then she was gone, and Marcus sat alone with a stranger’s number in his hand and his best friend’s name suddenly sitting in his chest like a stone he hadn’t known was there.

His phone buzzed before he’d left the lot. Jake.

‘Hey man, you good? Sal Greco just called me. Says he stopped by your dad’s place tonight and you weren’t there , but your car was parked outside for like an hour. Wanted to know if I’d heard from you.’

Marcus read it twice, doing the math, and didn’t like the answer.

The math didn’t work.

Sal said he’d ‘seen’ the car for an hour. But Sal had already been inside the house , Marcus had heard him on the stairs. If Sal saw the car, he saw it while he was already there.

Which meant the call to Jake wasn’t a friend checking in. It was Sal checking whether Marcus had noticed anything.

Marcus typed back. ‘Yeah, I’m good. Went to grab dinner, lost track of time. Tell Sal I’ll swing by the warehouse tomorrow.’

Three dots. Gone. Back.

‘Cool. He seemed kinda weird about it to be honest. You sure everything’s good?’

‘Yeah. Long day. See you tomorrow.’

Marcus stood in the empty lot, breathing in the cold off the lake, and decided not to go home tonight.

He took a room at a motel off Cicero that took cash and didn’t ask questions , his father used to joke it was “for affairs or emergencies, and you can usually tell which from the parking lot.” Marcus locked the door, shoved the dresser against it, and set the music box on the bed.

The USB drive was still inside. He turned it over in his fingers. No laptop , and even if he had one, some part of him didn’t want to plug it into anything that could be traced to him.

He unfolded the ledger page instead. Columns of numbers. Bank names , some familiar, some offshore. And in the corner, almost an afterthought:

‘D.A. , $40K/mo. ALD , quarterly. Judge H. , per case.’

A district attorney’s office. An alderman. A judge.

His father hadn’t just found proof the Morettis were skimming. He’d found proof Rafael owned half the people supposed to be stopping them , and Dante didn’t know.

‘If you’re reading this, son, I’m already dead. And it wasn’t an accident.’

Marcus folded the page back into the zip pocket where he used to keep his dog tags, and lay back with his boots still on.

Sleep didn’t come easy. When it did, it came with diesel and sand , a sound he hadn’t heard since the VA, since Dr. Reyes helped him build the box he kept it locked in.

Tonight the box didn’t hold.

His phone buzzed at five-forty. Unknown number. A photo , grainy, his father’s house, the Navigator parked outside, timestamped 9:47 PM. Last night.

‘Sal told Rafael you weren’t home when they stopped by. Rafael wants to know where you were. I told him I’d find out first , because if Rafael asks you himself, that’s not a conversation, that’s an interrogation. So I’m asking, as a favor. Where were you?’

Marcus read it three times, slowing down on the word ‘favor.’

This wasn’t Holt’s number. Someone else who knew about Sal, knew about Rafael, and had just dressed up a threat as a kindness.

‘Who is this?’

The reply came too fast , like the person had been holding the phone, waiting.

‘Someone trying to keep you breathing. Don’t go to the warehouse today. Don’t go anywhere Rafael’s people expect you. And whatever your dad left you , don’t open it. Not yet. Talk to me first.’

Marcus stared at it. Two strangers, two warnings, both somehow already knowing about the music box.

His phone buzzed again. Jake.

‘Hey , you up? Change of plan, boss wants us at the warehouse early. Like now-early. He’s asking for you specifically. Said it’s important.’

Marcus looked from one message to the other. Ten minutes from now, he was going to have to decide which warning to believe , and whichever one he picked wrong might be the last decision he ever got to make.

Marcus chose the warehouse.

Not trust , he wasn’t sure he trusted Jake anymore either. But not showing up would confirm everything the texts already suspected. Showing up was a chance to look Rafael in the eye and find out how much he actually knew.

He left the music box locked in the motel safe and drove over with nothing but his phone and the folding knife he’d carried since Kandahar.