Rafael’s security men closed the distance instantly.
“Hands where I can see them,” one ordered.
Marcus stopped.
His hand came back out empty.
Rafael stood.
“What have you seen, Lina?”
It was the first time he had used her first name.
“A box in the west wing.
During my first week at the estate.
It had the same blue evidence mark as the envelope in Marcus’s pocket.”
Marcus laughed once, without humor.
“A cleaner sees a storage box and suddenly she’s an investigator?”
Lina met his eyes.
“The date was written on it.”
Marcus stopped smiling.
“What date?” Rafael asked.
She told him.
The date his father died.
A woman at the table began crying silently.
Rafael turned toward her.
“Why are you crying?”
She covered her mouth.
The older man beside her muttered, “Enough.”
Rafael’s attention snapped to him.
“No.
Apparently there has been enough for seven years.
Enough silence.
Enough people deciding what I am allowed to know.”
The man pushed his chair back.
“Your father made enemies.
Some truths were safer buried.”
“Safer for whom?”
No answer.
Rafael looked at Marcus.
“We are going home.”
Marcus shook his head.
It was small, almost pitying.
“You really think that box is still there?”
The room went quiet again.
Rafael’s eyes narrowed.
Marcus realized too late what he had admitted.
He knew about the box.
Rafael stepped toward him.
“You told me nothing existed.”
“Because nothing in that box can help you.”
“You haven’t seen it?”
Marcus’s silence answered for him.
Rafael ordered his own security team to take Marcus’s weapon, phone, and keys.
Marcus resisted only verbally, insisting Rafael was making a mistake, that old recordings could be altered, that Lina had no idea what she had stumbled into.
Each argument made him look worse.
Within twenty minutes, Rafael and Lina were back in the same car that had brought them to the wedding.
Marcus rode separately under guard.
Neither Rafael nor Lina spoke for most of the drive.
The city moved beyond the tinted windows in ribbons of light.
Finally Rafael asked, “Why didn’t you tell anyone about the box when you found it?”
“Because I wanted to keep my job.”
