Chapter 8: The Call Sofia Almost Didn't Answer
Nora looked at the phone.
Sofia looked at the phone.
Neither of them moved for two full seconds.
Then Sofia picked it up and put it on speaker and set it flat on the table between them without answering, and Nora understood immediately — she was letting it ring out to voicemail, but keeping it where they could both hear if he spoke.
He spoke.
"Sofia." His voice was calm.
Unhurried.
The voice of a man who had decided that calm was still a weapon available to him.
"I know you're awake.
I know where you are.
I know your brother just left." A pause.
"I'm not calling to threaten you.
I'm calling because I want you to understand something before this goes further."
Sofia's hands were flat on the table.
She didn't look at Nora.
"What happened last night was not what Gabriel thinks.
The money — yes.
I took it.
I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
But I was going to pay it back.
Every dollar.
I had a deal in place.
Two weeks, and it would have been back in the accounts and no one would have known."
Nora wrote on the back of the receipt: *Keep him talking.* She slid it to Sofia.
Sofia picked up the phone.
Took it off speaker.
Put it to her ear.
Nora leaned close enough to hear.
"Why did you dr*g me?" Sofia said.
A pause.
"That wasn't meant for you."
"The wine was already poured when I came downstairs, Marco."
"I know.
I'm sorry.
That was — I miscalculated.
I thought you'd sleep through the evening and I'd have time to fix things before you woke up.
I didn't think you'd—"
"You didn't think I'd what?
Figure it out?
Tell my brother?"
"I didn't think it would go this far."
"A man is d*ad in the Northstar's back hallway." Nora didn't know if that was true.
But she said it quietly, close to the phone, and watched Sofia's eyes.
Sofia repeated it.
"Gabriel's man says someone is d*ad, Marco."
The pause this time was longer.
"That wasn't supposed to happen," Marco said.
His voice had changed.
Still controlled, but with something underneath it now.
"Rick wasn't supposed to — he panicked.
He wasn't supposed to run."
"What was in the glass?"
"Something that would have made him sick.
That's all.
Sick enough to be taken to a hospital, sick enough to be out of the picture for forty-eight hours while I moved the money back."
"You're lying."
"Sofia—"
"You put my lipstick on the glass.
You dr*gged me so I wouldn't remember the evening.
You sent a man to the restaurant to make sure the right bottle was used." Her voice was very steady.
"That is not a plan to make someone sick for two days.
That is a plan to make someone d*e and make sure his sister is blamed for it."
Silence.
"Come home," Marco said.
"We can talk about this properly.
Without your brother in the room."
"No."
"Sofia.
I love you.
Whatever you think happened—"
"I know what happened." She looked at Nora.
"And so does Gabriel.
And so does someone else who was in that room last night and saw everything."
Another silence.
Longer.
"The waitress," Marco said.
Sofia ended the call.
She set the phone on the table.
Her hands were shaking now — not from fear, Nora thought, but from the specific tremor that comes when the body finally processes what the mind has already accepted.
"He knows about you," Sofia said.
"I know."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Nora picked up the receipt with Gabriel's number on it.
"Call him.
Tell him what Marco said.
Tell him Marco confirmed the wine was intentional.
Tell him Marco knows I was there."
Sofia was already dialing.
Gabriel answered before the first ring finished.
"He called," Sofia said.
"He admitted the wine.
He admitted sending the man to the restaurant.
He knows about Nora." A pause while she listened.
"Yes.
She's here.
She's fine." Another pause.
"Gabriel.
The warehouse — be careful.
He said the money was going back in two weeks.
He had a deal in place.
That means someone else is involved.
Someone you haven't found yet."
Nora heard Gabriel's voice through the phone — not the words, but the tone.
Clipped.
Certain.
Sofia lowered the phone.
"He says stay inside.
He says don't open the door."
Nora nodded.
Sofia looked at the phone in her hand.
At the call log.
At her husband's name sitting at the top of it like an ordinary thing.
"I picked that lipstick shade myself," she said quietly.
"He didn't give it to me.
I bought it at a drugstore on Michigan Avenue.
He just — he knew I wore it.
He knew it would be on anything I touched." She paused.
"He knew me well enough to use me."
Nora didn't say anything.
Sometimes the only honest response to a thing like that is silence.
Sofia set the phone down.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
Nora looked at the door.
At the window.
At the receipt with the number on it.
May you like
"We wait," she said.
"And we make sure we remember every word he said."
