Instead, it made me precise.
“You’ve been following a minor for two weeks to ask me for a business file?”
Silence.
Then his tone changed.
“Choose your words carefully.”
I looked at the surveillance folder.
“Why? Are you recording me?”
Dante almost smiled.
The man did not answer.
I continued.
“Because someone has photographs of your sedan outside her school.
Someone has dates, times, locations, and your face.
And you just called me asking for confidential information while mentioning my sister.”
The confidence on the other end disappeared.
“You don’t understand who you’re dealing with.”
Dante finally spoke.
“She does now.”
The silence that followed was different.
Heavy.
The man had expected an assistant.
He had not expected Dante Moretti to be listening beside her.
“Moretti.”
Dante’s voice was almost gentle.
“You should have left her family alone.”
The call ended from the other side.
Dante immediately reached for his phone.
Everything after that moved quickly.
The recording, photographs, surveillance dates, and messages were preserved and handed over through the proper legal channels.
The man downstairs was stopped before he could leave and questioned by authorities once the evidence had been reviewed.
The people behind him tried to deny any connection.
Then they tried to describe the surveillance as ordinary competitive intelligence.
That explanation collapsed the moment the photographs of my seventeen-year-old sister entered the discussion.
Business pressure was one thing.
Following a minor while demanding confidential material from her sister was another.
Within days, the competitor connected to the scheme began distancing itself from the man in the photographs.
Lawyers appeared.
Statements changed.
People who had sounded untouchable suddenly became extremely interested in explaining what they had and had not authorized.
The deal they had been trying to penetrate moved forward without them.
The investigation did not disappear just because powerful people wanted it to.
And my sister stopped seeing the black sedan.
For the first time in weeks, I slept through the night.
But one problem remained.
My resignation letter.
It was still on Dante’s desk.
Three days after the call, I walked into his office again.
This time, the door remained open.
Dante was standing by the windows when I entered.
His gaze dropped to the letter in my hand.
“You’re still leaving.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
Something tightened in his face, but he nodded.
“All right.”
I had expected an argument.
Maybe that was unfair.
