Chapter 9 - The Empty Mansion
By Saturday morning, the Delgado mansion was dead.
The silence had returned—not the quiet of a peaceful house, but the heavy, suffocating silence of a tomb.
Pia was gone. She had packed her worn backpack late Friday night while Marcus sat on the bottom stair, unable to look her in the eye as she walked out into the cool midnight air. She hadn't taken a single cent of severance. She had simply kissed a sleeping Ben on the forehead, handed her house keys to Maria, and left.
Marcus sat at the long mahogany dining table. In front of him sat his laptop, completely dark. He had ordered Vance’s team to come at seven in the morning to tear out every wire, every hidden lens, and every server rack from the walls of the mansion. The security room was now nothing more than an empty, hollow closet with bare wires hanging from the ceiling.
Maria walked into the dining room, holding a tray with a pot of black coffee. She set it down softly, looking at Marcus with deep concern.
"He hasn't touched his breakfast, Mr. Delgado," Maria said quietly.
Marcus looked up. "Where is he?"
"In his room. Sitting by the window."
Marcus stood up, his joints aching as if he had aged ten years in ten hours. He walked slowly up the stairs to Ben’s room.
The door was partially open. Ben was sitting on the rug near the window, holding the carved wooden sailboat. He wasn't building anything. He wasn't coloring. He was just looking out at the driveway, watching the empty iron gates.
Marcus walked into the room and sat down directly on the rug beside his son. He didn't stay on the bed. He didn't keep his distance.
"Hey, buddy," Marcus said softly.
Ben didn't look up from his toy boat. "Pia's not coming back, is she?"
The question hit Marcus right in the center of his chest, sharp and excruciating. "No, Ben. She... she had to go."
"Did she go because I was bad?" Ben asked, his tiny voice cracking with a fear that broke Marcus’s heart into a million pieces.
Marcus reached out immediately, pulling Ben onto his lap, wrapping both arms around him and pulling the small boy tight against his chest. "No! No, baby, no! You were perfect! You're always perfect! Pia loves you so much."
"Then why did she leave?" Ben sobbed, burying his small face into Marcus’s dress shirt. "Why does everybody leave?"
Marcus held his son as the little boy finally broke down, letting out the deep, stored-up grief he had been carrying since the day his mother died. Marcus held him through the tears, rocking him back and forth on the floor, letting his own tears fall freely into Ben’s hair.
"It's my fault, Ben," Marcus confessed into the quiet room, his voice shaking with absolute honesty. "Daddy made a big mistake. I was scared, and I didn't trust people, and I hurt someone very good. But I'm going to fix it. I promise you, I'm going to fix it."
Marcus held his son for an hour until the boy’s breathing slowed and he fell into an exhausted sleep in Marcus's arms.
Marcus carefully laid Ben down on his bed, covered him with his favorite blanket, and kissed his forehead.
He walked down to his study. He didn't open his corporate portfolio. He didn't look at his stock tickers. He picked up his personal phone and dialed Vance.
"Vance," Marcus said, his voice completely firm. "I need the address of St. Jude’s Neurological Institute. And I need you to arrange a meeting with the board of directors of the medical foundation immediately."
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"Sir? Are you buying into the hospital?" Vance asked, surprised.
"No," Marcus said, looking out at the sun breaking through the clouds over Vlysse. "I'm going to do something I should have done weeks ago. Without a camera, without a contract, and without an excuse."
