Chapter 7 - WHAT DIMITRI KNEW
Callista's voice continued through static.
“He promised Marcus would leave me alone.”
The dispatcher asked where she was.
“Fourth-level garage. West side.”
“Are you alone?”
Callista's breathing broke.
“No.”
A man's voice sounded far away.
Too muffled to identify.
Then Callista whispered:
“I shouldn't have listened to Dad.”
The recording cut.
Nikos stood perfectly still.
Eleni did not touch him.
Not yet.
There were moments when comfort could become another demand.
He needed room to feel what he felt.
Finally he said:
“He knew.”
Andreas looked devastated.
“Yes.”
“My father knew my sister was being beaten.”
“Nikos—”
“And he protected the family name.”
No one answered.
The red appointment book changed meaning again.
Dimitri had paid Vale.
Halloran.
Possibly Marcus.
But the sequence mattered.
Callista had told her father before she died.
Dimitri tried to handle Marcus quietly.
Then Callista died.
Then he paid everyone.
Not to protect her.
Too late for that.
To contain what followed.
Eleni thought about every time Marcus apologized after hurting her.
Every promise.
Every suggestion that involving outsiders would only “make things ugly.”
Dimitri had believed he could manage an abuser privately.
Marcus counted on that.
That was the pattern.
Secrecy kept making him stronger.
Nikos sat.
“My father taught me never to bring police into family matters.”
Eleni answered gently.
“Maybe because police already knew too much about him.”
He looked at her.
She didn't apologize for saying it.
Hours later, forensic accountants examining Dimitri's old records found something that complicated the story.
A payment of one hundred thousand dollars left Dimitri's account after Callista's death.
But it did not go to Marcus.
It went to an intermediary.
The money was withdrawn in cash.
Marcus apparently received some of it.
Not all.
And another notation appeared beside the transaction:
PHONE + ORIGINAL.
“What does original mean?” Eleni asked.
No one knew.
Thomas Vale gave the next piece.
Dimitri had summoned him three days after Callista died.
“He looked destroyed,” Vale said.
“I had never seen him afraid before.”
“What did he want?”
Nikos asked.
“He wanted Callista's phone.”
“Why?”
“He believed she'd recorded Marcus.”
That changed things.
Dimitri had helped bury the case.
But before doing so, he may have tried to obtain proof.
“Then why not expose him once he had it?”
Vale looked away.
“Because the phone contained more than Marcus.”
“What?”
“Conversations about your family's business.”
Nikos laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
Callista had apparently begun recording conversations after Marcus became controlling.
Some recordings captured her father discussing payments to police contacts unrelated to her abuse.
If the phone entered evidence, Dimitri faced prison.
The Stavros organization faced investigation.
Hundreds of employees in legitimate businesses could have been swept into the collapse.
And Callista's death would become part of a citywide corruption scandal.
Dimitri made his choice.
He bought the phone.
He buried the case.
He told himself he was saving the family.
Nikos understood the logic.
That was what made him hate it.
“I've made the same choice.”
Eleni frowned.
“When?”
“Every time I paid someone to keep Olympus untouched.”
His gold ring clicked against the table.
“Every time I decided the law was something other men dealt with.”
Andreas stiffened.
“Nikos.”
“No.”
Nikos looked at his underboss.
“We don't pretend now.”
Andreas's jaw tightened.
“If you expose everything, you don't only expose Dimitri.”
“I know.”
“People depend on these businesses.”
“I know.”
“You could lose Olympus.”
“I know.”
Eleni watched them.
This was no longer just about Marcus.
It was about whether Nikos would become his father.
A man who loved someone desperately and still chose the empire when truth threatened it.
“Nikos.”
He looked at her.
“Don't burn innocent people just to punish yourself.”
His expression shifted.
She continued.
“But don't hide guilty ones to protect yourself either.”
That was the line.
Harder than vengeance.
Cleaner.
Over the next two days, attorneys separated legitimate business records from evidence of past corruption.
Nikos authorized disclosure of material connected to Callista, Marcus, Halloran and the police payoffs.
Not every rumor.
Not every unrelated employee.
Facts.
Records.
His father's red book.
Even information that could damage the Stavros name.
Andreas resisted until Nikos placed the gold signet ring on the desk.
“My father wore this when he paid for silence.”
Andreas looked at it.
“I've worn it while telling myself I was different.”
He pushed the ring away.
“If protecting the name requires burying Callista twice, then the name deserves what happens to it.”
Andreas finally nodded.
That evening, Internal Affairs suspended Marcus.
Halloran's retirement benefits came under review.
Vale agreed to testify to a grand jury.
Renner's cooperation continued.
For the first time, Marcus had no badge protecting him.
That made him more dangerous.
Eleni knew it.
So did Nikos.
But the biggest break came from old Olympus security archives.
The restaurant had occupied another location twelve years ago.
A fire inspection dispute had caused its exterior camera data to be preserved in an insurance archive.
Andreas found one frame.
Dimitri Stavros.
Three days after Callista died.
Standing in the alley behind the old Olympus.
Facing Marcus Delano.
Dimitri held a thick envelope.
Marcus held Callista's cell phone.
But the photograph showed something else.
A second man sat inside Marcus's car.
Eleni leaned closer.
“Halloran?”
“No.”
Nikos's face had gone white.
He recognized him.
“My uncle.”
Spiros Stavros.
Dimitri's younger brother.
The man who had served as family accountant for twenty years before retiring to Greece.
And according to the transaction records, Spiros—not Dimitri—had withdrawn the hundred thousand dollars.
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Marcus had not been dealing with Nikos's father alone.
Another Stavros had been inside the cover-up from the beginning.
