Episode 27 — Nightfall Decisions
Ethan's POV
There are calls you answer because they arrive at the wrong time, and there are calls you answer because you know, before the first syllable is spoken, what will be on the other end.
The assistant's voice was precise, practiced—the tone of too many conversations rehearsed and edited before being allowed through the line. "Mr. Marshall, your father is on his way through the city. He's asked me to confirm whether you'll be attending the board dinner tonight."
My thumb paused over the screen. The board dinner. Gregory's calendar always contained strategic placements—donations, photo-ops, meetings that doubled as chess moves. He scheduled things to be seen at particular angles, with particular people, for particular reasons. He was not one to appear simply to eat, and he was not one to call his assistant if the attendance wasn't already agreed.
"Tell him I'll be there," I said, and the words were flat when they left my mouth. They were deliberately neutral; I couldn't let whatever replied from across the table reshape me before I'd weighed my options. "At seven."
"Very good, sir. He'll be arriving at eight. He asked us to reserve the private room."
Private. Of course. Everything he did that might press on my life arrived in private—half-warnings, half-pleas, always with a kind of gravitas that suggested consequences and expectations.
When I hung up, the room felt suddenly smaller. My phone's screen dimmed, the house's ambient lights reflecting off glass. The library's late hours clung to me even though I was halfway back to the house. My head still held echoes of last night: Layla's laugh, the rain soaking the two of us into a temporary universe where the anonymous watcher didn't exist. For a few hours, she had been like a secret truth I could hold close without consequences. Now the world was folding back in.
I locked the bedroom door, not because anyone could walk in—it was a dorm room-sized ritual more than a barrier—but because I wanted the small, simple autonomy of shutting something out. I braced my palms on the desk and let my shoulders go loose, trying to find the place where clarity lived.
Gregory showing up on campus tonight, reserving a private room… it wasn't just a social visit. I had a lifetime of reading between my father's lines: a half-nod at a meal becomes a thinly-veiled order. The dinner could be a test, a show of proximity in public, or worse—a measured attempt to steer me back inside the paths he deemed safe.
I thought of Layla and the way she had tucked the note into her pocket like a secret talisman. I remembered the way she'd shown it to me in the library, the exact curve of her hand as she folded the paper, the quiet manner in which she slid it to me. It was strange, this simultaneous tenderness and fragility: she trusted me enough to show me fear, but the piece of paper proved how exposed she still felt.
I stood and walked the room once, the floorboards through the hallway whispering under each step. Marcus had been working in the background since the first clip. He ran interference: messages sent to moderators, quiet calls to friends with access to campus feeds, legal whispers that moved faster than gossip. He texted me updates like a surgeon's notes—clinical, immediate, necessary.
"Got a minute?" his last message had read.
I sent back two fingers. Minutes were a currency I would buy at nearly any price.
When Marcus arrived, he moved the way he always did: contained, efficient, like someone who had learned how to carry pressure without spilling it. He shut the door behind him and set his bag on the bed. "You okay?" he asked without pretense, meeting my eyes.
"As okay as I am when my father decides to make an appearance," I answered.
Marcus nodded. He didn't offer cheap assurances. He didn't need to. He pulled out his laptop and opened to the folder I'd instructed him to maintain: "Quad Surveillance & Student Activity." There it was—rows of timestamps, a schematic of movements, Chloe's quick notes attached to timestamps when she'd passed something along. Marcus's work hadn't uncovered a face; it had uncovered a pattern: routes, times, a familiarity with campus rhythm that felt like premeditation rather than coincidence.
"You think it's only a student?" I asked.
He looked up at me, an eyebrow raised. "It looks like a student. It moves like one. But whoever it is knows what they're doing. This wasn't impulsive. They timed the note. They learned routines. They left breadcrumbs without giving us a trail. That's the important part."
"Breadcrumbs for what?" I asked.
"For control. For intimidation. For slowly convincing you, or her, that normal life isn't possible." Marcus closed his laptop and folded his hands. He was silent for a moment, the kind of silence that meant he'd weighed all angles. "We can tighten security. We can pull the campus feed, watch entrances, loop the cameras. But beating someone at their own game means anticipating the next move. And the next move is usually to test the limits: see how far they can push before someone reacts."
I swallowed. Marcus always found the seams. He found the weak joints other people overlooked. "And Gregory?" I asked.
"He'll say the right words tonight," Marcus said, voice low. "He'll drop statements that sound reasonable—concern for legacy, for image, for potential legal complications. He'll mask orders with fatherly worry. That's his advantage: he speaks like a man guiding his son, and it's easy to believe him. But he has leverage, and he uses it."
"I don't want him to tell Layla what to do," I said. "I don't want her life shaped by his fear."
"No one's asking you to hand her over," Marcus replied bluntly. "But your father will use the language of protection as a leash. He always does."
I pictured Gregory at the dinner table: impeccable suit, a prescribed charm for each guest, the slow hands of a man who'd spent a life making things quiet and tidy. He'd look at me with an expression that said he had a plan for every misstep. Tonight, the meal would be the plan.
"You have a read on the private room," I said. "Who'll be there?"
Marcus scrolled through an invite list. "Board members, a couple of donors, and… an old associate of your father's from the PR firm. Perfect mix for a social pressure session."
The PR man. Of course. Gregory's world didn't rely on muscle alone; it relied on optics. PR guys gave him plausible deniability—he could suggest, coordinate, and ensure consequences arrived with public-friendly packaging. When threats existed in the background, PR translated them into messaging: damage control, containment, optics.
Suddenly, the dinner felt like another arena. I could decline, create distance, but what would that say? Pride was rarely wise in the Marshall orbit. Declining would be noticed; absence would be another message. Showing up and defying my father would be noticed, too. There were narrow corridors to move in, and I didn't like any of their walls.
"I'm going to see her before tonight," I told Marcus. I needed to feel her, to see if today's rain had left any mark on her spirit. I needed the tautness of human contact to counter the thin, manufactured fear that had been layered over our lives.
Marcus's jaw tightened. "We should also tighten her security. Not showy—small, discreet. Chloe's already looking out for odd things; keep her in the loop but don't make it a spectacle. I'll ask my people to patch the cameras and have an alert script ready for any attempts to get close. If this is someone who can place notes, they can escalate."
"Do it," I said. It felt absurd and insufficient—two words into action, as if I could command the world to stop being an anxious place for someone I cared about. "And keep Chloe off social for a while. No public posts, no check-ins."
Marcus nodded. "Already flagged that as a priority. Tell Layla to avoid going out alone after dark until we say otherwise."
"Until we say otherwise?" The sentence tasted stubborn in my mouth. I was forcing boundaries on people who had every right to move free. That was the indignity of control: it made my desire to protect into a prison.
Marcus leaned forward. "Your father's visit doesn't change the game we're playing with the watcher. But it changes how we appear to the public. If your father's presence tonight raises the stakes, we'll use it. We'll leverage the optics in our favor. If he's going to suggest stepping back, we'll counter with evidence—patterns, timestamps, something that shows this isn't a rumor but an attack."
Evidence. The word had weight. I thought of the camera feed Marcus had looped earlier: a hooded figure, the slow, measured placement of the note. We had a timestamp, a possible path, and Chloe's eyes on the crowd. Not enough to unmask a person, but enough to demand action. Enough to make a case before a room of men who preferred their problems sanitized.
I sat down hard and rubbed my face. "I'm not letting him push her away," I said. The sentence left a bruise of anger in my chest; it was both promise and threat. "Not him. Not anyone."
Marcus's face softened, but his voice was pragmatic. "So bring the proof. Bring the pattern. Don't let him turn us into the problem. We'll go into tonight with the narrative. We'll show we're handling it, and if he suggests anything else, we'll be ready."
The hours until the dinner moved like a taut wire: quick, thin, and unyielding. I drove to the dorms alone, windows down though the night air was cold. The campus looked different after rain—cleaned in the way water removes the patina from stone. The fountain's basin reflected a soft, uncertain moon. Students crossed paths with umbrellas, heads bent in private worlds. I walked faster than I liked.
When Layla came out of the dorm lobby, she could have been anybody—hood up, clutching her bag, alert in a way that made vulnerability bright. When she saw me, her face softened like a hand finding a familiar curve. "Ethan," she breathed, and the sound steadied something inside me that had been fraying.
"Hey." I folded my hands around hers. They were cold, but when I put them to my mouth I felt something like heat returning. "You okay?"
She looked at me with the kind of directness that sometimes made me forget to breathe. "I'll be okay," she said. "As long as you're not letting him—" She stopped and forced herself to smile. "As long as you're not letting it change things."
"How could I?" I asked, because the question was honest. How could anything change what we had when the risk of exposure made the rest of the world feel so precarious? "I won't let anyone steer your life. That's not mine to give."
She rested her forehead against mine for a fraction of a second. "Promise?"
I cupped her face and kissed her in a short, guarded motion, enough to seal a vow. "Promise."
We walked the familiar route under the dorm's awning, our steps slowing until we were almost careless. For a moment, tonight's private room, tonight's indirect warnings, tonight's myriad calculations felt trivial. Two people could occupy a small territory of comfort in the middle of all the clatter. That brief domesticity—simple, unadorned—was a rebellion. It was the only power I wanted to use.
But moments soft as that rarely lasted. My phone buzzed, a single message from Marcus: "PR man is a liar; board will back your father if he signals. Keep cool. Be strategic. See you there."
Keep cool. Be strategic. The man who taught me to measure my losses had given me a script for the night, and I slid into it like a uniform.
Dinner arrived with the same ceremony as all things in my father's circle. The private room was lit low, the table set with immaculate symmetry. Gregory stood when I entered, and for a split second his face softened into fatherly warmth. It's a film I'd seen before: the practiced smile, the arm offered in a public gesture of normalcy. He took my hand in a grip that conveyed affection and ownership in equal measures.
"You came," he said, voice steady.
"I did," I said.
He guided me to the seat at his right, and the guests around the table offered the kind of polite conversation the rich practice like small instruments: pleasing noise that implied power without needing to show a weapon. My father's voice began soft, the way he spoke when he wanted to be persuasive. "We've had… discussion on the matter of your college life," he said, and there it was—an almost-incidental thread of comment that drew the room's attention like a moth.
I tasted metal in my mouth, a coiled anger. It didn't require words to feel the push. Gregory wielded that tone like a surgeon's scalpel. "I'd rather you consider the implications of certain relationships," he said. "For the sake of legacy."
"This is about Layla?" A few heads turned, subtle interest flickering into place. It was the kind of attention that could become marketable gossip if you were careful enough to monetize it.
It took everything not to lash out. I smiled in the measured way my father expected of me. "My romantic life is my business," I said, and it was not a lie. It was also true that what my father called "business" would never remain private if he opposed it.
Gregory's eyes lingered on me. "And yet, perception has a cost," he said. "There are people who make careers of the loudest headlines. I would prefer that you avoid unnecessary scandal."
"You don't need to warn me," I said, calm, but my hands tightened on my fork so the bone felt like a bar between my fingers and the rest of the table.
"Consider this counsel," he replied, and there it was: it was advice and command wrapped up in a velvet glove. He would advise, and I would act as though advised, and the world would move in the channel he found most desirable.
Marcus's earlier words came back: keep cool. Be strategic. I met my father's gaze without flinching. "We're handling it," I said. "We have patterns. We have timestamps. We have people watching. We'll investigate ourselves."
A murmur went through the room. The PR man at Gregory's elbow tilted his head, that particular smile of someone imagining precisely the headlines that would result from a controlled reveal. It was the precise kind of man Gregory favored—someone who could manage panic and turn it into a press release.
Gregory nodded once. "I trust your judgment, son, but do keep your family's name in mind."
"Always," I said.
It would be easier to believe him if his tone weren't so knifed. He had not offered the open-handed support he suggested in public. He had given a suggestion that was at once warning and demand. He had placed on the table the temporal choice: the quiet or the storm.
And yet: the room hummed with superficial calm. Forks clinked. The waitstaff moved like rehearsed shadows. My father spoke to the men about investments. The debate circled margins of industry and philanthropy, each person's voice a shallow pool of mutual admiration.
At the edge of my hearing was Marcus's brief text: "Board is watching him. If he pushes you to err, push back with facts. Don't give them a scandal."
The rest of the dinner passed in a series of practiced pleasantries. When the dessert plates were cleared and the coffee poured, Gregory leaned back and looked at me as if gauging my limits.
"You're not a child," he said softly. "But you aren't reckless either. Keep me informed. For your good."
That last sentence weighed on me like a summons. It was both caution and an order. I smiled tightly and nodded.
When I left the room, I felt like I was walking out of a glass box. The cool night air hit my face like something real. I called Marcus the moment the car door shut: "Meeting in an hour. We move to the next step."
He answered with a single word. "Copy."
I drove with a practiced calm that betrayed the storm inside me. Night campus looked empty and naked and vulnerable. The surveillance map on my dash—Marcus's fingers had made it into a series of pixelated routes—glowed like a constellation. I stopped at a light and watched a student jog by, headphones in, oblivious to the care someone took to keep the light on for them.
Decisions felt heavier at night. They felt like stones you carried into water: you could throw them and watch the splash, or you could keep holding them until they cut into your palm. I thought of Layla in the dorm, of the way she'd trusted me with her fear. I thought of Gregory's private instructions masked as counsel. I thought of Marcus's steady competence and the odd, fragile thread that tied all of us together.
When I reached the agreed meeting place—a quiet coffee joint with a back room that Marcus favored for business—the door was unlocked because Marcus was early. He looked up as I entered, eyes weary but determined.
"We'll play them at their own game," he said without greeting. "We'll push information out in a controlled leak: timestamps, camera stills, a record of the note placements. We'll make it clear this is not about curiosity. This is about harassment. Your father can see it as protection; the board can see it as a threat to the community."
"And if he insists I step away?" I asked.
"You won't," Marcus said simply. "You won't step away because you love someone. You'll make sure everyone knows you didn't do anything wrong. You'll make sure they see the threat for what it is."
The plan was surgical. We would release information in a way that forced the narrative away from shame and onto responsibility. We would not give Gregory the opportunity to pivot the story into something that made Layla the problem.
I let out a breath that I didn't know I'd been holding. "Tonight," I said.
"Tonight," Marcus answered.
My choice had been made in the quiet rumble of my own chest: private dinners, veiled warnings, a father's firm hand at the wheel—none of it would make me step back from what I had chosen. I would not let fear dictate Layla's life. I would not let anyone make her feel small for existing next to me.
Back at the dorm, she was waiting at the window, silhouette against the dim light. When the door closed behind me, she turned and smiled like the world could be dismissed by a single expression.
"Did it go okay?" she asked.
"It did," I said. I meant it. The room hummed with potential problems to solve, with the strategies we'd already begun to deploy. Calm, controlled moves; not the loud theatrics Gregory favored, but the steady, stubborn work of protecting someone you loved.
She stepped forward and pressed her palms to my face. "Whatever you decide," she said quietly, "I'll be with you."
I couldn't promise her a world without worry. I could promise the only thing that mattered. "I'll be with you," I replied.
Outside the window, the quadrangle glittered under the safety of newly washed streets. Inside the room, our hands fit, and decisions had been made. Night had drawn its quiet curtain, but in the hush under it, I knew what I would do: fight with facts, keep her close, and refuse to let my father define the shape of our lives.
That was my decision for the night. And when tomorrow came, we would take the next move.
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