Daniel stepped out of the elevator and walked toward his brother"s office. From the sullen expression on the face of David"s secretary, it was obvious that the president was not in a mood today.
"What have you done to the poor girl? She doesn"t have a face on her, that"s it, she"s ready to kill someone," Daniel threw several folders with doc.u.ments on his brother"s table and plopped down in the chair opposite.
"I have nothing to do with it," David answered, opening and looking at the top folder that his brother brought, "She said that her whole family connected Marc Technologies chips and every day they are trying to persuade her to do the same thing, which she refuses."
"Wow, brother, you have such a loyal secretary, add her thirty percent bonus this month," Daniel clapped his hands, but his humor was not appreciated by David.
"Yeah, if everything keeps going like that, I might have to cut off my own salary to thirty percent," the man threw aside the weekly sales report and leaned back in his chair. Since the launch of the Marc Technologies advertising campaign, sales of Greenline Inc. and Lee Pharmaceuticals have fallen by twenty-five percent, and this was only in two weeks.
"Oh, come on! It"s not the great depression of the thirties, we"ll figure it out," Daniel did his best to cheer his brother up, although he knew very well that this time the situation was more than serious, and the most unpleasant thing was that none of them could plan the final outcome of it.
"Well, as for Armand, he"s almost over the edge, now he cannot even leave the house normally since Marcus has demonstrated his beautiful face in all the media. So you can bet who"s situation is worse," Daniel grinned and David nodded his head sympathetically.
Poor Armand barely escaped from a banquet in the White House two weeks ago, as soon as he went into the hall, the guests did not fail to take a moment to ask him about his brother and just to talk to him, in general.
Instead of finding Lina, for like half an hour he was trying delicately to get rid of the annoying ladies who surrounded him like a dense wall. And the gentlemanly manners of the man did not allow him to show rudeness and escape without a small social conversation with each of them.
"And why such a sullen face? You were late for work for an hour, I doubt that you overslept. If Elena didn"t come with you, then I bet you tortured her early in the morning, that she couldn"t even get out of bed, right?" Daniel narrowed his eyes playfully and winked at his brother.
"Forty minutes," David answered shortly.
"Forty minutes? Hmm, not bad for a morning workout," the older brother nodded his head in approval, but David"s expression was far from joyful.
"I couldn"t wake her for forty minutes this morning," David answered and rubbed his face with his hands in order to somehow relieve tension.
Daniel"s playful mood instantly disappeared, and playfulness gave way to serious concern.
"H-how come, forty minutes? What the heck? Yesterday it was only ten!" he asked, although he understood that the younger brother would not be able to answer this question, "What did the doctor say? Did you do a medical checkup?"
"The checkup showed that she was okay, they didn"t find anything strange," the man got up from his chair and went to the window, gray clouds in the sky behind the gla.s.s of his office perfectly reflected David"s mood.
"Before that, even if she didn"t immediately wake up, her body at least somehow reacted to my attempts to awaken her, but today... Whatever I did, there was no reaction, for a moment it seemed to me that she even stopped breathing," David said, and from these words, his heart became even harder.
It all started two weeks ago after the stupid banquet at which Marcus appeared. At first, David did not notice any oddities, and it seemed to him that Elena was just fast asleep, but with each pa.s.sing day, the situation became more and more obvious. And as a result, it came to the point that he had to wake her for a long time so that she finally opened her eyes.
At night, the woman was sleeping soundly and constantly tossing and turning and muttered something from a dream. Fearing that she had a nightmare, David tried to wake Elena several times, but in two weeks he never succeeded.
He even tried to plunge into her dream, but when he connected his consciousness to her, all he saw was a set of incomprehensible pictures replacing each other at such a frantic speed that the man"s head was ready to explode in a few seconds.
Elena, when she woke up in the morning, did not remember anything at all, and when David asked her, she only blinked her eyes in surprise. According to her feelings, everything was as usual, and she did not notice anything strange with her.
"Have you tried talking to Lina? She knows the Teser family more than anyone else, maybe this is some kind of thing related to this?" Daniel suggested. The man got up from the couch, went up to his brother and put a hand on his shoulder, "Well, or maybe Armand knows something?"
"No, I already asked. Neither he nor Lina are aware of what is happening to her," David answered and, lowering his shoulders, sat back in the chair. The crisis at work, which was generously contributed by the company of Marcus, at least somehow distracted the man from bad thoughts.
A light knock on the door and a melodious female voice broke the brooding silence into which the brothers plunged, "Mr. Anderson, the package has arrived to your name, and it was marked confidential, but it does not have the address or the name of the sender," the secretary reported, entering the office when David allowed her to come in.
"The guard scanned it for dangerous items but found nothing suspicious. Will you take a look?"
David glanced at the sealed envelope, "Alright, give it here. And please make two cups of coffee."
"Will be done, sir," the girl answered and went out to fulfill his request.
"What is it?" Daniel jumped up to his brother and watched impatiently as the latter opened an unknown package.
"What the-," an obscene phrase was about to fly off the man"s lips as he ran his eyes over the papers in David"s hands. Daniel covered his mouth with his hand and looked guiltily at the secretary, who at that moment brought them coffee.
"Whoa, who the h.e.l.l has sent you all this compromising info?" As soon as the girl slammed the door behind her, the man grabbed some of the papers from his brother"s hands and began to study them with even greater curiosity.
"I have no idea," David was no less confused.
In his hands were reports on secret deals of Marc Technologies over the past six months, including drug and weapon cases on the black market. With a similar set of doc.u.ments, the company of Marcus and himself could be brought to court under several very serious sections.
But not everything was so simple.
This man already had the Government and the Pentagon under his control, and David doubted that there would be a judge who would be ready to make such a charge.
The person who posted this clearly knew about the level of influence of Marcus and also understood that it did not make sense to use these doc.u.ments openly. Maybe it would be better to widespread them through bypa.s.s channels in the media and the Internet?
"Hmm, we can try, as an option," David thought to himself.
"Hey, hey, look! Here on the sheet is the signature with the pen - "Your BF." Is this the initials of this unknown dude? Do you know who this could be?" Daniel handed his brother a leaflet with a signature.
David looked at the exquisite italics, his eyebrows raised in surprise, and then frowned again.
"BF is your ex-boyfriend or something?" Daniel said obvious rubbish in order to defuse the situation, but his joke did not resonate with his younger brother.
David took a mug of coffee and took a sip of a hot drink, in his thoughts he was not here. This emphasis was well known to him; he had seen this signature more than once.
And this fact added even more confusion to his already confused thoughts.
Bf. Best friend.
In life, he had only one person whom he once considered his best friend. Rick Stein.