Chapter 2 - The Man Outside My Gates
The first bullet struck the stone lion beside the east entrance.
The second shattered a camera.
The third wasn't aimed at the house.
That told me more than the gunfire itself.
Whoever was outside could have put rounds through the windows.
Instead, he had blinded the camera system and announced that he could reach us.
A warning.
“Safe room,” I ordered.
Harper wrapped an arm around Maisie.
“No.”
I turned.
She was terrified, but she planted herself between me and her sister.
“I'm not taking her anywhere with one of your men until you tell me what's happening.”
I almost admired that.
Almost.
“What's happening is someone just breached a private estate protected by sixteen armed security officers.”
Maisie's fingers tightened around the blue fox.
“Is it my dad?”
The question stopped all of us.
I crouched so I wasn't towering over her.
“I don't know.”
“Would he shoot us?”
Harper closed her eyes.
I answered carefully.
“I don't know him well enough anymore to tell you what he would do.”
That wasn't entirely true.
I had known Gabriel Rourke better than most men know their brothers.
He had been beside me when I built my first legitimate shipping company. He had carried Luca on his shoulders at summer barbecues. Isabella once joked that Gabriel was the only person besides her who could tell me I was being an idiot and survive.
Then someone leaked our movements.
A bomb was placed beneath Isabella's Mercedes.
The security schedules had come from a server only three people could access.
Me.
Reed's predecessor.
Gabriel.
The predecessor died that same night.
Gabriel vanished.
The conclusion had been simple.
Too simple, I realized now.
Reed escorted Harper and Maisie toward the safe corridor while I moved to the security center.
The feeds flickered back one by one.
Two guards were down near the east wall.
Alive.
Both shot in the legs.
Again, deliberate.
“Shooter could have killed them,” Reed said.
“He didn't want bodies.”
“What did he want?”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Everyone in the room looked at me.
I answered.
No greeting.
Just breathing.
Then a man's voice.
“You still stand too close to windows.”
Every memory I had spent nine years burying came alive at once.
Gabriel.
Older.
Rougher.
But unmistakable.
“Where are you?”
A quiet laugh.
“If you knew, I'd be disappointed.”
“You fired at my people.”
“I fired around your people.”
“You put two men in the hospital.”
“They'll walk.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“You have a daughter.”
Silence.
For the first time, Gabriel's confidence cracked.
“Who told you?”
“She did.”
Another silence.
Then, very quietly, “Maisie is there?”
“Yes.”
He cursed.
Not at me.
At himself.
“Listen carefully, Elias. Get those girls out of your house.”
“You've been watching my gates for three days.”
“I've been watching the people watching your gates.”
I glanced at Reed.
“What people?”
“The same ones who watched Rebecca Lane for six months before she died.”
Harper's mother.
A chill moved through me.
“Her death was cancer.”
“No.”
One word.
Certain.
“What are you saying?”
“Rebecca was sick. But she didn't die when she was supposed to.”
“That makes no sense.”
“She found something.”
My eyes moved toward the private library.
Toward the photograph.
“What?”
“I can't tell you on this line.”
“You disappeared after my family was murdered.”
“I know.”
“You let me believe you did it.”
“I know.”
“Give me one reason I shouldn't find you tonight and finish what I should have finished nine years ago.”
Gabriel breathed out.
“Because Isabella knew I wasn't the traitor.”
My entire body went still.
“Don't say her name.”
“She knew, Elias.”
“You don't get to—”
“She called me forty-three minutes before she died.”
The security room became silent.
I could hear my own heartbeat.
“What did she say?”
Gabriel's voice lowered.
“She said someone inside the Marchetti family was moving money through the children's foundation. She'd found accounts she wasn't supposed to find.”
The children's foundation.
Isabella's charity.
“She asked me to meet her.”
My throat tightened.
“She was driving to meet you?”
“Yes.”
“And the bomb?”
“Wasn't meant to kill you.”
I stared at the wall.
For nine years, I had believed my wife and son died because someone wanted to punish me.
Gabriel continued.
“They were killing her.”
I couldn't speak.
Then another thought hit me.
“Who knew she called you?”
“I thought nobody.”
“You thought?”
“Rebecca did.”
Harper's mother again.
“Why?”
“Rebecca Lane worked three days a week at the foundation's accounting office. Isabella trusted her.”
I remembered her vaguely now.
A quiet woman with auburn hair.
“Rebecca saw Isabella leave that afternoon. She heard part of the phone call.”
“And then you disappeared.”
“I was framed.”
“Convenient.”
“They found the access records under my credentials because somebody used my credentials.”
“Who?”
“That is what Rebecca finally discovered.”
My pulse sharpened.
“Name him.”
“No.”
“You call my house, threaten me, talk about my dead wife, and refuse to give me a name?”
“If I give you the name without proof, you'll react like Elias Marchetti.”
“What does that mean?”
“You'll kill first.”
I didn't deny it.
“And if I'm right,” Gabriel said, “the person responsible has spent nine years preparing for that exact reaction.”
A door opened behind me.
Harper entered despite Reed having told her to stay put.
Maisie was beside her.
Gabriel heard the movement.
“Is she there?”
“Your daughter?”
“Yes.”
Maisie looked at the phone.
I put it on speaker.
“Gabriel.”
For several seconds, there was nothing.
Then the voice of a man who had faced guns without blinking broke completely.
“Hi, Maisie.”
She stared.
Harper's face hardened.
Maisie whispered, “Are you my dad?”
Gabriel didn't answer immediately.
“Yes.”
“Mom said you were gone.”
“I was.”
“Dead gone?”
Harper covered her mouth.
Gabriel said, “She had reasons to tell you that.”
Maisie looked down at the fox.
“Did you leave because you didn't want me?”
“No.”
The answer came so fast it echoed.
“No, sweetheart.”
My jaw tightened at the word.
“Then why didn't you come?”
Gabriel went quiet.
When he spoke again, grief stripped every edge from his voice.
“Because people were looking for me, and I believed they would hurt you if they knew you belonged to me.”
Maisie's lower lip trembled.
“They hurt Mom anyway.”
Gabriel didn't answer.
She handed me the stuffed fox.
“Tell him Mom said this was important.”
I frowned.
Gabriel inhaled sharply.
“What did she say exactly?”
Maisie thought.
“Never let anyone take the fox. And if Harper can't help me, find Mr. Marchetti.”
My hands tightened around the toy.
“Gabriel?”
“Elias, don't open it in the house.”
Too late.
I felt something beneath the stuffing.
Hard.
Rectangular.
A hidden seam ran beneath the fox's left arm.
Harper saw it too.
“What is that?”
I pulled a small folding knife from my pocket and cut two stitches.
Inside was a narrow brass key and a plastic memory card wrapped in wax paper.
Gabriel swore.
“Get out of the house now.”
“Why?”
“Because Rebecca had the evidence.”
A red warning flashed across the security monitors.
Reed spun toward the screen.
“Elias.”
Every exterior camera went black simultaneously.
Then the generator failed.
Darkness swallowed the mansion.
May you like
Through the phone, Gabriel shouted my name.
And from somewhere inside my house—not outside it—I heard Mrs. Doyle scream.
