Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN AT THE GATE
Gabriel did not open the gate.
Not immediately.
Rachel stood beside his desk with Elena’s photograph still between her fingers while Victor waited outside beside the elderly nurse.
“Why would Victor bring her here?” Rachel asked.
Gabriel’s face remained unreadable.
“That’s exactly what I intend to find out.”
He touched the intercom.
“Victor. Step away from the woman.”
Victor looked directly into the camera.
“You need to hear her.”
“I said step away.”
For several seconds, neither man moved.
Then Victor slowly raised both hands and walked ten feet toward the stone wall.
The old woman remained alone beneath the gate light.
Gabriel unlocked the pedestrian entrance remotely.
“Bring her to the library,” he told one of his guards. “Victor stays outside.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
“Gabriel—”
The intercom went dead.
Rachel looked down and realized she was still wearing Gabriel’s tuxedo jacket.
“I should go.”
“No.”
One word.
She looked up.
“Your sister was threatened because of something happening inside my house. Until I understand what, you stay where I can protect you.”
Rachel almost argued.
Then she remembered Madeline’s fingers closing around her wrist.
And the sentence whispered against her ear.
Your sister won’t make it home from nursing school tomorrow.
“All right.”
Gabriel led Rachel into the library.
The elderly woman entered moments later.
Up close, she looked at least eighty.
Her white hair was pinned beneath an old-fashioned nurse’s cap. The uniform was yellowed at the collar and too carefully preserved to be something she wore every day.
She carried a brown wool coat over one arm.
Gabriel recognized that coat.
Rachel knew because he stopped walking.
“My mother had one like that.”
The woman’s eyes softened.
“It was hers.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“Your name.”
“Margaret Hale.”
“Why are you wearing a forty-year-old uniform?”
“Because I wanted you to know I wasn’t coming here to tell you a story I learned yesterday.”
Margaret placed Elena’s coat across the back of a chair.
Then she saw the photograph in Rachel’s hand.
Her face changed.
“Where did you get that?”
“My mother’s room,” Gabriel said.
Margaret closed her eyes.
“She kept it.”
“You’re in another photograph with her.”
“I know.”
“You worked at St. Matthew’s?”
“For thirty-four years.”
Gabriel remained standing.
“What happened October seventeenth?”
Margaret’s hands began trembling.
“Two boys were born forty-three minutes apart.”
Rachel felt the room become smaller.
“One belonged to Elena DeLuca,” Margaret continued. “The other belonged to a woman named Anna Reed.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“Reed?”
Margaret nodded.
“Samuel’s younger sister.”
Gabriel looked toward the window.
“Samuel’s family had a child there?”
“A son.”
“And somebody switched them?”
Margaret did not answer immediately.
“That’s what Elena believed.”
Gabriel’s patience snapped.
“What do you believe?”
“I believe the identification bracelets were changed.”
Rachel’s stomach tightened.
Gabriel looked almost angry at himself for reacting.
“Who changed them?”
“I never saw a face.”
Margaret reached into Elena’s coat.
From a stitched opening in the lining, she withdrew something tiny.
A faded blue infant bracelet.
The plastic was cloudy with age.
A handwritten surname remained visible.
REED.
Margaret put it on the table.
“Elena found this in the blanket wrapped around the baby she brought home.”
Gabriel stared at it.
Rachel did too.
There was no first name.
Only REED.
Gabriel laughed once without humor.
“You expect me to believe my mother discovered this and simply said nothing for thirty-eight years?”
“No.”
Margaret looked directly at him.
“She spent thirty-eight years trying to discover whether the bracelet meant you were the wrong child—or whether someone wanted her to think you were.”
That changed everything.
Rachel looked at Gabriel.
“So the switch may never have happened.”
Margaret nodded.
“Exactly.”
Answer one.
Open two.
Gabriel picked up the bracelet carefully.
“Why fake something like this?”
“Because your father had enemies.”
“My father had hundreds.”
“And because the DeLuca inheritance had a condition.”
Gabriel went still.
“What condition?”
Margaret looked frightened.
“I don’t know all of it.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
“Your grandfather’s controlling shares were supposed to pass through Elena’s biological son.”
Gabriel stared at her.
Not a criminal empire.
Not pride.
Ownership.
Money.
Power.
Rachel suddenly understood why a lie about a baby could survive for nearly forty years.
Gabriel asked, “Where is Samuel?”
Margaret glanced toward the door.
“I thought Victor knew.”
Rachel’s pulse jumped.
“Victor brought you here.”
“Yes.”
“From where?”
“My apartment.”
“Why?”
“He told me Samuel had contacted you and Madeline had gone after him.”
Gabriel’s expression hardened.
“So Victor claims he’s helping.”
“He claims he has been helping your mother for years.”
Rachel remembered the wall safe.
“Then why was he opening Elena’s safe with Madeline?”
Margaret looked startled.
“He what?”
Gabriel watched her closely.
Margaret’s confusion appeared genuine.
Before anyone could speak, Gabriel walked toward the library door.
“Bring Victor in.”
Two guards escorted Victor inside.
Victor removed his overcoat.
One silver button was missing from the front.
The match was undeniable.
Gabriel placed the loose button on the table.
“Explain.”
Victor looked at it.
Then at Rachel.
“You were in the room.”
“She was,” Gabriel said. “Answer me.”
Victor’s mouth tightened.
“Madeline told me she had found something Elena left behind.”
“And you trusted her?”
“No.”
“Then why go alone?”
“Because I’ve been watching her for eight months.”
Rachel blinked.
Gabriel did not.
“Watching my fiancée?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
Victor slowly removed a folded page from his inside pocket.
It had been cut from a small book.
Rachel looked toward Elena’s leather address book.
One of the missing pages.
Victor placed it on the table.
Across the top, Elena had written:
If Gabriel announces a marriage to a Cross, Samuel must be moved immediately.
Gabriel read it twice.
Madeline Cross.
Rachel whispered, “Your mother knew her family?”
Victor nodded.
“Long before you met Madeline.”
Gabriel looked up.
“And you never told me?”
“Elena made me promise not to. She wanted evidence, not suspicion.”
“That promise ended when she died.”
“No.”
Victor’s voice changed.
It became quieter.
“Because three weeks before her death, she told me she believed someone inside this house had discovered Samuel.”
Gabriel’s face hardened.
“You?”
Victor shook his head.
“Elena didn’t trust me completely either.”
Margaret suddenly reached for the old photograph.
She examined the boy sitting beside Elena.
“No.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Margaret’s face had gone pale.
“What?” Rachel asked.
“That boy.”
Her finger shook against the photograph.
“This isn’t Gabriel.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“You already said that was my mother.”
“It is.”
“Then who is he?”
Margaret slowly lifted her eyes.
“I thought Samuel had destroyed every photograph of that child.”
Victor stepped closer.
“What child?”
Margaret swallowed.
“The other baby from St. Matthew’s.”
Rachel felt cold.
Gabriel looked down at the picture again.
“The Reed baby?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
Margaret’s answer barely rose above a whisper.
“His name is Daniel.”
Gabriel’s expression remained still.
Then Margaret said the words that finally broke through it.
May you like
“And Gabriel… you’ve known him your entire life.”
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