Chapter 7 - THE MAN EVERYONE TRUSTED
Charles Marino arrived at the estate at 2:06 in the morning.
He came because Gabriel asked him to.
No tricks.
No threats.
No men hiding in the hallway.
Charles was seventy-four, white-haired, broad through the shoulders despite his age.
He walked straight to Dorothy.
“Are you hurt?”
Dorothy stared at him.
“You knew.”
Charles stopped.
That was enough.
Gabriel stood beside the fireplace holding the prescription.
“Sit down.”
Charles looked at him.
“Gabriel—”
“Sit.”
Charles did.
The room contained almost everyone the truth had damaged.
Gabriel.
Celeste.
Evelyn.
Marcus.
Dorothy.
Me.
Anthony sat under guard near the wall.
When Charles saw him, something close to disgust crossed his face.
Anthony smiled.
“Doctor.”
Charles ignored him.
Gabriel placed the prescriptions on the table.
“You lowered my father’s heart medication.”
“Yes.”
No denial.
Dorothy began crying.
Gabriel stared.
“Why?”
“Because your father asked me to.”
The room went silent.
Even Anthony looked surprised.
Gabriel’s voice became dangerous.
“Don’t use a dead man to protect yourself.”
“I’m not.”
Charles reached into his jacket.
Marcus tensed.
Charles slowly removed an old envelope.
He placed it on the table.
Gabriel recognized his father’s handwriting.
CHARLIE.
OPEN ONLY IF GABRIEL ASKS WHY.
Gabriel didn’t touch it.
“You carried this for sixteen years?”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“Pain usually is not.”
Gabriel opened the envelope.
Inside was a one-page letter.
His father had written it two months before his death.
Charlie—
The medication is making me weak, but that is the point. Anthony watches my prescriptions. If he believes my heart is failing, he relaxes.
Do not tell Gabriel.
He is seventeen.
He still deserves to think adulthood arrives slowly.
Gabriel stopped reading.
The room blurred for a second.
He continued.
Victor is guilty of enough without adding murder. Evelyn has the records. Marcus knows part of the truth.
If I cannot finish this, protect my son from inheriting my war.
Not my reputation.
My war.
—G.
Gabriel lowered the paper.
His father had intentionally appeared medically fragile.
Charles hadn’t tried to kill him.
He had helped him deceive Anthony.
Answer one.
Open two.
Gabriel looked toward his uncle.
“So the medication wasn’t murder.”
Anthony shrugged.
“Not at first.”
Charles turned.
“What does that mean?”
Anthony smiled.
“You truly never knew?”
Charles stood.
“Anthony.”
“The great doctor.”
Anthony laughed softly.
“He lowered the dose because George asked him to. Victor swapped tablets because I told him to. Evelyn caught Victor. Marcus carried messages.”
He looked at Gabriel.
“So many little helpers.”
Gabriel’s blood went cold.
“But none of us killed your father.”
Evelyn whispered, “I saw him collapse.”
“Yes.”
“I saw you carry him downstairs.”
“Yes.”
“You refused to call an ambulance.”
Anthony tilted his head.
“No. Victor refused.”
Celeste flinched.
“My father?”
Anthony looked at her.
“Ask him.”
“He’s in the hospital.”
“Then ask Charles what happened after George got home.”
Everyone turned.
Charles’s face changed.
Gabriel saw it.
“What?”
Charles sat down slowly.
“When your father was brought home, he was conscious.”
Gabriel stopped breathing.
All these years, he had been told his father was already gone.
“You saw him?”
“Yes.”
“He spoke?”
Charles closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Gabriel crossed the room.
“What did he say?”
“He asked for you.”
Gabriel’s face emptied.
“And?”
“You were at school.”
“I was forty minutes away.”
“We called.”
“No one called me.”
Charles looked toward Anthony.
Anthony remained silent.
Gabriel understood.
“You stopped the call.”
Anthony said, “Your father didn’t need a teenage boy watching him die.”
“You don’t get to decide what I needed.”
“No. But he did.”
Gabriel froze.
Anthony nodded toward the letter.
“Read the bottom.”
Gabriel looked again.
There was one line beneath the signature, faint and squeezed against the edge.
If I do not make it home, keep Gabriel away until it is finished.
Gabriel stared.
“Finished?”
Charles looked toward the rosary.
“Your father was trying to make a deal.”
“With who?”
“Federal investigators.”
Marcus whispered a curse.
Charles nodded.
“George intended to give them Anthony’s ledger and his own records too.”
Gabriel looked up.
“His own crimes.”
“Yes.”
“He was going to turn himself in.”
“Yes.”
There went the saint.
Again.
His father had not been innocent.
He had been trying to become accountable.
Maybe that was harder.
And better.
Charles continued.
“He wanted to dismantle the organization before you inherited it.”
Gabriel’s eyes moved across the room.
All those years, men had praised George Marino for building an empire.
The truth was that his final act had been trying to destroy the part of it that poisoned his son.
“What happened to the federal deal?”
Anthony answered.
“It disappeared when George did.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“My father made it home alive.”
“Yes.”
“So what killed him?”
Anthony’s smile vanished.
“I don’t know.”
Gabriel crossed the room and grabbed him.
Marcus stepped forward, but Celeste stopped him.
This time, she didn’t protect Anthony.
Gabriel shoved his uncle into the chair.
“You carried him home.”
“Yes.”
“You blocked the call to me.”
“Yes.”
“You had motive.”
“Yes.”
“Then why shouldn’t I believe you finished it?”
Anthony looked him directly in the eye.
“Because I needed George alive.”
That stopped Gabriel.
“Why?”
“Only he knew where the original ledger was.”
Gabriel glanced toward the microfilm.
Anthony shook his head.
“That’s a copy.”
Nobody had considered that.
“The original had signatures,” Anthony said. “Not just photographed pages. Handwritten orders. Payment authorizations.”
“Where is it?”
“I spent sixteen years trying to find out.”
Dorothy whispered, “George wouldn’t trust something like that to a bank.”
“No.”
Charles looked toward Gabriel.
“He trusted objects.”
The brass bell.
The wheelchair.
The pocket watch.
The keychain.
Gabriel’s eyes moved toward his father’s rosary.
One bead was missing.
I suddenly remembered the leather medical case.
The single rosary bead inside.
“Gabriel.”
Everyone looked at me.
I brought the loose bead from the case.
Charles picked up the rosary.
The bead fit perfectly into the empty space.
Click.
The crucifix loosened.
Inside the cross was a tiny rolled strip of paper.
Not a ledger.
An old train-station locker ticket.
BOSTON SOUTH STATION.
LOCKER 214.
Dorothy whispered, “He used to take Gabriel there for Christmas trains.”
Gabriel stared at the ticket.
Charles read the handwritten date.
“December twenty-third.”
Two days before George Marino died.
Gabriel turned toward the door.
But Celeste didn’t move.
She was staring at the back of the ticket.
“What?”
Gabriel handed it to her.
Her face drained.
On the reverse was a signature.
C. CROSS.
Celeste whispered, “That isn’t mine.”
Evelyn came closer.
Then she shook her head.
“No.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“You recognize it?”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
Evelyn’s eyes filled with dread.
“My husband’s.”
Celeste whispered, “My father?”
Evelyn shook her head.
“No.”
Everyone froze.
May you like
She looked directly at Celeste.
“Victor Cross wasn’t your biological father.”
