Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN BEHIND THE STEEL
“Open it.”
Gabriel did not raise his voice.
He didn’t have to.
Vivian stood beside the exposed steel door, one wrist still red where Gabriel had stopped her from reaching the keypad.
“I told you,” she said. “I don’t know the code.”
From behind the door came a tired voice.
“She does.”
Gabriel looked at Vivian.
Rachel remained several feet away, one hand braced against the shelving unit because her injured knee had begun throbbing again.
Vivian’s face hardened.
“You don’t know who that woman is.”
“That makes two of us,” Gabriel said.
He picked up the yellowed envelope but did not open it.
“Code.”
Vivian glanced toward the corridor.
Gabriel noticed.
So did Rachel.
Marcus had not arrived yet.
That bothered Gabriel.
His security chief was never slow when Gabriel summoned him.
Vivian finally stepped toward the keypad.
Her fingers trembled as she entered six numbers.
1-9-8-7-0-4.
The lock clicked.
Rachel heard Gabriel inhale.
“1987?”
Vivian said nothing.
The steel door opened inward.
A narrow room appeared beyond it, lit by one yellow lamp.
There was no dungeon.
No chains.
Just an old cot, bottled water, blankets, several empty food containers—and an elderly woman sitting beneath the lamp.
She looked to be nearly eighty.
Gray hair hung loose around a thin face.
A dark wool coat rested across her shoulders.
Around her neck was a silver rosary.
Gabriel stopped moving.
The woman stared at him as if twenty years had disappeared.
“You have Salvatore’s eyes,” she whispered.
Gabriel’s father.
Rachel saw his jaw tighten.
“Who are you?”
The woman touched the rosary.
“Elena Moretti.”
The name meant nothing to Rachel.
It meant something to Gabriel.
His mother’s maiden name had been Moretti.
“Elena Moretti died in 1999.”
A sad smile crossed the woman’s face.
“So did your mother, according to your father.”
Gabriel’s expression turned cold.
Vivian spoke quickly.
“Don’t believe everything she tells you.”
Elena looked at her.
“You kept me in here for thirty-one hours.”
Rachel turned sharply toward Vivian.
Gabriel did not.
He was watching the room.
A plate.
Medication.
A folded blanket.
No signs Elena had been physically harmed.
That did not make Vivian innocent.
But it changed something.
“You fed her,” Gabriel said.
Vivian’s eyes flashed.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I wasn’t trying to kill her.”
Elena gave a bitter laugh.
“Such kindness.”
Gabriel finally opened the envelope.
Inside was one folded sheet and a photograph.
The photograph came out first.
A young woman stood beside Philadelphia’s old 30th Street Station beneath a departure board.
Dark hair.
Soft smile.
A silver necklace at her throat.
Gabriel knew her immediately.
His mother.
Lucia.
Beside her stood Elena, decades younger.
In Lucia’s arms was a little boy in a navy coat.
Gabriel.
On the back, someone had written:
November 14, 1991. The last morning he let me hold my son.
Gabriel stared at the date.
His mother’s funeral had been in February 1990.
When he was four.
Rachel watched understanding strike him.
The photograph was taken twenty-one months after Gabriel had been told his mother was dead.
He unfolded the letter.
His mother’s handwriting was shaky but careful.
Gabriel, if you are reading this, then Elena finally found a way to reach you.
His eyes moved faster.
Your father did not tell you the truth about me.
I was sick, but I was alive.
I tried to take you away after I learned where the money was coming from.
Salvatore stopped me.
Gabriel’s hand tightened around the paper.
Rachel looked away, giving him what little privacy the pantry could offer.
Then Gabriel reached the final paragraph.
And stopped.
“What?” Rachel asked softly.
He read it aloud.
“‘If Salvatore is gone, do not punish his son for his father’s sins.’”
Vivian closed her eyes.
Gabriel looked up.
“What son?”
Elena’s gaze settled on him.
“Not you.”
Silence filled the room.
Gabriel’s mother had known about another son.
A brother Gabriel had never heard of.
Vivian whispered, “This is why I needed time.”
Gabriel turned.
“For what?”
“To find the rest before Elena gave it to you.”
“You imprisoned her.”
“I stopped her from putting a target on your back.”
Elena’s hand tightened around her rosary.
“You were searching for Salvatore’s ledger.”
Vivian’s face changed.
Rachel noticed.
“So it exists,” Gabriel said.
Vivian looked at Elena with fury.
“You have no idea what’s in that book.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “But apparently you do.”
Vivian’s shoulders dropped.
For the first time that night, she looked less cruel than exhausted.
“My father spent thirty years terrified of it.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“Your father?”
Vivian nodded.
“Peter Cross kept your father’s legitimate books.”
That name Gabriel knew.
Peter Cross had been Salvatore DeLuca’s accountant.
He had later built Cross Financial into one of Philadelphia’s most respected private lenders.
Vivian’s family fortune had begun there.
Rachel’s stomach turned.
“Cross Financial?”
Vivian looked at her.
Rachel suddenly understood why that name felt familiar.
Her mother’s mortgage statement.
Cross Residential Holdings.
Vivian had not obtained Rachel’s mother’s financial information through Gabriel.
Her own family controlled the debt.
“You bought my mother’s mortgage.”
Vivian said nothing.
Rachel took one painful step toward her.
“You threatened her home because I heard Elena.”
“I needed you quiet.”
“You could have talked to me.”
“And you would have trusted me?”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly Vivian almost smiled.
“At least you’re honest.”
Gabriel folded his mother’s letter carefully.
“Where’s the ledger?”
Elena pointed toward the old wool coat around her shoulders.
“My sister gave me that coat three months before she died.”
Gabriel looked at it.
“She told me Salvatore never searched anything he thought belonged to poor people.”
Elena slid one hand into the lining.
Then frowned.
Her fingers searched deeper.
Her face changed.
“No.”
She pulled the lining open.
A narrow slit had been cut into the fabric.
Empty.
“The ledger was here.”
Vivian stared.
“I never found it.”
Gabriel’s eyes sharpened.
“If you didn’t take it, who did?”
Elena suddenly looked toward the open steel door.
“The man who brought my dinner.”
Rachel’s skin prickled.
Gabriel had been waiting for Marcus since the moment he called him.
He checked his phone.
No response.
Then Rachel noticed something beneath Elena’s cot.
A gold object reflecting the yellow light.
She bent carefully and picked it up.
An old pocket watch.
The back carried an engraved DeLuca crest.
Gabriel took it from her.
His father had owned an identical watch.
He pressed the release.
The cover opened.
Inside was a tiny black-and-white photograph of two boys.
One was Gabriel at perhaps six.
The second boy was older.
Maybe ten.
Behind the photograph, scratched into the metal, were two initials.
M.V.
Rachel looked at Gabriel.
“Marcus?”
Gabriel’s expression became unreadable.
Elena whispered, “His mother’s name was Valentina.”
Gabriel looked at her.
Elena’s eyes filled with grief.
“Gabriel…”
“He wasn’t hired by your family.”
May you like
She swallowed.
“He was born into it.”
