Chapter 3 - The Man Behind the Black Suit
Gabriel arrived with Luca and four security men nine minutes later.
The maintenance worker had vanished.
Security footage showed him entering through a service door.
No footage showed him leaving.
Emma stood beside Margaret's bed, furious rather than frightened.
"You said this was about your world."
"It is."
"They know where my mother sleeps."
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
"Which is why neither of you stays here tonight."
"You don't decide that."
"No. The person threatening your mother decided it."
Emma hated that he was right.
Margaret was transferred quietly to a private medical facility controlled by one of Gabriel's companies.
Emma refused Gabriel's Manhattan penthouse.
He offered a guarded apartment.
She refused that too.
"Where exactly do you intend to sleep?"
"My apartment."
"Your address was written on a threat."
"It's still my home."
"Not tonight."
She folded her arms.
"Do people usually obey you?"
"Yes."
"That must make me exhausting."
"It does."
She almost smiled.
Almost.
Eventually she accepted a small guest apartment on the secure floor beneath Sophie's hospital suite.
That evening, Gabriel brought Sophie to see her in a wheelchair.
The girl was recovering faster than doctors expected.
"Emma!"
Emma crouched beside her.
"Look at you."
"I walked six steps."
"Six?"
"Seven if Dad stops counting wrong."
Gabriel looked offended.
"I did not count wrong."
"You skipped four."
Emma laughed.
Gabriel stared at her.
He had seen beautiful women laugh at him for years.
This felt different.
Emma's laughter wasn't designed to produce anything.
It simply existed.
Sophie reached for both their hands.
For several seconds, the three of them were connected.
Then Gabriel's phone rang.
Luca.
"We found something."
Gabriel left Sophie with Emma.
Downstairs, Luca displayed an old corporate record.
Thomas Brooks had worked as an elevator technician.
That part was true.
But for six months in 2003, he had serviced a warehouse owned by Gabriel's father, Salvatore Moretti.
During those same six months, federal investigators had nearly dismantled Salvatore's organization.
Someone had warned them about shipments, names, and bank accounts.
The informant had never been identified.
"Thomas?" Gabriel asked.
"Maybe."
Luca opened another document.
"There's more."
Thomas had purchased Morning Grace's building for almost nothing from a shell company tied to Salvatore.
"Why?"
"We don't know."
Gabriel stared at the address.
Morning Grace had not simply been Emma's bakery.
It had once belonged to his father.
The next morning Gabriel told Emma.
She sat silently.
"My dad bought that building for me."
"When?"
"Before he died. He said he got lucky."
Gabriel placed a folder down.
"He paid one dollar."
Emma looked at him.
"That's impossible."
"It happened."
"Why would your father give mine a building?"
"I don't know."
She paced toward the window.
"Everything I knew about him..."
"Your father may have been trying to protect you."
"From whom?"
Gabriel didn't answer.
Emma turned.
"From your father?"
"Possibly."
"And now from you?"
That question landed harder than she intended.
Gabriel stepped closer.
"If I wanted the ledger more than I wanted you safe, you wouldn't be standing here arguing with me."
"That's supposed to reassure me?"
"No."
"What are you, Gabriel?"
The question hung between them.
He could have lied.
Instead he said, "A man who inherited an empire built with blood and has spent fifteen years trying to turn enough of it legitimate that my daughter won't inherit my sins."
Emma studied him.
"Have you hurt people?"
"Yes."
"Killed people?"
Silence answered.
Emma looked away.
Gabriel didn't defend himself.
"I won't pretend to be better than I was," he said. "But Sophie is."
Emma's anger softened by one degree.
"She loves you."
"She's the only reason I learned there were things more important than being feared."
Before Emma could respond, Sophie appeared with a nurse.
"I want pancakes."
Emma blinked.
"At ten at night?"
"Hospital pancakes are terrible."
Gabriel sighed.
Emma smiled.
"I used to make pancakes."
Sophie's eyes widened.
"You cook?"
"I owned a bakery."
"Then you're making pancakes."
Gabriel looked at Emma.
"You heard the boss."
For an hour, danger disappeared.
Emma made pancakes in the private kitchen.
Sophie covered hers in strawberries.
Gabriel ate one standing at the counter.
Then another.
"Good?" Emma asked.
He swallowed.
"Acceptable."
Sophie gasped.
"Dad ate three."
"Traitor."
Emma laughed again.
Later, after Sophie slept, Gabriel drove Emma to Morning Grace.
Police tape still crossed the abandoned storefront from an old water leak.
Emma unlocked the door.
Dust covered everything.
The ovens were gone.
The counters remained.
Emma touched the wall where children's drawings had once hung.
"My whole life was here."
Gabriel noticed something beneath the counter.
A carved letter.
M.
He crouched.
Another letter appeared beneath it.
G.
MG.
Moretti Group.
The building had been one of Salvatore's properties.
They searched for two hours.
Nothing.
Then Emma remembered her father replacing one section of floor himself.
Behind the old flour storage room, they found a newer wooden panel.
Gabriel pried it loose.
Inside was a small steel compartment.
Empty.
Except for a key.
Emma picked it up.
A number had been engraved into the metal.
Gabriel stared at it.
"What?"
"That's not a locker number."
"What is it?"
Gabriel took the key.
"Room 317 was my father's private room at the old Moretti Hotel."
"The hotel was demolished."
"The public part was."
Emma frowned.
Gabriel turned toward the rear wall.
Then they heard footsteps upstairs.
Morning Grace had no second floor entrance from outside.
Gabriel drew a gun.
Emma froze.
The footsteps stopped directly above them.
A floorboard creaked.
Then a child's voice whispered from the darkness.
May you like
"Emma?"
It sounded exactly like Sophie...
