Chapter 4 - The Man Gabriel Buried
“Gabriel.”
The voice came again.
Gabriel raised his gun.
“Show yourself.”
A man stepped into the emergency light.
He was sixty-five.
Maybe older.
Gray hair.
A scar crossed one side of his forehead.
Gabriel stared at him.
The gun lowered by inches.
“Dad?”
Matteo Costa looked at his son.
“I’m sorry.”
Gabriel hit him.
One punch.
Matteo fell.
Gabriel stood over him shaking.
“You’re sorry?”
Matteo wiped blood from his mouth.
“I deserved that.”
“You deserved seventeen years of those.”
I had never seen Gabriel lose control.
It frightened me less than watching him regain it.
He stepped back.
“Talk.”
Matteo explained.
He had discovered Leo’s operation in 2008.
Leo was using Costa shipping routes to move biological material for a private pharmaceutical consortium.
Matteo planned to testify.
Someone sabotaged his car.
He survived.
Evelyn helped hide him.
“Why stay dead?” Gabriel demanded.
“Because whoever tried to kill me knew everything.”
“You had a nineteen-year-old son.”
“I know.”
“You left me with Anthony.”
“I thought Anthony could protect you.”
Gabriel laughed bitterly.
“You don’t get to call abandonment protection.”
Matteo accepted that.
Then he looked at me.
“Quinn.”
“Are you my father?”
The question silenced everyone.
Matteo shook his head.
“No.”
Relief and disappointment collided inside me.
“Then why were you holding me in that photograph?”
“Because I helped deliver you.”
“What?”
“Your mother went into labor early. She couldn’t go to a hospital.”
“Why?”
“Because Leo was already watching her.”
Matteo sat.
“Your biological father was a researcher named Dr. Nathan Cole.”
I had never heard the name.
“He discovered the mutation in your family line. He wanted to protect you. Leo wanted access to you.”
“What happened to Nathan?”
“He disappeared before you were born.”
“Dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Every answer created another hole.
Gabriel paced away.
“You said you don’t know who sabotaged your car.”
“I didn’t then.”
“And now?”
Matteo looked toward him.
“Anthony.”
Gabriel stopped.
His uncle.
The man who raised him after Matteo’s supposed death.
The man who ran the Costa organization for fifteen years.
“No.”
“I found proof.”
Matteo removed a small encrypted drive.
“Anthony and Leo worked together.”
Gabriel stared at it.
“Anthony had a stroke.”
“Anthony had no stroke.”
Silence.
“He disappeared deliberately,” Matteo said.
Just like everyone else.
Dead mothers.
Dead fathers.
Sick uncles.
Nobody in our lives apparently understood the concept of simply staying where they were supposed to be.
Matteo continued.
“Anthony learned Leo was preparing to expose him. They turned on each other.”
“And Quinn?”
“She became leverage.”
I understood.
“They staged Marco’s attack to force Gabriel into protecting me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because once Gabriel publicly claimed you, Anthony could make it look like Gabriel was controlling the last living subject connected to the trial.”
Gabriel said, “They wanted evidence connecting me to her.”
“To destroy you.”
“And then?”
“To take Quinn.”
My stomach tightened.
Matteo looked at me.
“They need fresh samples.”
Gabriel’s expression became lethal.
“No.”
Matteo nodded.
“That’s why Evelyn resurfaced. She discovered the new trial had started.”
I thought about my pharmacy.
“My hospital.”
“Yes.”
“They’re doing it at St. Catherine’s again.”
“Yes.”
I suddenly remembered something.
A medication shortage.
Unusual oncology orders.
Boxes transferred to a restricted research floor.
“Dr. Elias Warren.”
Matteo looked at me.
“You know him?”
“He runs experimental oncology.”
Gabriel took out his phone.
“Julian. Find everything on Elias Warren.”
The answer arrived twenty minutes later.
Dr. Warren was connected to three shell corporations.
One belonged to Anthony Costa.
Another received payments from Leo.
The third was registered to a name that made me stop.
Dr. Nathan Cole.
My biological father.
Alive on paper.
Maybe alive in reality.
We returned to Gabriel’s house.
Matteo came with us.
Father and son barely spoke.
At dawn, I found Gabriel alone on the balcony.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
He looked at me.
“You?”
“Also no.”
We stood together.
Then he said, “You should leave Boston.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“They want you.”
“They’ve wanted me for thirty-two years.”
“Exactly.”
“And running worked beautifully for our parents.”
That landed.
Gabriel looked away.
“I don’t want you hurt because of me.”
“This started before I met you.”
“But now you’re under my protection.”
I smiled faintly.
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
His eyes met mine.
“What should we call it?”
My heart did something inconvenient.
“I don’t know.”
His hand touched mine.
No performance.
No audience.
Just Gabriel.
Then Julian entered.
“We found Warren.”
The doctor had left St. Catherine’s.
His vehicle was tracked to an abandoned research facility outside Boston.
Gabriel assembled a team.
Matteo insisted on coming.
So did I.
“No,” Gabriel said.
“Yes.”
“Quinn.”
“Those are medical records. You need someone who understands them.”
He hated it.
But agreed.
The facility appeared abandoned.
Inside, electricity still ran.
We found laboratories.
Freezers.
Patient files.
Thousands of samples.
Then I found a room labeled QH.
My initials.
Inside were thirty-two boxes.
One for every year of my life.
Baby teeth.
Blood samples.
Hair.
Medical records.
Photographs.
Someone had documented me since birth.
On the wall was a timeline.
My schools.
My apartment.
My hospital job.
Liam.
Gabriel.
And a photograph taken two nights earlier.
The alley.
Gabriel holding me.
Underneath, someone had written:
PAIRING SUCCESSFUL.
I stared.
“Pairing?”
Gabriel ripped the photograph down.
Julian called from the next room.
“You need to see this.”
A video monitor showed security footage.
Dr. Warren.
Anthony Costa.
And my mother.
They were arguing.
The date was that morning.
Audio crackled.
My mother shouted:
“You promised you would never involve Quinn.”
Anthony replied:
“We didn’t involve her, Evelyn.”
He smiled.
“We created her.”
The recording ended.
I couldn’t breathe.
Gabriel caught my shoulders.
“Quinn.”
“What does that mean?”
Matteo looked horrified.
Before anyone answered, every door in the facility locked simultaneously.
Red emergency lights came on.
A speaker crackled overhead.
May you like
Then Dr. Warren’s voice filled the room.
“Welcome home, Quinn.”
