Chapter 5 - The Father Who Never Came Home
Isabella refused to wait.
Neither Lorenzo nor Marco could stop her.
They reached St. Catherine's Hospital before dawn.
Room 614 was empty.
The bed was warm.
Victor had moved Gabriel.
But he had left something behind.
A cassette recorder.
Isabella pressed play.
Her father's voice filled the room.
"Isabella, if you're hearing this, then Lorenzo found you."
She covered her mouth.
Lorenzo stood beside her.
"I wanted to come home every day," Gabriel continued. "But Victor told me that if I returned, you and your mother would die."
Isabella cried silently.
Her mother had died believing Gabriel had abandoned them before his supposed accident.
Gabriel had survived.
Victor had kept him hidden.
Why?
Because Gabriel possessed the only complete record of the conspiracy.
Enzo Moretti had helped fake Gabriel's death to protect him.
Then Victor found him first.
For fourteen years, Gabriel had been moved from place to place.
Forced to surrender pieces of information.
Never enough to make himself useless.
The recording ended with an address.
A church outside Chicago.
Lorenzo organized a rescue.
Isabella insisted on joining.
"No."
"My father."
"Dangerous."
"My father."
He knew there was no winning.
They reached the abandoned church at sunset.
Victor waited inside.
Gabriel sat beside him.
Older.
Thin.
Alive.
Isabella stopped.
"Dad?"
Gabriel raised his head.
The years disappeared from his face.
"Bella."
She ran.
Victor's men raised weapons.
Lorenzo's men did the same.
"Nobody shoots," Lorenzo ordered.
Isabella reached her father.
They held each other.
Gabriel sobbed into his daughter's hair.
"I'm sorry."
She kept repeating one sentence.
"You're alive."
Victor watched them.
Even he seemed uncomfortable.
Lorenzo approached.
"This ends tonight."
Victor laughed.
"You still think I'm the villain."
"You kidnapped Gabriel."
"To keep him alive."
"From whom?"
Victor looked toward Matteo, who had entered behind Lorenzo.
"Him."
Matteo froze.
Victor explained that Matteo had wanted control of the Moretti empire decades earlier. Enzo refused. Gabriel discovered Matteo's financial network.
But Victor claimed he had eventually turned against Matteo.
"I kept Gabriel alive because dead men can't testify."
Matteo called him a liar.
Gabriel slowly stood.
"No."
Everyone looked at him.
"Victor is telling part of the truth."
Isabella stared at her father.
Gabriel pointed toward Matteo.
"He ordered Enzo's death."
Matteo reached inside his coat.
Lorenzo moved faster.
Gunfire shattered the church.
Marco tackled Isabella.
Lorenzo fired once.
Matteo's weapon fell.
He collapsed with a bullet through his shoulder.
Alive.
Victor's men surrendered.
Gabriel walked toward Matteo.
"You spent twenty-nine years hiding behind other men."
Matteo laughed through the pain.
"And Enzo spent twenty-nine years pretending he was better than me."
"He was."
Matteo's smile disappeared.
Lorenzo called the authorities.
Not the officers on his payroll.
Federal investigators.
For years he had avoided them.
Tonight he invited them.
He gave them Gabriel's archive.
Every ledger.
Every payment.
Every corrupt official.
Including records implicating parts of Lorenzo's own organization.
Marco stared at him.
"You know what this means."
"Yes."
"We lose half the empire."
"The half we shouldn't have had."
Isabella heard him.
For the first time since meeting him, she looked at Lorenzo without suspicion.
Gabriel was taken to a hospital under federal protection.
Matteo was arrested.
Victor agreed to testify.
It seemed finished.
It wasn't.
At three in the morning, Lorenzo returned home.
Elena was waiting.
She held an envelope.
"Your father left this for you."
"When?"
"The week he died."
"Why didn't you give it to me?"
"Because I was afraid of what you'd become after reading it."
Lorenzo opened the letter.
His father's handwriting covered two pages.
The first page apologized.
The second contained one final confession.
Lorenzo read it twice.
Then he looked at Elena.
"Isabella can't know this."
A voice came from the doorway.
"Can't know what?"
May you like
Isabella stood there.
And she had heard everything.
