Chapter 5 - Someone Inside the House
The recording cut off before the name.
Gabriel smashed the phone against the desk.
It was the first time I saw him truly lose control.
Not rage.
Fear.
His father had known.
Years ago.
Someone had prepared the recording and scheduled it to reach Gabriel only if certain financial accounts were disturbed.
Vincent traced the call to a private digital vault.
Inside were encrypted files.
We needed a password.
Gabriel knew exactly where to look.
His father’s old office.
The locked room in the west wing.
Inside the desk, we found a notebook.
Numbers filled every page.
Shipping dates.
Account codes.
Initials.
One combination repeated.
G.M. / C.M. / V.K.
Gabriel looked at Vincent.
Vincent looked sick.
“My initials,” he said.
Gabriel said nothing.
The recording had said the person Gabriel trusted most helped Carmine.
There were not many candidates.
Vincent had been his best friend for seventeen years.
“I never betrayed you,” Vincent said.
Gabriel’s voice was flat.
“Then prove it.”
We searched the room.
Behind a painting, I found a wall safe.
Gabriel knew the combination.
Inside were property deeds and an envelope addressed to him.
He opened it.
One sentence.
TRUST THE PERSON WHO MAKES YOU ANGRY ENOUGH TO LIVE.
Gabriel stared at me.
I stared back.
“Well, that could be anybody.”
He laughed despite himself.
Then we found the flash drive.
It contained records of a trust established by Gabriel’s father.
The controlling shares of Moretti Shipping had never belonged entirely to Gabriel.
Forty-nine percent had been placed in a protected family trust.
Carmine could not access it while Gabriel lived.
Unless Gabriel was legally declared incompetent.
The sedation suddenly made sense.
Drug him.
Create medical evidence of cognitive decline.
Forge signatures.
Take control.
If that failed?
Kill him.
The sniper had been Plan B.
But one mystery remained.
Why use Maria Moretti’s identity?
We found the answer in a scanned letter.
Maria had created the trust.
Not Gabriel’s father.
And she had included a hidden beneficiary.
A second child.
Gabriel read that line three times.
“I’m an only child.”
Apparently, he was not.
The records identified the beneficiary only by initials.
M.M.
I thought of the scratched casing.
M.
Before we could continue, the estate alarm sounded.
A guard shouted from downstairs.
Someone had entered through the service tunnel.
Vincent ran.
Gabriel turned his chair.
I followed.
The tunnel door stood open.
Wet footprints crossed the floor.
They led upstairs.
Toward my bedroom.
I reached the corridor first.
My door was open.
My mattress had been cut apart.
Drawers overturned.
Clothes scattered.
Pickles’s photograph smashed.
But nothing valuable was missing.
Only one thing.
The cookbook where I had hidden copies of medication logs.
Then I heard breathing behind my closet door.
I grabbed a lamp.
Gabriel reached me.
“Hannah, wait.”
The closet handle slowly turned.
The door opened.
May you like
A bloody hand appeared.
And Marissa Cole whispered my name...
