Chapter 6 - The Sister’s Secret
Gabriel said nothing for nearly ten seconds.
Then he reached for the laptop.
Sadi caught his wrist.
“Wait.”
His eyes snapped toward her.
“That’s my sister.”
“I know.”
“She helped poison me.”
“Watch the rest.”
Gabriel stared at her.
She pointed toward the timeline.
“The video keeps going.”
Mercer pressed play.
Onscreen, Isabella stood beside the bed.
Victor handed her the filament.
She looked down at Gabriel.
Then she shook her head.
Victor grabbed her arm.
There was no audio.
But his threat was visible in his face.
Isabella pulled away.
Victor showed her something on his phone.
She began crying.
Then she took the filament.
Sadi leaned closer.
“She was forced.”
Gabriel’s anger shifted.
The video continued.
Isabella moved toward Gabriel’s shoulder.
But instead of inserting the thread, she dropped it.
Victor slapped her.
Gabriel surged forward.
Roman caught him.
“It’s a recording.”
Victor retrieved the filament.
He inserted it himself.
Then he forced Isabella to hold the instrument.
A staged fingerprint.
A staged betrayal.
Everything about Victor’s plan had layers.
Gabriel whispered, “Where is she?”
Roman checked the mansion team.
No response.
He called again.
Nothing.
Then his phone lit up with a security alert.
Isabella’s bedroom.
Empty.
Her guards were unconscious.
A message had been written on the mirror.
BRING THE ORIGINAL LEDGER.
Gabriel stared.
“It burned.”
Isabella had lied.
Or pretended to.
Sadi remembered something.
“She said she burned your father’s ledger.”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t say the red ledger was the original.”
Gabriel looked at her.
They returned to the office.
Sadi examined the ashes.
Cheap paper.
Modern binding.
Not something eight years old.
A copy.
Gabriel suddenly opened the hidden compartment beneath his desk.
Empty.
Then he looked toward the portrait of his father.
He pulled it away from the wall.
A safe.
Roman stared.
“You knew?”
“No.”
Sadi noticed four small scratches around the lock.
Someone had used it recently.
Gabriel tried his father’s birthday.
Nothing.
Isabella’s birthday.
Nothing.
Sadi looked at the portrait.
Vittorio Falcone stood beside two children.
Young Gabriel.
Young Isabella.
In Isabella’s hand was a violin.
“What song did she play?”
Gabriel frowned.
“What?”
“When she was little.”
He stared at the picture.
“‘Moon River.’ Why?”
“Numbers?”
Gabriel suddenly understood.
The first four notes.
He entered the corresponding piano key numbers their mother had taught them as children.
The safe opened.
Inside was a black leather ledger.
Original.
Gabriel stared at it.
A letter rested on top.
His name was written across the envelope.
He opened it.
The handwriting belonged to his father.
Gabriel,
If you are reading this, then Victor has finally made his move.
Gabriel stopped.
Roman stared.
“He knew.”
Gabriel continued.
Vittorio had discovered Victor’s relationship with Aurelius years earlier.
Victor had been laundering money through the company.
But the company became something darker.
Vittorio planned to expose him.
Then Vittorio died.
Official cause: heart attack.
Mercer took the letter.
His face drained.
“A delayed cardiac toxin could look exactly like that.”
Gabriel sat down.
Victor had not begun by trying to kill him.
He had begun with Gabriel’s father.
For eight years, Gabriel had mourned a natural death that may have been murder.
Sadi sat beside him.
She did not speak.
She simply stayed.
After a minute Gabriel looked at her.
“He raised me.”
“Victor?”
“My father was always working. Victor taught me to drive. Took me to boxing matches. He was there when my mother died.”
The betrayal was no longer criminal.
It was intimate.
Sadi understood why that hurt more.
Roman interrupted gently.
“We have to move.”
The ledger contained locations.
Accounts.
Names.
One property stood out.
Aurelius Rural Research Annex.
Hudson Valley.
Abandoned publicly.
Still receiving electricity privately.
Gabriel’s men moved before sunset.
This time the police were informed indirectly through a federal contact Gabriel trusted.
He no longer wanted private revenge.
He wanted Victor unable to disappear.
The research annex looked empty.
It wasn’t.
Mercer found his daughter Emma in a locked medical room.
Alive.
Sadi hugged the crying girl while Mercer broke down beside them.
Mateo was safe at the mansion.
One hostage recovered.
But Isabella was nowhere.
Roman found blood near the rear corridor.
Gabriel’s face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
They followed the trail.
It ended at a steel door.
Behind it was an elevator.
Only one button.
Down.
Gabriel pressed it.
The underground level smelled like disinfectant.
Rooms lined a central corridor.
Sadi saw hospital beds.
Restraints.
Drug cabinets.
Victor had not simply built a poison laboratory.
He had built a place where human beings were tested.
They found records.
Missing people.
Runaways.
Immigrants.
Patients without families.
People no one powerful would search for.
Sadi stared at the names.
“This is why your father wanted out.”
Gabriel nodded.
A scream echoed from farther down the corridor.
“Isabella!”
Gabriel ran despite his injury.
They reached the final room.
Victor stood behind a glass wall.
Isabella was strapped to a chair.
An IV line entered her arm.
Gabriel slammed his fist against the glass.
“Victor!”
The older man turned.
Silver-haired.
Elegant suit.
Calm smile.
Exactly the kind of man nobody would suspect of building hell beneath a medical facility.
Victor pressed an intercom button.
“Gabriel.”
“Let her go.”
“I will.”
Gabriel stared.
“What do you want?”
“The ledger.”
“It’s not here.”
Victor smiled.
“Of course it is.”
Gabriel looked toward Roman.
Victor continued.
“You were always predictable when family was involved.”
Sadi stepped forward.
Victor noticed her.
His expression changed.
“The maid.”
Sadi looked through the glass.
“You should have matched the thread.”
Victor’s smile vanished.
Gabriel almost laughed.
Victor recovered.
“You destroyed years of work because you noticed a stitch.”
“No.”
Sadi held his gaze.
“You destroyed yourself because you thought no one like me would notice.”
Victor’s eyes hardened.
He lifted a syringe.
Gabriel stopped breathing.
Victor inserted it into Isabella’s IV port.
“Ledger.”
Gabriel reached inside his coat.
The black leather book appeared.
Victor smiled.
A door unlocked.
“Bring it in.”
Roman said, “No.”
Gabriel looked at Sadi.
Then at Isabella.
He stepped toward the door.
Sadi noticed something on the wall beside Victor.
A label.
The same Aurelius symbol.
Below it:
NEUTRALIZATION PROTOCOL.
She looked at Mercer.
He saw it too.
An antidote cabinet.
Victor believed he controlled the poison.
But he had left the cure inside the room.
Gabriel entered.
The door locked behind him.
Victor held out his hand.
“Ledger.”
Gabriel tossed it onto the table.
Victor opened it.
His smile faded.
The pages were blank.
Gabriel said, “You taught me never to bring the real thing to a negotiation.”
Victor’s face twisted.
Then alarms erupted.
Roman had cut power.
The magnetic locks released.
Gabriel lunged.
Victor grabbed the syringe.
Isabella screamed.
Sadi rushed toward the antidote cabinet.
Mercer followed.
Gunfire exploded in the corridor.
Gabriel tackled Victor into the table.
The syringe skidded across the floor.
Sadi opened the cabinet.
Rows of vials.
No labels.
Only numbers.
Mercer stared.
“Which one?”
Isabella’s body began convulsing.
Gabriel shouted her name.
Sadi looked at the poison kit.
Then at the numbers.
Then she saw the tiny copper-colored knot printed beside one vial.
The same marking that had been tied to Gabriel’s poisoned stitch.
She grabbed it.
“This one.”
Mercer filled a syringe.
He ran toward Isabella.
Her eyes rolled back.
Gabriel held her hand.
May you like
Mercer raised the needle.
And Isabella’s heart monitor went flat.
