Chapter 2 - The Man Behind Gabriel Bennett
Clara did not leave with Leonardo Falcone.
Not at first.
She refused his offer to “talk somewhere safe,” refused Dante’s suggestion that a car was waiting, and refused to let anyone tell her what had happened to the man she loved.
Instead, she walked into the restaurant’s back office, locked the door, and called the only person from Gabriel’s old life she trusted.
His former colleague, Nora Ellis.
Nora answered after two rings.
“Clara? Is everything okay?”
Clara stared at the rain against the office window.
“Did Gabriel ever tell you he had a brother?”
There was a long silence.
Too long.
“Nora?”
“He told me not to answer questions about his past,” she said finally.
Clara closed her eyes.
“You knew.”
“I knew he was scared,” Nora whispered. “That is all.”
“Scared of whom?”
Nora’s voice dropped.
“People who knew him before he became Gabriel Bennett.”
Clara sat down slowly.
For years, Gabriel had told her that he had grown up alone. He said he had been in foster care. He said he did not speak to anyone from before college because there was no one worth speaking to.
She believed him.
Not because the story made sense.
Because grief and loneliness had made him seem familiar to her.
They had met at a bookstore café in Seattle. Clara had been reading alone after work. Gabriel sat at the next table, correcting essays with a red pen and drinking tea that had gone cold.
He had smiled when she knocked over her bag.
He had helped gather the papers that spilled across the floor.
He had made her laugh.
And somehow, over time, he had become home.
But now she wondered whether every gentle thing about him had been real.
Or whether it had all been another identity.
A knock sounded at the office door.
Leonardo stood outside.
Clara hesitated before opening it.
He had removed his suit jacket. Red wine stained his white shirt and the side of his trousers. The cut on his burned finger had been wrapped in a napkin.
He looked less like the feared man who had entered the restaurant an hour earlier.
And more like someone carrying a loss he had never survived.
“I am sorry for grabbing you,” he said.
Clara did not respond.
“I had no right.”
“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”
He nodded.
Then he placed a small photograph on the desk.
It showed two boys standing beside a lake.
The older one was maybe sixteen, thin and serious, with dark hair and sharp eyes.
The younger one was smiling.
He had blue eyes.
Gabriel’s eyes.
Clara stopped breathing.
“That is him,” she whispered.
Leonardo’s face tightened.
“Gabriel was nineteen when that photo was taken. I was twenty-six.”
Clara picked it up with shaking fingers.
The boy in the photograph looked younger than the man she married.
But the smile was unmistakable.
“He said he had no family.”
“He was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
Leonardo’s eyes grew colder.
“From my world.”
The answer should have made Clara angry.
Instead, it made her heart ache.
Gabriel had never spoken about fear.
But there were moments she remembered now.
The way he checked locks twice before bed.
The way he changed routes home.
The way he went silent whenever a black SUV passed too slowly near their apartment.
The way he woke from nightmares and refused to explain them.
“He did not want this life,” Leonardo continued. “He wanted out. When our father died, I took control of the family business. Gabriel wanted nothing to do with it.”
“A mafia family?”
Leonardo did not deny it.
“He told me he was leaving. I let him go.”
Clara looked up.
“Then why did everyone think he was dead?”
“Because someone inside our organization wanted him dead.”
Dante entered the office without knocking.
“Boss.”
Leonardo turned.
“What?”
“One of the men at Table 8 sent a message after seeing the ring.”
Clara’s stomach dropped.
“To whom?” Leonardo asked.
“We do not know yet. But the name Gabriel Falcone has already reached people it should not reach.”
Leonardo looked toward Clara.
“You cannot go home tonight.”
Clara folded her arms.
“You do not get to order me around.”
“I am not ordering you.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Trying to keep you alive.”
Clara stared at him.
Then she looked down at the ring.
For three years, it had been the last piece of Gabriel she had left.
Now it was a target.
And perhaps a key.
“Fine,” she said quietly. “You can tell me what Gabriel was hiding.”
Leonardo’s expression shifted.
“But you tell me the truth too.”
“What truth?”
“Whether he is really dead.”
May you like
For the first time that night, Leonardo Falcone looked away.
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