Chapter 4 - The Husband Who Wasn’t Dead
The call had lasted seven seconds.
That was all.
Seven seconds to destroy three years of grief.
Seven seconds to turn Clara’s memory of a funeral into something unbearable.
She sat in the brownstone study, Gabriel’s letter trembling between her fingers.
“He is alive,” she said.
Leonardo paced once across the room.
“We do not know that.”
“I know his voice.”
“You have not heard him in years.”
“I know his voice.”
The force of her words stopped him.
Dante returned from the hallway.
“The number was routed through encrypted relays. No location yet.”
Clara stood.
“Then find him.”
Leonardo looked at her.
“If it was Gabriel, he may be contacting you because he is in danger.”
“He left me believing he was dead.”
“Yes,” Leonardo said. “And if he did that, it was likely because someone made him believe disappearing was the only way to keep you alive.”
Clara turned toward him, anger finally breaking through her shock.
“You keep defending him.”
“I am trying to explain him.”
“You do not get to explain what it felt like when police told me he was gone. You do not get to explain the closed coffin. The hospital bills. The empty apartment. The nights I woke up thinking I heard him come through the door.”
Leonardo said nothing.
Clara’s voice cracked.
“I buried him.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“No. You don’t.”
His face became still.
Then he walked to the piano in the corner of the room and lifted the cover.
Beneath the keys sat a faded photograph of Gabriel as a child.
“I buried him too,” Leonardo said.
The anger drained from Clara, leaving only exhaustion.
Then Dante’s phone buzzed.
He checked the screen.
“Boss. We found something.”
A location had been attached to a message sent through an old Falcone emergency channel.
A warehouse near the Chicago River.
Leonardo read it once.
Then his face hardened.
“Matteo Rinaldi.”
Clara looked at him.
“Who is he?”
“The man Gabriel warned you about.”
“Then we go.”
Leonardo shook his head immediately.
“No.”
“He called me.”
“That is exactly why you are not going.”
“He may be alive.”
“He may be bait.”
Clara stepped closer.
“You dragged me into this the moment you grabbed my wrist at that restaurant. You do not get to lock me away now.”
Leonardo stared at her.
Then, unexpectedly, he nodded.
“Fine.”
Dante swore under his breath.
“Boss—”
“She stays in the car,” Leonardo said. “And if anything looks wrong, we leave.”
Clara did not argue.
Because beneath the anger, beneath the betrayal, beneath the terror of discovering that Gabriel might be alive, there was only one thing she needed.
Answers.
The warehouse stood dark beside the river.
Rain hammered the roof.
Leonardo’s security team moved ahead carefully, scanning every entrance.
Clara waited inside the armored car with Dante.
Her hands were wrapped around Gabriel’s ring.
Then she saw movement through the rain.
A man emerged from the warehouse doorway.
He was thinner than Gabriel had been.
Older.
His hair was longer.
A scar marked the side of his face.
But he had blue eyes.
Blue eyes that found hers through the wet darkness.
Clara opened the car door before Dante could stop her.
“Gabriel!”
The man took one step forward.
Then a gunshot cracked through the night.
Leonardo moved faster than Clara could understand.
He shoved her behind the car as glass exploded across the pavement.
Dante pulled his weapon and shouted orders.
Across the road, Gabriel fell.
Clara screamed.
But Gabriel lifted his head.
He was alive.
And as Leonardo’s men moved to cover them, Gabriel shouted the one thing Clara could barely hear over the rain.
May you like
“Matteo has the evidence!”
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