Chapter 3 - The House Without Lights

Darkness swallowed the bedroom.

Sadi heard the medical monitors change tone before anyone spoke.

“Stay down,” Enzo said.

A gun came out of his jacket.

Emergency lights should have activated.

They did not.

Somewhere in the corridor, glass broke.

Dr. Vale cursed. “I need power to the infusion pumps.”

Gabriel’s voice came from the bed, calm and cold.

“Battery backup.”

“It should have switched automatically.”

“Then someone killed that too.”

Sadi pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight.

Enzo immediately covered it with his hand.

“Do you want to advertise the room?”

“Do you want the doctor treating him blind?”

Enzo released her hand.

“Keep it low.”

A security guard appeared in the doorway with a small tactical light.

“Generator room was breached.”

“By who?” Enzo asked.

“We don’t know.”

“How many entrances?”

“None forced.”

Gabriel gave a humorless laugh.

“So the man trying to kill me has keys.”

Another guard rushed past the door.

Sadi caught the smell before anyone else reacted.

Smoke.

“Something’s burning.”

The first guard turned.

“West electrical room.”

Gabriel pushed himself higher despite Vale’s protest.

“Get everyone off this floor.”

“We can move you,” Enzo said.

“No elevator.”

“We have a chair.”

“No.”

“Gabriel—”

“I am not being rolled through my own house like furniture.”

Sadi stepped toward the bed.

“You can either be moved like furniture or die like an idiot.”

Gabriel stared at her.

Dr. Vale looked down, apparently hiding a smile.

Enzo said, “Chair.”

They moved Gabriel to a reinforced study on the ground floor while guards swept the estate.

The smoke turned out to be deliberate but limited. Someone had burned a control panel, cut generator cables, and disabled two cameras from inside the security office.

No intruder was found.

That was worse.

At four in the morning, the lights returned.

Gabriel sat in a leather chair with his injured arm stabilized against his chest. He looked exhausted, but his eyes remained sharp.

Sadi stood near the study fireplace while Enzo placed four names on the desk.

“The surviving Gianna Falcone House cufflink recipients,” Enzo said. “You. Me. Victor. Isabella.”

Sadi looked at him. “Who is Isabella?”

Gabriel answered.

“My father’s widow.”

“Your stepmother?”

“She married him after my mother died.”

“And where is she?”

“In Rome, supposedly.”

Enzo slid a passport record across the desk.

“She entered the country three days ago.”

Gabriel’s face did not change.

“Did she tell anyone?”

“No.”

Sadi looked between them.

“Why would a charity give cufflinks to family members and advisers?”

Gabriel leaned back.

“Gianna Falcone House was not a normal charity when it began.”

“What was it?”

“A promise.”

“To whom?”

“My mother.”

For the first time, his voice changed.

Not much. Just enough.

“She wanted a place for families who could not afford rehabilitation after traumatic injuries. My father funded it. Victor organized the property. Enzo handled security. Isabella later ran the board.”

“And you?”

“I was twenty-three. I wrote a check and believed that counted as helping.”

Enzo opened a folder.

“Five years later, the foundation stopped using the original building. The programs moved. The old property was converted into storage.”

Sadi stared at the engraved cufflink.

“Storage for what?”

Neither man answered immediately.

“That means something illegal,” she said.

Gabriel looked at her. “This family has a flexible relationship with that word.”

“I noticed.”

Enzo said, “The storage site burned fifteen years ago.”

“Accident?”

“We thought so.”

Gabriel’s eyes were on the cufflink.

“Three months after the fire, Sadi’s father died.”

Sadi stopped breathing.

“What did you say?”

Gabriel looked up.

“Rafael Moreno.”

The room became very small.

“You knew my father?”

“I knew of him.”

“That is not what you just said.”

Gabriel did not answer.

Sadi crossed the room in three fast steps.

“You knew his name without asking me. Why?”

Enzo moved slightly, not blocking her but ready.

Gabriel raised his good hand.

“Leave her.”

Sadi’s voice shook. “My father repaired boilers and taught self-defense classes.”

“He did both.”

“What else did he do?”

Gabriel held her gaze.

“For six years, he worked nights for my father.”

Sadi felt the words land one at a time.

“No.”

“He kept records.”

“No.”

“He was good with numbers. Better than people realized.”

“My father was not part of your family.”

“I didn’t say he was.”

“You said he worked for them.”

“For my father, yes.”

Sadi looked at Enzo. “Did you know?”

Enzo’s silence answered.

She stepped away from both men.

“My mother told me he took extra maintenance jobs at night.”

“He did,” Enzo said. “At warehouses, clubs, properties. It gave him a reason to be there.”

“A reason to do what?”

“Check accounts without looking like an accountant.”

Sadi laughed once, without humor.

“You are telling me my father was a secret bookkeeper for mobsters.”

Gabriel’s expression tightened.

“For my father. There is a difference.”

“Not to the car that killed him.”

Silence.

Sadi saw it.

The tiny pause.

The look between Gabriel and Enzo.

Her anger turned cold.

“You don’t think the crash was an accident.”

Gabriel said, “No.”

She backed away from the desk.

For fifteen years, the story had been simple. Rain. A sharp curve. A truck driver who never saw Rafael Moreno’s small sedan until it was too late.

Her mother had cried every night for months.

Sadi had been eleven.

“You knew this?”

“We suspected it,” Enzo said.

“And you said nothing to my mother?”

“We had no proof.”

“You had enough proof to remember his name fifteen years later.”

Gabriel’s voice softened.

“I was not running the family then.”

“That is not an answer.”

“No. It isn’t.”

She grabbed her coat from the back of a chair.

Gabriel watched her.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“You cannot go home.”

Sadi turned on him.

“You do not get to tell me where I can go.”

“Someone wrote that you saw everything on a corpse.”

“And someone in this house just turned off the power.”

“That is exactly my point.”

“No. Your point is that I should trust you because you’re dangerous enough to protect me.”

Gabriel said nothing.

“My point,” Sadi continued, “is that the danger may be standing next to you.”

Her eyes moved to Enzo.

He did not flinch.

Gabriel looked toward the closed study door.

“You are right.”

That surprised her.

He continued. “Which is why nobody leaves alone.”

Sadi almost argued again.

Then Enzo’s phone vibrated.

He answered, listened, and held it out to Gabriel.

“It’s Belladonna.”

Gabriel put the call on speaker.

A guard’s voice filled the study.

“We found the missing service cart.”

“Where?” Gabriel asked.

“Basement laundry tunnel.”

“The second wineglass?” Sadi asked.

“Still on it.”

Vale, who had been checking Gabriel’s bandage, stepped forward.

“Bag it. Don’t touch the rim.”

The guard hesitated.

“There’s something else.”

“What?” Enzo said.

“A photograph taped underneath the cart.”

Sadi’s stomach tightened.

“Of what?”

“Not what. Who.”

A message arrived on Enzo’s phone.

He opened the image.

Sadi saw her father immediately.

Rafael Moreno stood in front of a brick building beside a much younger Gabriel, Gabriel’s father, Victor Falcone, and a woman Sadi did not recognize.

All four men were smiling except Rafael.

He was looking directly at the camera.

On the back of the photograph, someone had written one sentence.

ASK WHAT RAFAEL HID BEFORE HE DIED.

Sadi stared at the image until the letters blurred.

Gabriel spoke quietly.

“I know where that photograph was taken.”

“Where?”

“Gianna Falcone House.”

Sadi looked at him.

“The one that burned?”

“Yes.”

“And what did my father hide?”

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Gabriel’s answer came slowly.

“If I knew that, I think someone would already be dead.”