Chapter 5 - The Brother at the Gate

Gabriel read the sentence three times.

His mother did not die of an aneurysm.

He was sitting in the study when Sadi returned with Maria and the ledger. Morning had turned the windows pale gray, and the estate smelled faintly of burned wiring from the sabotage during the night.

Gabriel looked at Maria.

“You knew my mother?”

Maria shook her head. “Only by name.”

“Then why would Rafael write this?”

“I don’t know.”

“You expect me to believe he hid a ledger for fifteen years and never told you what was inside?”

Maria’s eyes flashed. “My husband was terrified. Terrified men do not always become generous with details.”

Sadi stepped between the question and the anger building behind it.

“Gabriel, attacking my mother is not going to change the handwriting.”

He looked at her.

“I am not attacking her.”

“You sound like you are cross-examining a witness.”

“She is a witness.”

“She is my mother.”

That stopped him.

Enzo stood on the opposite side of the desk, his arms folded.

Gabriel turned toward him.

“Did you know anything about my mother’s death?”

“No.”

“That answer came quickly.”

“Because it is true.”

“Were you working for my father then?”

“I was twenty-one. I drove cars and opened doors.”

“Victor?”

“Already his adviser.”

Gabriel looked back at the ledger.

“Isabella?”

Enzo hesitated.

“She volunteered at the clinic where Gianna was treated during her last year.”

Sadi noticed Gabriel go completely still.

“Before she married my father?”

“Years before.”

Gabriel’s voice dropped. “You never thought that mattered?”

“At the time? No.”

A guard knocked and entered.

“Boss. Marco is at the gate.”

Gabriel’s expression hardened.

“Why?”

“He says he heard you were shot.”

“From who?”

“He won’t say.”

Sadi looked at Gabriel. “Who is Marco?”

“My half-brother.”

Maria muttered, “Of course there is a half-brother.”

Despite everything, Sadi almost laughed.

Gabriel did not.

“Let him in,” he said.

Enzo frowned. “We have not cleared him.”

“That is why I want to see him.”

Marco Falcone entered ten minutes later wearing jeans, a dark wool coat, and the irritated expression of a man who had spent his entire life being compared to someone more dangerous.

He was thirty-two, broader than Gabriel, with the same dark eyes but none of Gabriel’s stillness.

He looked at the bandaged shoulder.

“You look terrible.”

Gabriel leaned back. “Good morning to you too.”

Marco looked around the room.

His gaze paused on Sadi, Maria, and then the ledger.

“What happened?”

“You tell me.”

Marco’s mouth tightened. “I came because someone said you might not survive the night.”

“Who?”

“A number I didn’t recognize.”

“Show me.”

Marco handed over his phone.

Enzo checked the message.

Sadi saw only one line.

COME HOME BEFORE YOUR BROTHER LOSES EVERYTHING.

Gabriel looked up.

“Convenient.”

Marco’s eyes narrowed. “You think I shot you?”

“I think somebody wants me to think you did.”

“That is not better.”

Enzo placed a security printout on the desk.

“Three men tried to enter the estate with expired credentials. One credential was issued to Marco’s old security detail.”

Marco looked at him sharply.

“That team was dissolved six years ago.”

“Who kept the records?” Enzo asked.

“You did.”

The room chilled.

Enzo did not react.

Marco pointed at him. “If somebody cloned old credentials, ask the man who controls the archive.”

Gabriel’s voice sharpened. “Enough.”

Marco turned toward him.

“No. You always do this. Something happens and everyone stands around pretending Enzo is a piece of furniture. He knows every door code, every driver, every account.”

“Careful.”

“I am being careful. You are the one who got shot.”

Sadi watched Enzo closely.

He looked angry.

Not guilty.

She had learned from her father that anger and guilt were not opposites, but the distinction still mattered.

“Marco,” she said, “where were you at nine seventeen last night?”

He looked at her. “Who are you?”

“The person everyone keeps trying to kill.”

Marco blinked.

Gabriel almost smiled.

Sadi repeated the question.

“Where were you?”

“At a poker room in Jersey City.”

“Witnesses?”

“Twenty.”

“Cameras?”

“Probably fifty.”

“Did you know Gianna Falcone House issued cufflinks?”

His expression changed.

“Yes.”

“Do you have one?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was a kid when they opened it.”

“Did your mother have one?”

Marco’s eyes moved to Gabriel.

“Isabella?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Where is it now?”

“I don’t know.”

Gabriel spoke quietly. “She entered the country three days ago.”

Marco stared at him.

“What?”

“She did not tell you?”

“No.”

Gabriel watched his brother’s face.

Sadi did too.

The surprise looked real.

Marco swore and pulled out his phone.

Gabriel stopped him.

“Do not call her.”

“She is my mother.”

“And somebody used a symbol tied to her foundation to threaten two witnesses.”

Marco’s expression hardened.

“You think she is involved?”

“I think I do not know anything anymore.”

Sadi slid the loose page from Rafael’s notebook across the desk.

Marco read it.

His face lost color.

“Where did this come from?”

“My father.”

Marco looked at Sadi again, more carefully this time.

“Moreno.”

“Yes.”

He whispered something that sounded like a curse.

“You know the name,” Sadi said.

Marco looked at Gabriel.

“I heard Mom and Victor argue about a Moreno once.”

“When?” Gabriel asked.

“After Dad died.”

“What did they say?”

“I was outside the library. Victor said, ‘The Moreno problem should have ended with the father.’ Mom told him never to say that name in her house.”

Sadi’s hands went cold.

Gabriel leaned forward despite the pain.

“You never told me?”

“I thought it was business.”

“It was business.”

Marco looked ashamed.

“In this family that covered almost everything.”

Enzo’s phone rang.

He listened, then placed the call on speaker.

A technician at Belladonna had recovered partial footage from a camera with an independent memory buffer.

The image was grainy, but it showed the service corridor twenty minutes before dinner.

A woman in a white coat entered through the staff door carrying a narrow wine case.

Her face was hidden by a hat.

She used a security card to open the private dining room.

“Whose card?” Gabriel asked.

The technician gave a number.

Marco closed his eyes.

Gabriel looked at him.

“Recognize it?”

Marco nodded once.

“It belongs to my mother.”

No one spoke.

Then the front gate alarm sounded.

A guard hurried in.

“Another car just arrived.”

Gabriel did not need to ask who.

Before the next alarm, Dr. Vale returned with one more result from Belladonna.

“The residue from the surviving wineglass matches the compounds in Gabriel’s blood,” he said.

Marco looked at Gabriel. “So the poison was definitely in the drink.”

“On the rim and in the remaining wine,” Vale replied. “Someone prepared the glass before service.”

Sadi turned to Marco. “You said someone may be framing you. Give me a reason they would choose you.”

Marco’s expression closed.

Gabriel said, “Answer her.”

Marco rubbed both hands over his face. “I owe money.”

“How much?”

“Enough that people know about it.”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “How much?”

“Six hundred thousand.”

Maria muttered something in Spanish.

Marco continued, “Poker, sports, stupid loans. I was paying it down.”

Sadi understood immediately. “A brother in debt. A dead boss. A missing family account. You make a perfect successor with a motive.”

Marco looked sick. “Exactly.”

Gabriel stared at him. “And you hid this from me.”

“You would have fixed it.”

“That was the idea.”

“I wanted to fix one thing in my life without being Gabriel Falcone’s little brother.”

The anger in Gabriel’s face changed into something more complicated.

Sadi looked at the old ledger again. Someone was not merely trying to kill Gabriel. Someone was preparing a story about why he had died.

A minute later, Isabella Falcone entered the study wearing a white coat and black gloves.

She was sixty-one, elegant, silver-blonde, and perfectly calm.

She looked at Gabriel’s bandage.

Then at Marco.

Then at Sadi.

Finally, her gaze settled on Rafael Moreno’s ledger.

For the first time, her composure broke.

“Where did you get that?”

Sadi held it closer.

“My father left it.”

Isabella whispered, “Then Victor knows.”

Gabriel stared at her.

“Knows what?”

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She looked directly at him.

“That Rafael failed to destroy the only record proving your mother was murdered.”