Chapter 6 - The Woman in White Gloves

Marco moved first.

He crossed the study so quickly that Enzo stepped between him and Isabella.

“Who murdered Gianna?” Marco demanded.

Isabella took off one glove, finger by finger.

“You are asking the wrong question.”

Gabriel’s voice was low. “Then give us the right one.”

Isabella looked at him with an expression Sadi could not read.

“Who benefited from her death?”

Gabriel’s face tightened.

“My father.”

“No.”

“Victor?”

“No.”

“Stop doing this.”

Isabella folded the glove in her hand.

“Your mother discovered that Gianna Falcone House was being used before it even opened.”

Sadi frowned. “Used for what?”

“To move money through construction contracts, medical suppliers, and property purchases. The charity was real. So was the theft around it.”

Gabriel looked at the ledger.

“Victor.”

“Yes.”

“Then he benefited.”

“Financially. But Gianna’s death gave him something larger.”

“What?”

“Control over Salvatore.”

The name of Gabriel’s father changed the room.

Isabella continued.

“Your father loved your mother. Whatever else he was, that was real. When she threatened to expose Victor’s accounts, Victor threatened you.”

Gabriel went still.

“Me?”

“You were sixteen.”

Sadi watched the old wound appear across his face before he could hide it.

Isabella said, “Gianna backed down publicly. Privately, she kept collecting evidence. Rafael helped her.”

Sadi looked at her mother.

Maria’s eyes filled with tears.

“Rafael never told me.”

“He was trying to keep you alive.”

Sadi’s voice sharpened. “That worked well.”

Isabella accepted the blow without reacting.

“Gianna became ill suddenly. Headaches. Weakness. Collapses. Doctors called it a vascular condition. Three months later she died.”

Gabriel spoke through clenched teeth.

“An aneurysm.”

“That was the official diagnosis.”

“And the real one?”

“I do not know the exact drug. I know Rafael found invoices for compounds that never reached patients.”

Sadi thought of Gabriel’s blood test.

“The same kind of compounds used on him?”

Isabella looked at the bandaged shoulder.

“That is why I came back.”

Gabriel’s eyes hardened.

“You knew I was going to be attacked?”

“I knew someone accessed archived supplier records from Gianna Falcone House last week. Records tied to your mother’s death.”

“And you told no one.”

“I did not know whom to trust.”

Marco laughed bitterly. “Your solution was to tell nobody?”

“My solution was to find Victor.”

Gabriel stared at her.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Enzo spoke for the first time.

“You entered Belladonna yesterday.”

Isabella turned toward him.

“I did not.”

“Your access card did.”

“My card was stolen from my hotel safe yesterday afternoon.”

“Convenient,” Marco said.

“I agree.”

Sadi watched Isabella’s hands.

One glove remained on her right hand.

“Why the gloves?”

Isabella looked at her.

“Arthritis cream stains the skin.”

“Take the other one off.”

Marco frowned. “Sadi—”

“Take it off.”

Isabella slowly removed the glove.

There was a fresh cut across her palm.

Sadi pointed. “What happened?”

“Broken glass.”

“Where?”

“Hotel bathroom.”

“Last night?”

“Yes.”

Sadi stepped closer.

“Did you drink wine at Belladonna?”

“No.”

“Did you touch a wineglass?”

“No.”

Isabella’s answer was immediate.

Sadi looked at Enzo.

“Test her fingerprints against the second glass.”

Isabella’s face tightened.

Marco said, “You think my mother poisoned Gabriel?”

“I think facts are less loyal than families.”

Gabriel looked at Sadi.

“Do it.”

Isabella did not object.

That mattered.

While a guard collected her prints, Dr. Vale entered with an updated scan.

“The tissue is responding.”

Gabriel looked up.

“My arm?”

“We restored circulation in two compromised vessels. The bleeding is slowing. I am still not promising full function.”

Gabriel exhaled.

Sadi had not realized she was holding her breath until she did the same.

Vale noticed Isabella.

His face changed.

“Mrs. Falcone.”

“Doctor.”

“You know each other?” Sadi asked.

Isabella looked away.

Vale answered. “I trained at St. Vincent’s with her first husband.”

Marco stared at his mother. “First husband?”

Isabella closed her eyes.

Gabriel’s voice became dangerously soft.

“You were married before my father?”

“For six months.”

“To whom?”

“A physician named Nathaniel Harrow.”

Vale said, “He worked in vascular research.”

Sadi felt the clues lock together.

“What happened to him?”

Isabella looked at the floor.

“He disappeared.”

“When?”

“Two weeks after Gianna died.”

Gabriel stood so abruptly that Vale reached for him.

“Sit down.”

Gabriel ignored him.

“Did Harrow treat my mother?”

Isabella whispered, “Yes.”

Marco stepped back as if struck.

“You married the doctor who treated Gianna?”

“Before he treated her.”

“And then you married Salvatore.”

“Years later.”

Gabriel’s face had gone white with anger.

“You knew the man tied to her death and you entered my family anyway.”

Isabella’s eyes filled.

“I entered your family because I was trying to survive what he left behind.”

“That sounds rehearsed.”

“It has been rehearsed in my head for twenty-four years.”

Sadi opened Rafael’s ledger again.

One set of initials appeared beside repeated medical transfers.

N.H.

She turned the notebook toward Isabella.

“Harrow.”

Isabella nodded.

Rafael had drawn a line from N.H. to V.F.

Nathaniel Harrow to Victor Falcone.

Beneath it was another code.

WHITE GLASS.

Sadi pointed.

“What is that?”

Isabella’s expression changed.

“I have not heard those words in years.”

“What do they mean?”

“It was Victor’s name for a contingency account. Money used when a problem needed to disappear without looking like violence.”

Gabriel stared at the page.

“My mother.”

“Probably.”

“Rafael?”

Isabella’s silence said enough.

Enzo’s phone buzzed with a message from the Belladonna forensic team.

He read it twice.

“The second wineglass has a partial print.”

Everyone looked at Isabella.

Enzo continued.

“Not hers.”

Marco exhaled sharply.

“Whose?” Gabriel asked.

Enzo looked at him.

“Victor’s.”

Gabriel sat back slowly.

Sadi frowned. “Victor touched the glass before dinner?”

“According to the print.”

Isabella shook her head.

“That is too easy.”

“What does that mean?” Marco asked.

“Victor never leaves prints when he expects trouble.”

Gabriel looked at her.

“You sound certain.”

“I spent twenty years watching him prepare for trouble.”

Sadi stared at the ledger.

“If he wanted us to find his print, he is pointing us somewhere.”

“Or pointing us at himself,” Enzo said.

“Why?”

“To make us chase a man already gone.”

Vale asked Isabella one final question before they left.

“Where were you when Gabriel was shot?”

“At the Warwick Hotel.”

“Alone?” Sadi asked.

“For part of the evening.”

“That is not an alibi.”

“I ordered dinner at eight forty. The server collected the tray at nine thirty-five.”

Enzo checked the hotel record on his phone. “Confirmed.”

Sadi did the math. Belladonna was more than twenty minutes away without traffic. Isabella could not easily have been the woman on the service corridor camera and returned in time.

“Unless someone used your coat and card,” Sadi said.

Isabella nodded. “Which is what I have been trying to tell you.”

Gabriel looked at the fresh cut on her palm. “And the glass?”

“The hotel bathroom tumbler broke when I dropped it.”

Vale examined the cut without touching it. “The wound is consistent with that.”

Sadi disliked how much the evidence cleared Isabella. She had learned that relief could be as dangerous as suspicion.

“Then whoever stole your card also knew what you would be wearing,” she said.

Isabella’s face tightened. “Only my driver and hotel staff saw the coat before dinner.”

“Your driver?”

“He disappeared this morning.”

Gabriel looked at Enzo.

“Find him too.”

A guard entered carrying a small evidence bag.

Inside was an old brass key.

“We found this sewn into the lining of the attacker’s jacket from the storage facility.”

A metal tag was attached.

G.F.H. ARCHIVE B.

Isabella stared at it.

“That archive does not exist anymore.”

Gabriel looked at her.

“Where was it?”

“In the basement of the original Gianna Falcone House.”

“The building that burned.”

“Yes.”

Sadi held up the key.

“Then why is someone carrying a key to a room that supposedly disappeared fifteen years ago?”

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No one answered.

By noon, they were driving toward the ruins.