Chapter 9 - The Man Who Should Be Dead

Isabella had not been taken.

Sadi knew it before anyone else said it.

The side door showed no drag marks, no dropped shoe, no sign of a struggle. Isabella’s handbag was gone from the chair. So was her phone.

“She left willingly,” Sadi said.

Marco stared at the empty space where his mother had been.

“No.”

Gabriel looked toward the loading door. “She took the key.”

“She would not betray us.”

Gabriel’s expression hardened. “You said that about a lot of people today.”

Marco turned on him. “And you haven’t?”

Enzo stepped between them before the argument became something worse.

“The gas was irritant, not lethal. Whoever deployed it wanted confusion.”

Sadi crouched beside the collapsed guard, who was already sitting up and coughing.

“Isabella knew exactly when to move.”

Marco’s face tightened. “Or someone told her where to go.”

Lucia lifted Isabella’s abandoned glove from beneath a crate.

“There’s writing inside.”

Sadi took it.

A phone number had been written along the seam in blue ink.

Below it were two initials.

N.H.

Nathaniel Harrow.

Gabriel looked at Isabella’s empty place.

“Call it.”

Enzo used a clean phone.

The line rang twice.

A man answered.

“Isabella.”

Gabriel’s face changed at the sound of the voice.

Enzo said nothing.

The man continued.

“You should have stayed in Rome.”

Gabriel took the phone.

“Nathaniel Harrow.”

Silence.

Then a quiet laugh.

“Gabriel.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I sound old.”

“You should sound dead.”

“Many people should.”

Sadi stepped closer to the speaker.

Gabriel asked, “Where is Isabella?”

“With me by now, if she followed instructions.”

Marco grabbed the edge of the table.

“Put her on.”

Harrow ignored him.

“You found Rafael’s key.”

Gabriel looked at Sadi.

“Why do you want it?”

“I don’t.”

“Then who does?”

Harrow’s voice lowered.

“The man who has spent twenty-four years making sure the wrong people pay for his decisions.”

“Victor.”

Again, silence.

Gabriel said, “You poisoned my mother.”

Harrow exhaled slowly.

“Yes.”

Marco closed his eyes.

Sadi felt anger move through the room like heat.

Gabriel’s voice did not rise.

“Why?”

“Because I was a coward with debts and Victor knew exactly how much cowardice cost.”

“Did you poison me?”

“I supplied a compound.”

“To Victor?”

“To an intermediary.”

“Name.”

“I will not do that over a telephone.”

“You are in no position to negotiate.”

Harrow laughed again, but this time the sound was tired.

“You are alive because I changed the dosage.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.

“What?”

“The order was for enough anticoagulant to make any major wound unsurvivable. I reduced it.”

“Why?”

“Because I spent half my life hearing Gianna Falcone gasp for breath in my dreams.”

Sadi could not tell whether the remorse was real.

Gabriel asked, “Where do we meet?”

Harrow gave an address to an abandoned chapel outside the city.

“Bring Rafael’s ledger,” he said. “No army.”

“You are asking the wrong family for restraint.”

“Then Isabella dies with the rest of the truth.”

The call ended.

Marco slammed his fist against a crate.

“I’m going.”

Gabriel said, “No.”

“She is my mother.”

“And you are emotionally compromised.”

Marco stared at him. “Listen to yourself.”

Sadi cut between them.

“We are all compromised.”

Gabriel looked at her.

She continued. “My father is in that ledger. Your mother is in the recordings. Marco’s mother walked out with the key. Enzo lied for fifteen years. None of us are neutral.”

Enzo nodded once. “She’s right.”

Gabriel gave him a cold glance.

Sadi pointed toward the phone.

“Harrow expects Isabella and the key. That means he does not know she already left the warehouse with it.”

Marco frowned. “What does that tell us?”

“She is not running to Harrow because she trusts him. She is trying to trade.”

“For what?”

Sadi looked at Marco.

“For you.”

Marco went quiet.

Isabella had heard the message sent to Marco. Come home before your brother loses everything. She knew Victor had used Marco’s old security records. She knew his ring had disappeared.

“She thinks Victor is framing him as Gabriel’s killer,” Sadi said. “And she thinks Harrow can stop it.”

Gabriel’s face hardened.

“Then we go.”

The chapel stood behind an abandoned cemetery, its stained glass broken and its doors chained open.

They arrived with only Gabriel, Sadi, Marco, and Enzo visible. Four guards remained far back beyond the tree line.

Inside, candles burned along the old altar.

Isabella stood near the front pew.

Beside her was a thin man in his early sixties with white hair and a cane.

Nathaniel Harrow looked less like a murderer than a retired professor.

Sadi hated that immediately.

The metal cylinder lay on the altar.

Marco moved toward Isabella.

She raised a hand.

“Stay there.”

“Mom.”

“I said stay.”

Harrow looked at Gabriel’s sling.

“You kept the arm.”

Gabriel stared at him.

“Disappointed?”

“Relieved.”

“Do not confuse relief with forgiveness.”

“I don’t.”

Sadi held up the ledger.

“You wanted this.”

Harrow’s eyes moved to it.

“Rafael was smarter than all of us.”

“He was also dead before forty.”

Harrow flinched.

“Victor ordered the crash.”

Sadi’s throat tightened.

“Proof?”

“I kept invoices. Vehicle purchase. Payment to the driver. The driver died three years later.”

“Where are they?”

“In a deposit box tied to White Glass.”

Gabriel nodded toward the cylinder.

“And you need the trustee key to get them.”

“No. Victor does.”

“Then why are you here?”

Harrow looked at Isabella.

“Because she called me and offered him the key in exchange for clearing Marco.”

Marco stared at his mother.

“You stole it for me?”

“I stole it because I already failed one son in this family.”

Gabriel’s expression changed.

Isabella looked at him.

“I knew Victor threatened you after Gianna died. I knew Salvatore covered it. I said nothing because I was afraid of losing the life I had built.”

“You married him.”

“Yes.”

“Did you love him?”

“Yes.”

“That makes it worse.”

Tears appeared in Isabella’s eyes.

“I know.”

Harrow tapped his cane once against the floor.

“We do not have much time.”

Enzo looked toward the broken side window.

“Why?”

“Because Victor knows Isabella contacted me.”

“How?”

Harrow smiled without humor.

“He has watched me for twenty-four years.”

A red dot appeared on the altar.

Then another.

Enzo shouted, “Down!”

Gunfire shattered the remaining stained glass.

Everyone dropped behind the pews.

Gabriel pulled Sadi down with his good arm.

The shooting lasted only seconds.

Then engines roared outside.

Victor’s men were not trying to kill them all.

They were creating another distraction.

Sadi looked toward the altar.

The metal cylinder was gone.

Harrow was still on the floor.

Isabella was still beside him.

Marco was behind a pew.

Enzo was near the door.

Gabriel’s face went cold.

“Then who took it?”

Sadi saw movement through the broken window.

A man in a dark coat ran toward the cemetery wall.

She recognized the way he moved.

The same suited man she had thrown onto the marble floor at Belladonna.

The man who was supposed to have been taken into Falcone custody.

The man everyone had assumed was still locked away.

“He escaped,” Sadi said.

Enzo looked at her.

“No.”

Gabriel understood first.

“If he escaped, someone inside released him.”

The red dots disappeared.

The engines faded.

Harrow sat up slowly.

“Now Victor has the key.”

Sadi looked at Gabriel.

“And we have something better.”

“What?”

She held up her phone.

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The entire conversation in the chapel had been recording.

Harrow had just confessed to Gianna’s murder and named Victor as the man who ordered Rafael Moreno’s death.