Chapter 8 - THE PRICE OF THE TRUTH
The darkness lasted only a few seconds.
When the emergency lights came on, Gabriel was on the ground, one arm wrapped around my waist. A gunshot had shattered the boathouse window. Somewhere outside, men were shouting.
Sofia had disappeared.
So had Elena.
Vittorio lay beside the doorway, blood running from a cut above his eyebrow. Gabriel pulled me behind the concrete pillar as his security team returned fire toward the empty parking area.
"Are you hurt?" he demanded.
"No."
"Look at me."
I did.
He searched my face with the same intensity he had shown when he first saw my bandaged hand. For a moment, the noise around us seemed to fade.
"I can't lose you," he said.
The words were almost inaudible.
I touched his cheek.
"Then stop making decisions as if losing me is the only thing you have to fear."
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them, the man who had spent six months hiding behind a convenient marriage was gone.
"We'll get your father back," he said. "And when this is over, you can decide whether you want to stay married to me."
It wasn't a declaration of ownership.
It was the first time he had offered me a choice.
We left the marina through a rear service road and regrouped at a secured property outside Chicago. Gabriel's team had already begun tracing the photograph sent to my phone.
The location was a private medical facility once used by the Romano family. The building had been closed for years, but its electricity had been restored that morning.
My father was inside.
So was Sofia.
At least, that was what the surveillance team believed.
Gabriel refused to send armed men through the main entrance without knowing who controlled the building. Instead, he contacted a federal investigator whose name appeared repeatedly in the documents from the ledger.
Special Agent Daniel Mercer arrived an hour later.
He examined the recordings, the financial records, and the threats against my father.
"If these documents are authentic," he said, "they connect several people to a long-running financial conspiracy. But we need the original records, and we need your cooperation."
"You'll have it," Gabriel replied.
Mercer looked at him carefully.
"That includes you, Mr. Romano."
Gabriel nodded.
"I understand."
It was a risk. If the investigation revealed crimes committed by members of the Romano organization, Gabriel could lose businesses, property, and the power he had spent his life protecting.
He agreed anyway.
We found my father in a locked room on the second floor, shaken but alive. He had been taken from his house by two men posing as emergency medical personnel.
When he saw me, he held me so tightly that my injured hand throbbed.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"You don't have to apologize for surviving."
He began to cry.
For the first time, I understood how much of his life had been shaped by fear. He had not hidden the truth because he believed I was weak. He had hidden it because he knew what happened to people who stood against the Romanos.
But fear had not saved my mother.
It had only made her disappearance easier to conceal.
Gabriel stayed nearby while the investigators secured the building. He didn't interrupt when my father spoke about Rebecca. He didn't ask for gratitude. He simply listened.
Later, I found him alone in the corridor, staring at a photograph of his father.
"Do you hate him?" I asked.
"I don't know what I feel."
"That's honest."
He gave a humorless smile.
"I spent my entire life believing that if I became powerful enough, nobody could ever hurt the people I loved. But I didn't even know what was happening inside my own house."
"Power doesn't make you omniscient."
"No. But it can make you believe you don't need to ask questions."
I stood beside him.
"Then start asking."
He turned toward me.
"Do you love me, Catherine?"
The question caught me off guard.
"I don't know yet."
He nodded, accepting the answer.
"I can live with that."
He reached for my hand, then stopped before touching the bandages.
I closed the distance myself.
His fingers wrapped gently around mine.
For a moment, we were simply two people standing in a quiet hallway, with no contracts between us and no audience to impress.
Then Agent Mercer hurried toward us.
"We found a second recording in the medical facility," he said. "It was hidden inside a cabinet registered to Elena Romano."
He handed Gabriel a small device.
The recording began with Elena's voice.
"Vittorio, the girl has the key. If she reaches the chapel, everything is finished."
Vittorio answered.
"Then we should have killed her father years ago."
Elena's reply made my blood run cold.
"No. We need Catherine alive. She is the only person who can authenticate Rebecca's handwriting."
A pause followed.
Then another voice spoke.
A man's voice I had never heard before.
"You're both forgetting the real problem."
Elena fell silent.
The man continued.
"If Catherine opens that box, she'll discover who paid to bring her into this family."
Gabriel looked at me.
I stared at the device.
My marriage had not simply been a convenient arrangement to save my father's company.
May you like
Someone had planned it long before I met Gabriel.
And that meant the person who wanted me inside the Romano household might have been watching me my entire life.
