Chapter 2 - The Ring on the Table
Gabriel extended his hand.
“Give me the ring.”
Victoria stared at him.
For several seconds, no one in the restaurant seemed to understand what he had said.
Then her fingers instinctively curled around the five-carat diamond.
“What?”
“The engagement ring.”
Gabriel’s voice remained dangerously quiet.
“Take it off.”
Victoria laughed, but the sound lacked confidence.
“You’re ending our engagement because some waitress spilled champagne on me?”
“No.”
Gabriel glanced toward Sarah.
She remained on the floor, holding his handkerchief against her bleeding cheek while two employees carefully helped her upright.
“I’m ending it because you hit someone who couldn’t hit you back.”
Victoria’s mouth opened.
Gabriel stepped closer.
“And because you expected me to admire you for it.”
Arthur Harrington suddenly appeared from a private table across the room.
The sixty-three-year-old financier had watched the entire confrontation.
“Gabriel,” he said carefully. “Perhaps we should discuss this privately.”
“There is nothing private about what your daughter just did.”
Arthur lowered his voice.
“Our families have agreements.”
“Had.”
That single word drained the color from Arthur’s face.
Victoria noticed.
Her arrogance faltered.
“Daddy?”
Arthur ignored her.
“You cannot terminate our arrangement over an emotional misunderstanding.”
Gabriel looked almost amused.
“Watch me.”
Victoria tore the diamond from her finger.
She slammed it onto the table.
“There. Take it. When you calm down tomorrow, you can crawl back and apologize.”
Gabriel picked up the ring.
Then he placed it inside Arthur’s champagne glass.
Several guests gasped.
“You misunderstand your position,” Gabriel said. “I was never marrying your daughter because I needed her. I was marrying her because using your financial network was convenient.”
Arthur went still.
“Gabriel—”
“Convenience has become expensive.”
Gabriel turned to his lieutenant, Marco Bellini.
“Terminate every Moretti-backed credit facility connected to Harrington Capital at opening Monday morning.”
Arthur’s expression collapsed.
“You can’t.”
“I can.”
“You’ll destroy us.”
Gabriel gave him a cold look.
“No, Arthur. Your debt destroyed you. I merely stopped pretending otherwise.”
Victoria finally understood.
The luxury apartment, family foundation, private aircraft, Southampton estate—everything depended upon the illusion that Harrington Capital remained solvent.
And Gabriel Moretti had been supporting that illusion.
“You’re choosing her over me?”
Victoria pointed at Sarah.
Gabriel followed her finger.
Sarah looked horrified to be dragged deeper into the confrontation.
“No,” Gabriel replied. “I’m choosing not to marry you.”
He looked back at Victoria.
“Do not confuse the two.”
Then he approached the restaurant manager.
“Is she fired?”
The manager swallowed.
“Mr. Moretti, I—”
“Answer.”
“No.”
“Good.”
Gabriel removed a card from his wallet.
“Send every medical expense associated with tonight to this office.”
Sarah finally found her voice.
“I don’t want your money.”
That surprised him.
So did everyone else.
Gabriel turned.
Sarah’s knees trembled, but she remained standing.
“I said I don’t want your money.”
“You were injured at my table.”
“By her.”
Sarah looked toward Victoria.
“Not you.”
Gabriel studied her.
Most people accepted whatever he offered before he finished offering it.
Sarah Collins apparently did not.
“I’m not buying your silence.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Then what is the problem?”
Her cheeks reddened.
“The problem is everybody in this room keeps deciding things for me.”
The restaurant became painfully quiet again.
Sarah swallowed.
“I need to go clean my face.”
Then she walked away.
Marco approached Gabriel.
“That might be the first person I’ve ever seen dismiss you.”
Gabriel gave him a warning glance.
Marco wisely stopped smiling.
Across the restaurant, Victoria was crying now.
Not from remorse.
From humiliation.
“This is not finished,” she whispered.
Gabriel barely looked at her.
“Yes, it is.”
He walked away.
But twenty minutes later, something happened that made Sarah’s slap almost irrelevant.
Gabriel’s head of security approached him near the exit.
Luca Marino rarely looked concerned.
Tonight he did.
“We checked the security cameras.”
“And?”
“The chair hitting Sarah’s foot wasn’t random.”
Gabriel stopped.
Luca showed him a freeze-frame from the restaurant camera.
The technology executive who had pushed his chair backward was looking directly toward Victoria moments before doing it.
Then another frame.
Victoria’s hand was below the table.
Her phone was illuminated.
A message had been sent seventeen seconds before Sarah approached.
Gabriel’s eyes hardened.
“To whom?”
“We’re working on it.”
His phone vibrated.
Marco called from outside.
“Boss, we have another problem.”
“What?”
“The waitress.”
Gabriel looked toward the employees’ corridor.
“What about her?”
“Someone just tried to grab her behind the restaurant.”
Gabriel was moving before Marco finished.
He crossed the kitchen and shoved through the rear door.
Sarah stood against a brick wall in the alley, terrified.
Marco had one man pinned facedown against the pavement.
Another Moretti guard held a second man against a black SUV.
“What happened?”
Sarah looked at Gabriel.
“They asked whether I had opened the envelope.”
“What envelope?”
“I don’t know.”
One attacker laughed despite the blood on his lip.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
Gabriel crouched beside him.
“Know what?”
The man smiled.
“That waitress is worth more than every Harrington in Manhattan.”
Sarah’s face went white.
Gabriel seized the man’s collar.
“Explain.”
But the attacker only laughed.
Gabriel’s attention shifted to Sarah.
She looked genuinely lost.
Then Luca emerged from the restaurant holding Sarah’s torn work bag.
“There’s something inside.”
He produced a cream envelope.
Sarah stared at it.
“I’ve never seen that before.”
Gabriel opened it.
Inside was an old photograph.
A much younger Sarah stood beside her mother.
Behind them was a silver-haired man Gabriel recognized immediately.
Nathaniel Collins.
Founder of Collins Atlantic Holdings.
A billionaire who had supposedly died without an heir twelve years earlier.
On the back of the photograph were seven handwritten words:
SARAH COLLINS IS HIS ONLY LEGITIMATE DAUGHTER.
Gabriel slowly raised his eyes.
Sarah shook her head.
“No.”
Luca handed Gabriel another sheet from the envelope.
It was a preliminary ownership certificate.
Gabriel read it twice.
Then a third time.
His expression changed.
“What does it say?” Sarah whispered.
Gabriel looked at the frightened waitress standing beneath the dirty alley light.
“It says someone has spent twelve years making sure you never discovered who you are.”
Sarah’s breathing became shallow.
“And who am I?”
May you like
Gabriel held out the document.
“You apparently own controlling rights to a trust worth almost two billion dollars.”
