Chapter 3 - The Waitress Worth Two Billion
Sarah laughed.
It was not amusement.
It was shock.
“That’s ridiculous.”
Nobody answered.
“I’m twenty-two years old. I have seventy-three dollars in my checking account.”
She pointed toward the restaurant.
“I pick up extra shifts because my mother’s care costs more than my tuition. Billionaires don’t spend their lunch breaks calculating whether they can afford subway fare.”
Gabriel handed the certificate to Luca.
“Verify everything.”
Sarah shook her head.
“I’m going home.”
“You can’t.”
Her eyes snapped toward Gabriel.
“Excuse me?”
“Two men tried to abduct you.”
“And staying around you is safer?”
The question landed harder than Gabriel expected.
“No,” he admitted. “But tonight it might be.”
Sarah folded her arms.
“I don’t know you.”
“You know enough.”
“Yes. I know people are afraid to say your name too loudly.”
Gabriel’s expression remained unreadable.
“That is probably more accurate than most newspaper profiles.”
Despite herself, Sarah almost smiled.
Almost.
Then one of the captured men spoke.
“Ask Harrington.”
Gabriel turned.
The attacker spat blood onto the pavement.
“Ask Arthur Harrington what happened to Nathaniel Collins.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
Sarah stopped breathing.
Within forty minutes, Gabriel’s penthouse overlooking Manhattan had become an improvised investigation center.
Sarah refused his offer of expensive clothes and remained in her burgundy waitress uniform after cleaning the blood from her face.
A thin bandage covered the cut beneath her eye.
Gabriel sat across from her while Luca projected corporate records onto a wall.
Nathaniel Collins had founded Collins Atlantic Holdings thirty years earlier.
Shipping.
Commercial property.
Medical technology.
Private equity.
At his death, his assets had been divided through a complicated network of trusts.
Publicly, Nathaniel had no children.
Privately, records suggested otherwise.
“Your mother worked for Collins Atlantic,” Luca said.
Sarah frowned.
“She told me she was an administrative assistant.”
“She was Nathaniel Collins’s executive assistant for nine years.”
Sarah stared at the photograph.
Her mother, Rebecca, was twenty-seven in it.
Happy.
Healthy.
Nothing like the fragile woman Sarah visited every morning in Queens.
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
Gabriel answered quietly.
“Maybe she was afraid.”
“Of what?”
Gabriel looked at the Harrington name appearing repeatedly through the financial documents.
“Of the people who benefited from your father’s death.”
Sarah looked toward him.
“You think he was murdered?”
“I think rich men rarely hide billions without giving somebody a reason to kill them.”
Luca expanded a document.
“When Collins died, temporary control of his holding company transferred to three trustees.”
One name appeared first.
Arthur Harrington.
Sarah stood abruptly.
“No.”
Gabriel watched her pace.
“If Nathaniel had a legally recognized child, what would happen?”
Luca answered.
“Under the trust structure? Majority control eventually transfers to the heir at age twenty-three.”
Sarah froze.
“When do I turn twenty-three?”
Nobody needed to answer.
Her birthday was eleven days away.
The room became silent.
Gabriel understood immediately.
Someone had hidden Sarah for nearly twelve years because the trust could not fully transfer until she reached twenty-three.
Now the deadline was approaching.
And if Sarah died before then?
Arthur Harrington and the other trustees could potentially retain control permanently.
Sarah sank onto the sofa.
“This cannot be real.”
Gabriel sat opposite her.
“When did your mother become ill?”
“Six years ago.”
“What happened?”
“A car accident.”
Gabriel and Luca exchanged a look.
“What?”
Sarah noticed.
“Tell me.”
Luca hesitated.
Gabriel did not.
“Your mother’s accident may not have been an accident.”
Sarah’s eyes filled.
“No.”
She stood.
“No. Stop.”
“Sarah—”
“You don’t get to turn my entire life into one of your conspiracy meetings.”
She grabbed her bag.
“My mother is sick. My father is dead. I have an exam Monday. That is my life.”
Gabriel rose.
“And tonight two men tried to put you into a vehicle.”
She stopped at the elevator.
Her shoulders trembled.
Gabriel softened his voice.
“I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m asking you to survive long enough to learn whether I’m wrong.”
Sarah looked at him.
For the first time, Gabriel saw past the stubbornness.
She was terrified.
“Why do you care?”
The question surprised him.
Gabriel could have given ten strategic reasons.
The Collins shipping network was valuable.
Arthur Harrington had become an enemy.
Protecting Sarah created leverage.
All were true.
None was the answer.
“Because nobody protected you in that restaurant.”
Sarah looked away.
“That doesn’t make you responsible for me.”
“No.”
He paused.
“It makes me unwilling to watch it happen twice.”
She stayed.
The following morning, they visited Rebecca Collins’s private-care facility.
Sarah entered first.
Her mother lay near a window, thin and pale.
When Rebecca saw Gabriel behind her daughter, terror transformed her face.
“No.”
Sarah rushed forward.
“Mom?”
Rebecca tried to sit.
“Get away from him.”
Gabriel stopped.
Sarah looked between them.
“You know him?”
Rebecca stared at Gabriel.
“Not him.”
Her trembling hand pointed toward his face.
“His father.”
Gabriel went still.
“My father?”
Rebecca began crying.
“He promised Nathaniel he would protect Sarah.”
Gabriel’s chest tightened.
“My father knew Nathaniel Collins?”
Rebecca nodded.
“More than knew him.”
She reached beneath her pillow and pulled out an old brass key attached to a chain.
“He died protecting him.”
Gabriel stepped closer.
“My father died in a warehouse fire.”
“No.”
Rebecca’s voice shook.
“That is what Arthur Harrington wanted you to believe.”
She pressed the key into Sarah’s palm.
“Your father left proof.”
Sarah stared at it.
“Where?”
Rebecca whispered an address.
Gabriel recognized it.
His childhood home in Hell’s Kitchen.
Then Rebecca looked directly at him.
“There’s one more thing you need to know.”
Gabriel waited.
Her next words changed everything.
“Nathaniel Collins wasn’t only Sarah’s father.”
May you like
She swallowed.
“He was the man who secretly financed the Moretti empire.”
