Chapter 4 - The Key Behind the PaintingGabriel wanted six armed men to accompany me downstairs.
I allowed two.
This was apparently what compromise looked like when negotiating with a mafia boss.
My apartment door had been forced open.
The lock hung crooked.
My bedroom had been destroyed.
Mattress ripped.
Drawers emptied.
Books scattered.
And the lighthouse painting was gone.
I stopped in the doorway.
Gabriel nearly walked into me.
“They took it.”
“The key?”
“No.”
I crossed the room and knelt beside my father's old wooden restoration box.
I opened the false compartment beneath the brushes.
The brass key was still there.
Gabriel stared at it.
“You moved it.”
“I'm not completely helpless.”
“I never said you were.”
“You bought my building.”
“Security and helplessness are different things.”
I slipped the key into my pocket.
“Do you know what it opens?”
“No.”
But I had an idea.
My father had rented a storage unit in Queens for years.
After his death, I had emptied it.
Or thought I had.
That afternoon, Gabriel and I drove there in an armored SUV with Marco and two more vehicles behind us.
“This is subtle,” I muttered.
“I don't do subtle when people shoot at you.”
“You've known me less than twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-one.”
I turned.
“You counted?”
“No.”
“You absolutely counted.”
He looked out the window.
That was when I realized something astonishing.
Gabriel Rossi could be embarrassed.
It made him approximately ten percent less terrifying.
At the storage facility, the manager remembered my father.
“He rented two units,” she said.
I frowned.
“I only knew about 214.”
“There was another. Basement level. Paid twenty years in advance.”
She showed us downstairs.
Unit B17.
The brass key fit.
Inside stood one object.
A wooden crate.
Gabriel opened it.
Paintings.
Six of them.
Old.
Beautiful.
Probably worth more than my entire bloodline.
I examined the first canvas.
“Seventeenth century.”
Gabriel watched me.
“Valuable?”
“Very.”
I turned it over.
There were numbers written across the stretcher bars.
Account numbers.
Dates.
Initials.
Gabriel went still.
“Ledger codes.”
My father had hidden financial records on the backs of paintings.
Five canvases later, we had enough information to expose a criminal network operating inside Gabriel's organization for decades.
But the sixth painting was different.
There was a photograph attached behind it.
Gabriel removed it.
His expression changed.
The man beside my father was Gabriel's uncle.
Vittorio Rossi.
Gabriel stared at the image.
“My father's brother.”
“The person stealing the money?”
“Maybe.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Gabriel's head snapped toward the door.
“Down.”
The lights died.
Gunfire erupted.
Gabriel pushed me behind the crate.
Marco fired toward the doorway.
Someone screamed.
I crawled backward until my hand struck a metal shelf.
Then a masked man appeared from the darkness.
He aimed at Gabriel.
I didn't think.
I grabbed a paint can from the shelf and hurled it.
It struck the gunman's face.
His shot went wide.
Gabriel tackled him.
Seconds later, it was over.
Gabriel stood over the unconscious attacker, breathing hard.
Then he turned toward me.
“What the hell was that?”
“What?”
“You threw paint at a man with a gun.”
“It worked.”
“You could have been killed.”
“So could you.”
His anger disappeared.
For one suspended second, neither of us moved.
Then Gabriel crossed the room.
He cupped my face in both hands.
His forehead almost touched mine.
“Do not do that again.”
My heartbeat became ridiculous.
“Then stop getting shot at.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth.
Mine did the same.
We almost kissed.
Almost.
Then Marco cleared his throat.
Gabriel stepped away.
I hated how disappointed I felt.
Marco held up the attacker's phone.
“You need to see this.”
The latest message read:
TAKE THE GIRL ALIVE. KILL ROSSI.
Below it was a photograph.
Not of me.
Of Gabriel.
Taken from inside his own penthouse.
Someone close to him was feeding Vittorio information.
May you like
And suddenly Gabriel wasn't the only one protecting me.
I might be the only person he could trust.
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