Chapter 5 - A TRAITOR AT THE DOOR
Carmine Del Monaco had taken a bullet for Gabriel Russo when they were twenty-three. Gabriel had trusted him with money, secrets, and the location of Isabella's safe houses. Accusing Carmine without evidence felt like cutting off his own right hand.
So Gabriel did something his enemies would never have expected.
He asked him directly.
They met in an empty boxing gym. Rain ticked against the skylights. Carmine stood beneath a faded championship poster and listened as Gabriel described the fire.
“Do you think I betrayed you?” Carmine asked.
“I think someone is using information only my people have.”
“Then check my phone.”
Gabriel did. Carmine had made a call to a property records clerk. He had also sent a photograph of the deed to a number saved as HOME.
“Who's that?”
“My daughter.”
Gabriel looked up. “You told me she moved to Denver.”
“She did. Then she came back.”
Carmine sank onto a bench. His daughter, Sofia, was twenty and studying respiratory therapy. Three weeks earlier, someone had threatened to reveal her father's crimes unless she provided details about Gabriel's movements. She had been terrified. Carmine had tried to manage the blackmail himself.
“You should have told me,” Gabriel said.
“I thought you would see her as a weakness.”
“She is a weakness. That's why they chose her.”
Carmine handed him the threatening messages. Gabriel read them twice. The sender knew about Leo's medical crisis before Isabella went into labor.
That fact changed everything.
Meanwhile, Dr. Price's review uncovered a second irregularity. A medication supply had been removed under a valid hospital account, but the person who signed the inventory log had been on leave. It was possible the records reflected sloppy practices. It was also possible someone had impersonated staff to manipulate Leo's care.
Price forwarded the evidence to hospital counsel and requested law enforcement involvement. She would not tell Gabriel the identity of the person under suspicion.
Elena spent the afternoon with Rebecca Shaw preparing for a licensing-board interview. She spoke plainly about the emergency and acknowledged the boundary she had crossed. When the interview ended, Shaw told her the outcome could take months.
Outside the building, Isabella waited beside a car, a mask covering her face against the cold.
“I shouldn't be out of the hospital,” she admitted. “But I needed to say something without my brother standing over us.”
She handed Elena a small silver locket. Inside was a photograph of a teenage Isabella holding Gabriel's hand at their mother's funeral.
“Marco gave me this when I told him I was pregnant. He said the truth about our families was inside it.”
Elena turned the locket over. Its back was scratched, but the hinge looked newer than the rest.
“Why give it to me?”
“Because somebody watches Gabriel. Somebody watches me. Nobody thinks you're important enough to notice.”
Elena almost laughed at the cruel accuracy of it.
That night, Rebecca helped her open the locket without damaging it. Beneath the photograph lay a thin piece of paper bearing a storage-unit number and a date.
The date was tomorrow.
May you like
And beside it, in tiny handwriting, were three words:
BRING THE CHILD.
