Chapter 8 - When the King Woke Up
Gabriel survived.
Barely.
The bullet missed his heart by less than an inch.
For fourteen hours, Ava sat outside surgery wearing the same bloodstained clothes.
Dylan slept with his head against her shoulder.
Jennifer arrived at dawn.
Her arm was still in a sling.
She sat beside Ava.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
Jennifer exhaled.
Then she began crying.
Ava looked at her.
Jennifer laughed weakly.
“This is awkward.”
“Very.”
“I spent six months engaged to him.”
“And?”
“And I don’t think he ever looked at me the way he looks at you.”
Ava stared toward the operating-room doors.
“That’s ridiculous.”
Jennifer smiled.
“You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“He smiles around you.”
“He barely smiles.”
“Exactly.”
The surgeon emerged at 7:12 a.m.
Gabriel was stable.
Ava finally cried.
Three days later, Gabriel opened his eyes.
Ava was asleep beside his bed.
Her cheek rested on folded arms.
Gabriel watched her for several seconds.
Then whispered, “You drool.”
Ava’s eyes opened.
She stared at him.
“You’re alive.”
“Disappointing several people, apparently.”
She stood so quickly the chair fell over.
Then she hit his arm.
He winced.
“Gunshot patient.”
“You scared me.”
“I noticed.”
She leaned down and kissed him.
Gabriel’s surprise lasted only a second.
When she pulled back, he looked almost offended.
“That was brief.”
“You have stitches.”
“Not on my mouth.”
Ava laughed.
For several minutes, the outside world disappeared.
Then reality returned.
Robert Kelly and Marcus Reed were in federal custody.
The files from Box 317 had been delivered to federal prosecutors and investigative journalists simultaneously, making suppression nearly impossible.
Dozens of investigations had begun.
Judges resigned.
Police officials were suspended.
Shell companies were frozen.
The Reed empire itself was under examination.
Gabriel did not fight it.
Instead, he handed over his father’s records.
All of them.
“You could lose everything,” Ava told him.
Gabriel looked around his private hospital suite.
“Not everything.”
She understood.
Weeks passed.
Gabriel recovered.
Jennifer testified against her father.
Elias surrendered voluntarily and agreed to testify about Daniel’s death and the cover-up.
His future remained uncertain.
But Gabriel visited him once before the hearing.
Neither man forgave the other.
Not yet.
Sometimes forgiveness was not a door.
Sometimes it was a road.
Dylan returned to school.
His tuition problem vanished, but not because Gabriel paid it.
Ava refused.
Instead, Gabriel arranged an interview with a scholarship foundation.
Dylan earned the award himself.
Ava pretended not to know Gabriel had spent three hours preparing Dylan for the interview.
One evening, six weeks after the shooting, Ava returned to the Gilded Rose.
The restaurant had reopened.
Mr. Strauss nearly fainted when Gabriel walked in behind her.
“Mr. Reed.”
“Strauss.”
Ava looked around.
Nothing had changed.
Same chandeliers.
Same cream linens.
Same polished wood.
Yet she felt entirely different.
Strauss approached nervously.
“Ava, your position is available if you want it.”
Gabriel looked at her.
She smiled.
“No.”
Strauss blinked.
“No?”
“I spent three years disappearing here.”
She removed her old name badge from her pocket.
“I think I’m done.”
Outside, rain had begun.
Gabriel held an umbrella.
Ava stepped beneath it.
“So what now?” he asked.
“I find a job.”
“You could work for me.”
“No.”
“You rejected that remarkably fast.”
“I’ve seen your management style.”
“It’s effective.”
“You get shot too often.”
He smiled.
Ava stopped walking.
“What?”
“What?”
“You smiled.”
“I do that.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I occasionally do.”
“Do it again.”
“No.”
She poked his side.
He winced dramatically.
“You’re exploiting an old injury.”
“You’re impossible.”
Gabriel looked at her.
The playfulness faded into something warmer.
“I have something for you.”
He removed a small box.
Ava stared.
“No.”
“It isn’t a ring.”
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I sound relieved.”
He opened it.
Inside lay her mother’s locket.
The broken chain had been repaired.
Ava touched it.
Her eyes filled.
Gabriel fastened it around her neck.
“Thank you.”
“There’s more.”
He handed her a document.
She unfolded it.
The missing two-million-dollar trust Daniel Reed had established for Mei had been traced through Robert Kelly’s companies.
With interest and recovered assets, it had become considerably more.
Ava stared at the number.
“I can’t take this.”
“It was your mother’s.”
“I didn’t earn it.”
“Neither did the man who stole it.”
She looked at him.
For the first time in years, rent was not waiting.
Tuition was not waiting.
Survival was not waiting.
Ava could breathe.
“What will you do?” Gabriel asked.
She looked back through the windows of the Gilded Rose.
At the waitresses moving silently between tables.
At people who had become experts at disappearing.
May you like
A thought came to her.
“I think I know.”
