Chapter 9 - THE HOUSE THAT KNEW TOO MUCH
Nicholas’s house stood behind stone walls north of the city.
Hannah had expected vulgar wealth.
Gold fixtures.
Marble statues.
Something ridiculous.
Instead the house was quiet.
Old brick.
Dark wood.
Tall windows facing the water.
It looked less like a mafia palace and more like a place someone had inherited and never learned to enjoy.
Nicholas entered through the kitchen.
The staff had been evacuated.
Elias’s men searched every room.
Gabriel Shaw was gone.
His office was not.
Nicholas stood in the doorway.
Hannah looked past him.
Bookshelves.
Legal files.
A painting of Baltimore Harbor.
Desk.
Nothing disturbed.
Too clean.
“He knew we’d come,” Hannah said.
Nicholas nodded.
Elias opened drawers.
“Computer’s gone.”
“Safe?”
“Empty.”
Nicholas walked toward the harbor painting.
He stopped.
Hannah noticed.
“What?”
“That was never there.”
“The painting?”
“Yes.”
He lifted it from the wall.
Behind it was a small steel compartment.
Elias swore.
Nicholas entered a code.
Wrong.
Again.
Wrong.
Hannah looked at him.
“Birthday?”
“Too obvious.”
“Your mother?”
Nicholas entered Elena’s birthday.
Red light.
Hannah thought.
“What would Gabriel use that you wouldn’t guess?”
Nicholas looked toward the medallion around his neck.
He entered October 14, 2001.
Green.
The safe opened.
Inside was one envelope.
Hannah whispered, “That felt ominous.”
Nicholas opened it.
A photograph fell out.
Elena Vale.
Alive.
Dated three months after the car bombing.
Nicholas stopped breathing.
Hannah picked it up.
The timestamp was unmistakable.
January 2002.
A newspaper visible beside Elena confirmed the date.
Nicholas sat down.
“No.”
Hannah looked at the image again.
Elena appeared thinner.
Bruised.
Terrified.
But alive.
Nicholas’s voice dropped.
“I saw the coffin.”
“Was it open?”
“No.”
“Did you see her body?”
“No.”
He looked at Elias.
“Did anyone?”
Elias shook his head slowly.
“Your father said the blast made identification impossible.”
Nicholas stared at the photograph.
Twenty-five years.
His mother had survived the explosion.
At least temporarily.
The letter beneath the photograph was from Gabriel.
Nicholas read aloud.
Vincent paid me to keep Elena hidden after the explosion failed to kill her.
She remained alive for eleven months.
She attempted to escape twice.
The second time, she succeeded.
I do not know what happened afterward.
If Nicholas ever discovers this, the arrangement is over.
Hannah felt sick.
“Eleven months.”
Nicholas’s voice was empty.
“She was alive eleven months.”
While he mourned.
While Daniel cried.
While their father told them she was dead.
Eleven months.
Nicholas folded forward slightly.
Hannah sat beside him.
She did not touch him immediately.
Then slowly, she placed her hand over his.
Nicholas looked at it.
Did not pull away.
Elias said, “Boss.”
Nicholas lifted his head.
“We can find out what happened.”
“After twenty-five years?”
“People leave records.”
Hannah said, “She escaped.”
Nicholas looked at her.
“That matters.”
“What if she died afterward?”
“Then we find that too.”
Nicholas stood.
The grief hardened into purpose.
“Gabriel knows.”
A phone rang.
Not Elias’s.
Not Hannah’s.
A landline on Gabriel’s desk.
Everyone froze.
Nicholas answered.
“Gabriel.”
A familiar male voice replied.
“Nicholas.”
“Where are you?”
“Safe.”
“Temporary condition.”
Gabriel sighed.
“You sound like your father.”
Nicholas’s face changed.
“Careful.”
“You need to understand something. I survived Vincent Vale because I knew when not to be brave.”
“You kept my mother prisoner.”
“I kept myself alive.”
“You helped him fake her death.”
“Yes.”
“You watched two children bury an empty coffin.”
Silence.
Gabriel finally said, “I regretted that.”
“I’ll make sure you have time to regret it properly.”
Gabriel laughed softly.
“There he is.”
Nicholas tightened his grip on the phone.
“What happened after she escaped?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lie.”
“I don’t.”
“Why call?”
“To trade.”
Nicholas’s eyes narrowed.
“For what?”
“The original files for passage out of the country.”
“No.”
“Then you never learn where Elena went.”
Nicholas closed his eyes.
Hannah watched.
Gabriel knew exactly where to cut him.
“Proof,” Nicholas said.
“What?”
“Proof you know.”
Gabriel paused.
Then:
“Ask Hannah Brooks what happened to her father.”
Hannah froze.
Nicholas looked at her.
Her face had emptied.
Gabriel continued.
“Thomas Brooks. Paramedic. Died in 2008.”
Hannah stepped closer to the phone.
“How do you know my father?”
“Hannah.”
“Answer me.”
“Your father knew Elena.”
Her knees nearly buckled.
Nicholas caught her arm.
Gabriel said, “Thomas Brooks found her after she escaped.”
Hannah stared at the phone.
“No.”
“He hid her.”
“No.”
“He moved her under another name.”
“My father never—”
“Your father was better at keeping secrets than you realized.”
Hannah’s mind raced backward.
Her father working double shifts.
The locked metal box in his closet.
The woman who used to send Christmas cards without a return address.
E.B.
Hannah had always assumed it was one of his old patients.
Gabriel continued.
“Thomas helped Elena leave Maryland.”
Nicholas’s voice became quiet.
“Where?”
“Trade.”
Nicholas looked at Hannah.
She was trembling.
“My father died when I was nine.”
“I know,” Gabriel replied.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“That’s what police said.”
Hannah’s stomach turned.
Nicholas took the phone.
“If you touched Thomas Brooks—”
“I didn’t.”
“Who did?”
Gabriel exhaled.
“Victor.”
Victor Rourke.
Dead now.
But his sins kept multiplying.
Hannah stepped away.
Her father had not died in a random highway accident.
Maybe.
Maybe another lie.
Gabriel gave them an address.
An abandoned convent outside Wilmington.
Midnight.
Original files for safe passage.
“Come alone,” he said.
Nicholas laughed without humor.
“Everybody keeps asking me to do that.”
“If I see Elias, I burn everything.”
The call ended.
Hannah looked at Nicholas.
“You’re not going alone.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She blinked.
“That was easy.”
“I’m learning.”
At 11:52 p.m., Hannah and Nicholas entered the convent.
No Elias.
No visible backup.
Gabriel waited inside the old chapel.
He was sixty-three, silver-haired, elegant, carrying a leather case.
“I wondered who would save you from yourself after Elena died,” he said.
Nicholas looked at Hannah.
“She’s still deciding.”
Gabriel placed the case on the altar.
“Files.”
Nicholas opened it.
Ledgers.
Photographs.
Audio tapes.
Letters.
One passport.
ELENA BROOKS.
Hannah’s breath stopped.
Brooks.
Her father had given Nicholas’s mother his surname.
Gabriel watched both of them.
“Thomas moved her through Pennsylvania. Then Ohio.”
Nicholas flipped through the documents.
“Where after that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said you did.”
“I said I could tell you where she went after escaping. Ohio is where my information ends.”
Nicholas’s face became lethal.
“You played with words.”
“I survived your father by doing exactly that.”
Hannah picked up a photograph inside the case.
Elena standing beside Thomas Brooks.
Her father.
Younger.
Smiling.
Between them was a small girl.
Three years old.
Hannah stared.
“That’s me.”
Nicholas looked.
Hannah recognized her yellow coat.
Her father’s hand.
Her own childish face.
Elena Vale was kneeling beside her.
Smiling.
Alive.
The photograph was dated 2002.
Hannah looked at Nicholas.
“I met your mother.”
Before he could answer, a gunshot shattered the chapel window.
Gabriel collapsed.
Nicholas grabbed Hannah.
“Down!”
More shots.
The leather case fell.
Documents scattered across the floor.
Nicholas dragged Hannah behind the altar.
Outside, headlights surrounded the convent.
Elias’s voice shouted through Nicholas’s concealed earpiece.
“We’ve got at least eight!”
Nicholas looked at Gabriel.
Blood spread across his coat.
Gabriel was still conscious.
He crawled toward them.
“Not Rourke.”
Nicholas leaned closer.
“What?”
Gabriel coughed.
“The men outside.”
“Who?”
May you like
Gabriel looked terrified.
“They work for your mother.”
