Chapter 2 - The Crash That Never Happened
The impact threw me forward.
The seat belt locked across my hips.
My hands flew protectively around my stomach.
“Gabriel!”
“I’ve got it.”
He jerked the wheel left as another vehicle came alongside us.
For one terrifying second, I saw the driver.
Dark jacket.
Black gloves.
No expression.
He swerved toward our SUV.
Gabriel slammed the brakes.
The other vehicle shot ahead.
One motorcycle nearly clipped our front bumper before disappearing into the dark.
“Who are these people?”
“Not now.”
“I am seven months pregnant, Gabriel!”
“I noticed.”
“Then start talking!”
A crack exploded behind us.
The rear window shattered.
I screamed.
Gabriel pushed my head down.
“Stay low!”
“That was a gunshot!”
“Yes.”
“That deserves an explanation!”
“Preferably after we don’t die.”
Fair point.
He accelerated again.
Chicago’s northern suburbs blurred past us.
Streetlights.
Snow piled along curbs.
Closed storefronts.
Then Gabriel made a sudden turn into an industrial district.
The SUV behind us followed.
“Where are we going?”
“Changing cars.”
“Changing—”
He turned sharply through an open warehouse gate.
The door slammed shut behind us.
Darkness swallowed the vehicle.
Gabriel stopped.
“Move.”
“What?”
“Out. Now.”
He grabbed my suitcase from the back while I climbed carefully from the passenger side.
A man appeared from the shadows.
I almost screamed again.
“Relax,” Gabriel said. “He’s with me.”
The stranger opened the rear door of a dusty minivan.
Of all the vehicles I had expected a fugitive DeLuca to drive, a twelve-year-old minivan was not one of them.
Gabriel helped me inside.
“Seriously?”
“Adrian tracks expensive cars.”
“And murderous strangers don’t track minivans?”
“Nobody respects a minivan.”
Even now, I nearly laughed.
The warehouse door reopened at the opposite end.
We drove out onto another street just as engines roared behind us.
The black SUV had entered the warehouse.
It would find Gabriel’s abandoned vehicle.
Nothing else.
For twenty minutes, no one spoke.
I watched the mirrors.
No headlights followed.
Finally, Gabriel exhaled.
“We lost them.”
“Wonderful.”
He looked at me.
“You’re pale.”
“I was shot at fifteen minutes after leaving my husband. I’m allowed to be pale.”
“Any pain?”
I checked myself.
The baby moved.
Strong.
My breathing slowly eased.
“He’s moving.”
Gabriel’s expression softened.
“You know it’s a boy?”
“Yes.”
“Name?”
I looked out the window.
“Not anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
“Adrian wanted Antonio.”
“After Grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
“I’ll choose something that doesn’t belong to either family.”
Gabriel nodded.
“I like that.”
We drove south.
Not toward my father’s estate.
Not toward downtown.
Eventually Gabriel pulled into the underground garage of an ordinary apartment building.
“This is safe?”
“Safer than anywhere connected to our names.”
The apartment upstairs was small, clean, and clearly temporary.
No photographs.
Minimal furniture.
Two laptops on the dining table.
A medical kit.
Three prepaid phones.
I stared.
“You’ve been expecting me?”
“No.”
“Then why does this look like a witness-protection starter pack?”
“Because I’ve been expecting someone.”
My stomach tightened.
Gabriel locked the door.
Then he held out his hand.
“The flash drive.”
I didn’t move.
“First you tell me what you meant about Mom.”
He looked away.
“Gabriel.”
“Elena, there are things—”
“If one more man tells me there are things I don’t understand, I’m going to throw something.”
That stopped him.
He almost smiled.
Then he pulled out a chair.
“Sit.”
I sat.
He placed a bottle of water in front of me.
Our mother had died sixteen years ago.
Officially, Maria DeLuca had been killed in a highway accident when a truck crossed the median.
My father never spoke about it.
For years I thought that was grief.
Gabriel sat across from me.
“Mom’s crash wasn’t an accident.”
My throat tightened.
“How do you know?”
“Because I found the maintenance report.”
“What maintenance report?”
“The one that disappeared from the police file.”
He opened a laptop.
A scanned document appeared.
I recognized the date.
The day before my mother died.
“What am I looking at?”
“Her car was inspected because she complained the brakes felt soft.”
I read the highlighted line.
BRAKE SYSTEM FUNCTIONING NORMALLY.
Gabriel opened another page.
“This is from a mechanic who worked at the DeLuca garage.”
The signature at the bottom was unfamiliar.
“The mechanic said someone replaced the brake line later that night.”
I stared at him.
“Who?”
“He didn’t know. He was told to leave early.”
“By Dad?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Gabriel hesitated.
“Adrian’s father.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Vittorio Romano?”
Gabriel nodded.
I stood too quickly.
Pain tightened across my lower back.
“Elena.”
“Don’t.”
I paced toward the window.
“Adrian was twenty-four when Mom died.”
“Twenty-three.”
“You think his father killed our mother?”
“I think Vittorio was involved.”
“Why?”
“Because Maria DeLuca discovered something she wasn’t supposed to discover.”
The flash drive suddenly felt heavier inside my coat.
“What?”
Gabriel looked at it.
“Verona.”
I stopped.
“You’re telling me Verona Holdings existed sixteen years ago?”
“Under a different name.”
He opened another folder.
“The shell company changed every few years. Verona is only the latest version.”
“What does it do?”
“That’s what I’ve spent three years trying to prove.”
“Three years?”
He looked at me.
“Adrian didn’t exile me because I betrayed the families.”
My shame returned.
“He exiled you because you found this.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“You told me Adrian was laundering money.”
“I couldn’t tell you the rest.”
“Why?”
“Because you were sleeping beside him.”
The words landed hard.
He wasn’t being cruel.
He was being accurate.
“If Adrian realized what I knew, I thought he might use you to get to me.”
I touched my belly.
“Would he?”
Gabriel didn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
I sat again.
“Vivian is a director of Verona.”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“I knew someone named Vivian Mercer appeared in some records. I didn’t know she was Adrian’s mistress.”
“Mercer?”
“That’s her legal surname.”
“She uses Lane.”
“Lane is her mother’s name.”
I stared.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Gabriel looked exhausted.
“Vivian’s father was a federal prosecutor.”
My skin prickled.
“He prosecuted organized crime?”
“He was building a case against Vittorio Romano and our father.”
“Our father?”
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“He disappeared.”
I felt cold.
“When?”
“Sixteen years ago.”
The same year our mother died.
Gabriel turned the laptop toward me.
A newspaper article filled the screen.
FEDERAL PROSECUTOR DANIEL MERCER MISSING; FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.
Below it was a photograph.
The man standing beside Daniel Mercer was younger, but unmistakable.
My father.
Salvatore DeLuca.
I stared at the screen.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“It gets worse.”
“How?”
“Your husband started Verona with Vivian seven years ago.”
“Two years after we got married.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Gabriel looked toward my coat.
“That may be on your drive.”
I finally pulled it out.
Small.
Black.
Ordinary.
Enough to destroy everything.
Gabriel inserted it into an isolated laptop.
A password prompt appeared.
“I copied most things without opening them,” I said. “This protected folder required Adrian’s security key.”
“You have it?”
“I photographed the token on his desk.”
Gabriel looked impressed despite himself.
“You always were the dangerous one.”
“I married Adrian Romano.”
“Point taken.”
I entered the code.
The folder opened.
Dozens of subfolders appeared.
Properties.
Transfers.
Photographs.
Audio.
And one folder labeled LEGACY.
Gabriel and I looked at each other.
I clicked it.
There were eight files.
One was a scanned letter.
Dated sixteen years earlier.
My mother’s handwriting.
My hands began to tremble.
I opened it.
The letter was addressed to my father.
Salvatore,
If you are reading this, then I was right to be afraid.
Vittorio knows I found the accounts.
But he is not acting alone.
There is someone inside our own family helping him.
I have hidden the original ledger where only Elena—
I stopped breathing.
The sentence continued.
—where only Elena will eventually think to look.
Gabriel whispered my name.
I couldn’t hear him.
My mother had written my name.
I was fifteen years old when she died.
My hands shook harder as I continued.
Do not trust the Romans.
Do not trust the Mercers.
And until you know who betrayed us—
do not trust Gabriel.
I stared at the final line.
Gabriel had gone white.
“No.”
I looked up.
He backed away from the table.
“No, Elena.”
“You knew about this?”
“I swear to you, I have never seen that letter.”
“Mom said not to trust you.”
“I can read.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Gabriel.”
“I don’t know!”
His voice cracked.
For the first time since he picked me up, his control shattered.
He dragged both hands through his hair.
“She died when I was nineteen. I worshipped her.”
I searched his face.
Was this acting?
Had nine years with Adrian destroyed my ability to recognize truth?
The baby moved again.
Then the apartment buzzer sounded.
Gabriel froze.
No one should have known we were there.
The buzzer sounded a second time.
He drew a handgun.
I backed away.
“Who is it?”
He moved toward the intercom but didn’t touch it.
A phone vibrated on the table.
One of the prepaid phones.
Gabriel looked at the screen.
Then at me.
“What?”
He turned the phone around.
A photograph had been sent from an unknown number.
It showed the Romano mansion.
Taken minutes ago.
Police vehicles filled the driveway.
Men in federal jackets were entering through the front doors.
Below the photograph was a single message.
YOU TOOK THE WRONG DRIVE.
Then another message arrived.
THE ONE ADRIAN WANTED YOU TO FIND WAS A DECOY.
My stomach dropped.
A third message.
CHECK YOUR COAT.
Slowly, I reached into my inside pocket.
My fingers touched the flash-drive case.
And something else.
A folded piece of paper.
I pulled it out.
It wasn’t mine.
Gabriel watched me unfold it.
Three words were written in black ink.
HE KNOWS EVERYTHING.
May you like
Then, beneath them:
RUN FROM GABRIEL.
