Chapter 3 - The Husband Who Never Stopped SearchingGabriel let the phone ring six times.
Then seven.
Then eight.
I could hardly breathe.
"Answer it," I whispered.
He shook his head.
"Not while we're moving."
"What if it's important?"
"It is important."
"Then answer."
Gabriel pulled beneath an overpass, switched off the engine, and checked the road behind us.
Only when he was satisfied nobody had followed did he accept the call.
"Mr. Moretti."
Even through the speaker, I recognized Alessandro's voice.
Cold.
Controlled.
Dangerously calm.
"Where are you, Shaw?"
Gabriel didn't answer immediately.
"North Carolina."
Silence.
Then Alessandro said, "Have you found her?"
My heart stopped.
Gabriel looked at me.
I shook my head violently.
He understood.
"Not yet."
Alessandro exhaled.
I knew that sound.
It was the sound he made when he was trying not to lose his temper.
"You told me you had a lead."
"I do."
"Then why am I speaking to you instead of my wife?"
My throat tightened.
My wife.
After a year.
After Valentina.
After everything.
He still called me that.
Gabriel said, "There are complications."
"What complications?"
"I believe somebody else is looking for her."
The silence became heavier.
Then Alessandro spoke again.
"Who?"
"I can't confirm."
"If Vittorio has sent men after Elena, I want names."
A chill moved through me.
He suspected his uncle.
Gabriel remained silent.
Alessandro's voice dropped.
"Listen carefully. I don't care where she lives. I don't care what name she's using. If she doesn't want to see me, I won't force her."
I stared at the phone.
That was not the Alessandro I remembered.
"But I need to know she's alive," he continued. "And I need to know nobody's hurting her."
Gabriel said nothing.
"Find my wife."
The call ended.
For several moments, none of us spoke.
Rebecca was sitting beside Gabriel, pressing a bandage against her wounded arm.
Samuel slept in the back.
Rain tapped against the truck's windshield.
Finally, I whispered, "He hired you?"
Gabriel nodded.
"Three months ago."
"You said somebody else hired you eleven months ago."
"That's correct."
I stared at him.
"Who?"
"Vittorio."
My stomach dropped.
Gabriel turned around.
"He hired me to find you. At first, I believed the story he told me."
"What story?"
"That you had disappeared with confidential financial records. He claimed you were vulnerable and might be targeted by rival organizations."
I swallowed.
"And then?"
"Then I found evidence that the search was connected to the old family trust."
"So you stopped working for him."
"I continued pretending."
"Why?"
"Because I needed access to his money trail."
Rebecca shifted beside him.
"Gabriel, your shoulder."
He ignored her.
"Three months ago, Alessandro contacted me privately. He knew I'd worked security for the family before. He told me he didn't trust the people currently assigned to locate you."
"Why not?"
Gabriel gave a humorless smile.
"Because every lead disappeared before reaching his desk."
I looked down.
That sounded like Alessandro.
Suspicious of everyone.
Always expecting betrayal.
Except when it came from the people closest to him.
"Does he know Vittorio is involved?"
"He knows something is wrong."
"Does he know about Nico?"
"No."
I felt sick.
A year earlier, I would have rushed home to warn him.
I would have stood beside him.
Helped him think.
Helped him survive.
That had been my role for seven years.
But I wasn't that woman anymore.
I had a son.
And my responsibility was to Samuel.
Not to rescue Alessandro from the consequences of his family's cruelty.
"Take me somewhere safe," I said.
Gabriel studied me.
"There's a farmhouse near the Tennessee border."
"Who owns it?"
"Someone I trust."
I looked at Rebecca.
She nodded.
"He's telling the truth."
I wanted desperately to believe them.
But belief had already cost me too much.
By evening, we reached the farmhouse.
It stood at the end of a long gravel road surrounded by trees and open pasture.
The owner was a retired federal investigator named Thomas Keene.
He had gray hair, a stiff left leg, and a dog named Ranger that barked until Samuel laughed.
Thomas immediately softened.
"Well," he said, crouching beside the child seat. "That's the first person who's ever appreciated Ranger's terrible manners."
I almost smiled.
For the first time that day, Samuel stopped crying.
Thomas prepared a guest room upstairs.
Rebecca cleaned and dressed her gunshot wound properly.
Gabriel disappeared into the study with his laptop.
I gave Samuel a bath in an old porcelain tub.
Fed him.
Held him until he fell asleep.
Then I sat beside his crib.
I watched him breathe.
Every rise of his tiny chest felt like a miracle.
I remembered the night he'd been born.
The doctors rushing around me.
The fear in their voices.
The way I'd begged them to save him.
I had survived that alone.
I could survive this, too.
At midnight, someone knocked softly.
Thomas stood in the doorway.
"Mind if I come in?"
I nodded.
He entered carrying two mugs of tea.
"Gabriel told me some of what's going on."
"Then you know my son is in danger."
"Yes."
"Can you protect him?"
Thomas didn't make grand promises.
"I can protect this property as well as anyone can. But the safest way to end a threat like this is to put the people behind it somewhere they can't issue orders."
"Prison?"
"That's the idea."
I gave a bitter laugh.
"The Morettis have been avoiding prison for generations."
Thomas sat across from me.
"Some of them. Not all of them."
I looked up.
"What do you mean?"
"Your husband's organization is not as united as people think."
"I know."
"Then you know Alessandro has been restructuring his legitimate businesses."
I nodded.
He had mentioned it before our marriage collapsed.
He wanted to separate the hotels and shipping companies from the criminal operations.
He said there was too much blood in the old business.
Too many men who considered violence a form of management.
At the time, I thought it was simply another way for him to become wealthier.
Thomas leaned forward.
"Vittorio stands to lose millions if Alessandro succeeds."
"That still doesn't explain why he'd target a baby."
"Because ownership of the holding company is tied to a family trust. If Alessandro dies without a recognized child, control can pass to Vittorio's branch."
I looked at Samuel.
"And if Alessandro has a child?"
"That changes who stands to inherit."
My mouth went dry.
Thomas continued carefully.
"I need you to understand something. If Vittorio has already tried to kill Alessandro, and he learns there's a son, your child may become his primary target."
I gripped the edge of my chair.
"How do we stop him?"
"We need evidence strong enough to survive the family's lawyers."
"What kind of evidence?"
"Money transfers. Communications. A witness who can connect them to specific crimes."
I thought of Nico.
Dead.
Gabriel's sister.
Missing.
The unnamed men who had attacked us.
"Do you have that?"
"Not enough."
He hesitated.
"But there may be someone who does."
"Who?"
Thomas looked toward the window.
"Valentina Russo."
I laughed in disbelief.
"You're telling me the woman sleeping with my husband might save my child?"
"I'm telling you she's involved."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," Thomas agreed. "It isn't."
He stood.
"Get some sleep, Elena."
I looked back at Samuel.
"Sleep doesn't come easily anymore."
Thomas paused in the doorway.
"It rarely does when you've spent too long being afraid."
After he left, I sat alone with my thoughts.
Valentina.
Vittorio.
Alessandro.
The three people who had turned my life into something I barely recognized.
At two in the morning, my phone vibrated.
Another unknown number.
This time, there was no message.
Only a photograph.
It showed Alessandro standing alone inside the nursery at our old mansion.
The room I'd closed before disappearing.
He was holding the tiny wooden moon from above the crib.
Underneath the photograph was a message.
"He hasn't changed that room."
My throat tightened.
Then another image arrived.
A close-up of a child's drawing.
A stick-figure family.
A tall man.
A woman with dark hair.
A baby.
Across the top, written in Alessandro's handwriting, were three words.
Maybe someday, Elena.
I covered my mouth.
I remembered that drawing.
He had made it one rainy Sunday years earlier, after our first miscarriage.
He'd found me crying in the nursery.
Instead of telling me to be strong, he'd sat on the floor beside me and drawn the ridiculous little picture.
"We'll get there," he'd whispered.
I had kept it inside a drawer.
I thought I'd thrown it away when I left.
Apparently, he had found it.
My phone vibrated again.
"He's been sleeping in that room for eleven months."
I stared at the message.
"Who are you?" I typed.
The reply came instantly.
"Someone who knows your husband better than you think."
I felt anger replace my fear.
"Then tell him he should have remembered he had a wife before he took another woman to his bed."
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Then the answer arrived.
"He knows."
I stared.
A final message followed.
"That is why he has been trying to find you. He doesn't want to bring you home. He wants to ask for forgiveness before it's too late."
I almost threw the phone.
Forgiveness.
Such a small word.
As if seven years of marriage could be repaired with an apology.
As if I could forget the coldness in his eyes when he admitted the affair.
As if Samuel's existence didn't change everything.
I was about to switch off the phone when another message arrived.
"Vittorio has arranged a meeting tomorrow. Alessandro believes it's about company shares."
A pause.
"It isn't."
My pulse accelerated.
"What is it about?"
May you like
The answer made my blood run cold.
"It's about killing him."
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