Chapter 3 - The Secret Beneath Rossi Tower
By midnight, the penthouse had become a command center.
Maps covered the dining table.
Norah had arranged files into chronological order.
Gabriel had brought in two trusted men.
The first was Frankie Bellini, his driver and oldest friend.
The second was Elena Costa, a financial investigator whose ability to find hidden money had once saved Gabriel millions.
Norah trusted neither of them.
Gabriel noticed.
“You can say it.”
She looked up.
“Say what?”
“That you think everyone around me is compromised.”
“I think everyone should be investigated.”
Elena raised an eyebrow.
“I like her.”
Frankie laughed.
Gabriel gave both of them a look.
Silence returned.
Norah turned one page.
“Elliot Hayes disappeared on October 18, 2004.”
Elena reviewed the report.
“Officially.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning his body was never recovered.”
Norah's fingers tightened.
“So he could be alive.”
“Maybe.”
Gabriel stood beside her.
“There’s more.”
He placed an old photograph on the table.
It showed three men outside a warehouse.
His father.
Vincent Moretti.
Elliot Hayes.
Norah stared at the picture.
“There.”
She pointed to Elliot.
“He looks scared.”
Gabriel nodded.
“My father didn't photograph people who looked scared.”
“Why was Moretti there?”
No one answered.
Norah flipped another page.
A shipment manifest.
A code.
A bank transfer.
Then a second photograph.
This one was difficult to interpret.
A young girl stood outside the Rossi warehouse.
She was holding a stuffed rabbit.
Gabriel stared.
He recognized the rabbit.
Not the girl.
But the rabbit.
His father's office had contained an old photograph of that exact toy.
“That's me.”
Norah's voice barely carried.
“When I was ten.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“You were there.”
“I don't remember.”
“Your father brought you.”
“Maybe.”
The realization was terrible.
Norah had unknowingly walked into the same building where her life had been destroyed.
The mystery became larger.
They searched old newspaper archives.
At 2:15 a.m., Elena found something.
A fire report.
Rossi warehouse.
October 18, 2004.
Three people were inside.
One was presumed dead.
One was missing.
One escaped.
Gabriel read the name.
Elliot Hayes.
“Who escaped?”
Elena turned the page.
“Unknown female.”
Norah froze.
“Female?”
Gabriel looked up.
“The report says a child was found wandering two blocks away.”
Norah’s face went white.
“What child?”
Elena read.
“Female. Approximately ten years old.”
Norah slowly backed away from the table.
“No.”
Gabriel caught her before she stumbled.
“Nora.”
“I don't remember.”
“You were there.”
“No.”
“Listen to me.”
“I remember the fire.”
Her voice broke.
“I remember someone carrying me.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“Did you see his face?”
She closed her eyes.
Darkness.
Smoke.
A man’s voice.
A hand over her mouth.
Then a sentence from the distant past returned.
Run, little bird.
Norah opened her eyes.
“I remember a man telling me to run.”
Gabriel felt a chill.
“Did he say anything else?”
“He said my father was a good man.”
Silence.
Then Norah whispered:
“He said, ‘Your father didn't betray Rossi. Rossi betrayed him.’”
Gabriel's face hardened.
“My father?”
Elena looked at the documents.
“Then we need to consider the possibility that Gabriel's father wasn't the victim.”
“What are you saying?”
“Maybe Elliot Hayes was trying to stop something.”
Gabriel stared at the old records.
His father, Marco Rossi, had built the organization.
He had also taught Gabriel one rule above all others.
Trust family.
But the evidence was pointing toward the possibility that Marco had betrayed the man who worked for him.
Norah walked to the window.
“I need air.”
Gabriel followed.
She stood on the balcony.
The city stretched below them.
Beautiful.
Distant.
Unforgiving.
“You're angry.”
She said it without looking at him.
“I don't know what I am.”
“You should be.”
“At my father?”
“Yes.”
Gabriel leaned against the railing.
“I loved him.”
“And?”
“And people can love someone who did terrible things.”
Norah finally looked at him.
“That sounds familiar.”
He understood immediately.
“Your father?”
“My father made mistakes.”
“You don't know that.”
“I know he disappeared.”
“That doesn't make him guilty.”
Norah looked down.
“I've spent half my life wondering why he left me.”
Gabriel's voice softened.
“Maybe he didn't.”
She looked at him.
A moment passed.
Too intimate.
Too honest.
Then the penthouse lights went out.
Everything went black.
Norah inhaled sharply.
Gabriel moved instantly.
He pulled her behind him.
His hand went to the weapon at his waist.
A crash came from the office.
Then another.
Frankie shouted.
Someone had breached the floor.
Gabriel ordered everyone low.
Emergency lights flickered on.
A masked man appeared at the end of the corridor.
He raised a handgun.
Before he could fire, Norah moved.
She grabbed the metal lamp beside the sofa and threw it.
The attacker flinched.
Frankie fired.
The man escaped through the service door.
Gabriel ran after him.
By the time he reached the stairwell, the attacker was gone.
But something remained on the floor.
A silver lighter.
Gabriel picked it up.
Engraved on the side were two letters.
E.H.
Norah came running.
She stared at the lighter.
“My father.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Your father may still be alive.”
The police were called anonymously.
No one in the penthouse discussed why.
An hour later, Gabriel sat alone in the office.
He opened the black folder again.
A hidden page fell out.
He picked it up.
It contained one sentence.
If Norah ever returns to Rossi Tower, tell her the truth before Moretti does.
Gabriel read it twice.
Then noticed the signature.
Marco Rossi.
His father.
Gabriel's entire understanding of the past cracked.
The man attacking Norah was not simply trying to kill her.
He was trying to prevent her from learning what Marco Rossi had known before his death.
At dawn, Norah entered the office.
She was holding the silver lighter.
“I found something.”
Gabriel looked up.
“What?”
“A number.”
“Where?”
“Inside the lighter.”
She showed him.
There was a tiny engraving beneath the hinge.
Six digits.
Gabriel recognized them immediately.
It was a safe code used by his father.
For the first time in years, Gabriel felt genuine fear.
Because the safe was not in the penthouse.
It was beneath Rossi Tower.
And no one had opened it since his father died.
They descended through a hidden elevator.
The vault door opened only after Gabriel entered the code.
Inside was a small room.
Three boxes.
One cassette recorder.
One envelope.
Norah approached the envelope.
Her name was written across it.
Not Norah Hayes.
Norah Bell.
She stared.
“What?”
Gabriel picked up the envelope.
“Your surname wasn't always Hayes.”
Norah’s hands began to shake.
Her father had hidden more than money.
He had hidden an identity.
May you like
And now Gabriel understood the real danger.
Someone had spent twenty-two years making sure she never learned who she was.
