Chapter 6 - The Church Where the Secret BeganRebecca wanted to leave immediately.
Gabriel physically stood in front of the door.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“You promised.”
“I promised not to control your choices.”
“Then move.”
“No.”
Her face changed.
Gabriel continued before she could speak.
“I’m not stopping you from going.”
“You’re standing in front of the door.”
“I’m stopping you from going alone.”
Rebecca froze.
Gabriel pointed toward her phone.
“They asked for you alone because they want you isolated.”
“My aunt is in that car.”
“I know.”
“She raised me.”
“I know.”
“Then move.”
Gabriel lowered his voice.
“Rebecca, listen to me.”
She hated how close she was to panic.
“I am listening.”
“If you want to go to St. Catherine, I will help you go.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“But?”
“But we involve police. We use surveillance. You wear a transmitter. You do not walk into another locked room with nobody knowing where you are.”
Rebecca stared at him.
That was not an order.
It was a plan.
A good one.
She took a breath.
“Okay.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Okay.”
St. Catherine Church had been abandoned for almost nine years.
The restoration trust had once planned to save it.
Instead, funding disappeared.
The roof failed.
The parish relocated.
Now the building stood between two vacant lots on Chicago’s South Side, windows covered with plywood and a rusted cross leaning above the entrance.
At 1:14 a.m., Rebecca walked through the front doors alone.
At least she appeared alone.
A transmitter was sewn into her coat.
Federal agents surrounded the area.
Adrien monitored the building from a nearby van.
Gabriel had been ordered to remain outside the perimeter.
He had argued.
Loudly.
Rebecca secretly enjoyed that.
Inside, the church smelled of dust and wet plaster.
“Margaret?”
Her voice echoed.
Nothing.
She moved between broken pews.
“Margaret!”
A light appeared near the old altar.
Marcus Hale stepped into view.
Rebecca stopped.
He was fifty-eight.
Gray-haired.
Heavyset.
A man she had passed at Gabriel’s estate without ever noticing.
He held a gun.
Rebecca’s heart hammered.
“Where is my aunt?”
“Safe.”
“Show me.”
“Phone first.”
Rebecca took the temporary phone from her pocket.
“The photographs are here.”
Marcus smiled.
“Good.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Money.”
The answer came too quickly.
Rebecca knew.
She had spent seven years listening to Daniel lie.
“That’s not the whole reason.”
Marcus’s expression changed.
“You think surviving Mercer made you clever?”
“No.”
She swallowed.
“It made me pay attention.”
Marcus stepped closer.
“Give me the phone.”
Rebecca remained still.
“Did you cut Vittorio Moretti’s brakes?”
Marcus’s face emptied.
Outside, investigators listened.
Rebecca continued.
“You signed the repair invoice.”
“Give me the phone.”
“Enzo ordered you?”
Marcus raised the gun.
Rebecca’s legs wanted to move.
She forced them still.
“Where is Margaret?”
“Phone.”
Rebecca held it out.
Marcus approached.
Then a voice came from behind the altar.
“Don’t give him anything.”
Rebecca gasped.
“Margaret?”
Her aunt appeared.
Her wrists were tied, but she was standing.
Alive.
Marcus turned.
“Shut up.”
Margaret looked at Rebecca.
“He doesn’t have the real recording.”
Marcus spun back toward Rebecca.
Her mind raced.
“What recording?”
Margaret answered.
“Vittorio’s.”
Marcus shouted, “Shut up!”
Rebecca stared at her aunt.
Margaret smiled sadly.
“The ledger wasn’t all he gave me.”
Suddenly everything made sense.
The letter.
The safe-deposit box.
The desperation.
Enzo had been searching for more than financial records.
“Where is it?” Rebecca asked.
Margaret looked at Marcus.
“Somewhere your employer will never find it.”
Marcus struck her.
Rebecca screamed.
Outside, Gabriel heard it through the transmitter.
Every instinct in him demanded movement.
An agent blocked him.
“We need the confession.”
“He touched her.”
“Mr. Moretti—”
Gabriel’s stare silenced him.
Inside the church, Rebecca looked at the blood on Margaret’s lip.
Something inside her changed.
Fear remained.
But beneath it came anger.
“Daniel hit me too.”
Marcus looked at her.
“You people keep making the same mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“You think hurting women makes you powerful.”
Marcus laughed.
Rebecca continued.
“But every time one of you hurts us, you leave evidence.”
His smile faded.
“Daniel left the cellar lock.”
Rebecca took one step forward.
“He left the messages.”
Another.
“He left my blood.”
Another.
“You left your signature on a repair invoice.”
Marcus raised the gun higher.
Rebecca stopped.
“And Enzo left you.”
Marcus’s face changed.
Rebecca saw it.
“He’s not coming, is he?”
Silence.
“He made you take Margaret.”
Marcus tightened his grip.
“He made you come here.”
“Shut up.”
“He knows if this fails, you take the blame.”
“Shut up!”
“He did the same thing to Daniel.”
Marcus’s breathing became heavier.
Rebecca lowered her voice.
“And eleven years ago, he did it to you.”
For a second, the anger disappeared.
Fear replaced it.
Rebecca knew she had found the crack.
“You cut the brakes.”
Marcus whispered, “I didn’t know he was going to die.”
Outside, investigators moved closer.
Rebecca’s heart pounded.
“What did Enzo tell you?”
Marcus shook his head.
“No.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He said the car needed to scare Vittorio.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
Rebecca said, “But Vittorio died.”
Marcus’s voice broke.
“The line was supposed to leak slowly.”
Rebecca stared at him.
“Who told you that?”
“Enzo.”
There it was.
A confession.
Recorded.
Transmitted.
He realized what he had said.
His face changed.
“You’re wearing a wire.”
Rebecca did not move.
Marcus lunged.
Then the church exploded with noise.
“FEDERAL AGENTS!”
“DROP THE WEAPON!”
Marcus grabbed Rebecca.
The gun pressed against her neck.
Everything happened at once.
Margaret screamed.
Agents appeared between the pews.
Marcus dragged Rebecca backward.
“Stay away!”
Rebecca could barely breathe.
Then she remembered the cellar.
Daniel’s hand.
Her fear.
Seven years of surrendering small pieces of herself.
Not again.
She drove her heel down onto Marcus’s foot.
He cursed.
Rebecca threw herself sideways.
The gun fired.
Plaster exploded from a column.
Agents tackled Marcus.
Rebecca hit the floor.
For several seconds, she heard nothing.
Then someone was running toward her.
Gabriel.
He had ignored every instruction to remain outside.
He dropped beside her.
“Rebecca.”
She stared at him.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Look at me.”
“I’m fine.”
His hands hovered near her shoulders but did not touch.
He waited.
Rebecca understood.
Permission.
She leaned toward him.
Gabriel wrapped his arms around her.
For the first time since the cellar, Rebecca allowed herself to shake.
Not because she was weak.
Because she was safe enough to stop pretending she wasn’t terrified.
Gabriel held her while agents dragged Marcus away.
Margaret approached.
Rebecca pulled away immediately and embraced her aunt.
Margaret whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For every secret.”
Rebecca started crying.
“So am I.”
At sunrise, Margaret finally revealed the location of Vittorio Moretti’s recording.
Not a bank.
Not a safe.
Not an office.
The old woman had hidden it inside the least glamorous place imaginable.
A sewing box.
In Rebecca’s childhood bedroom.
For eleven years, a small digital recorder had rested beneath spools of thread and spare buttons in Margaret’s apartment.
Rebecca stared at her.
“You had it this entire time?”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
Gabriel stood across the room.
“What’s on it?”
Margaret looked at him.
“Your father arguing with Enzo.”
Gabriel swallowed.
“And the letter?”
Margaret nodded.
“With it.”
Two hours later, Adrien retrieved the box under police supervision.
Gabriel sat alone in the library before playing the recording.
Rebecca remained outside.
He had not asked her to leave.
She had chosen to give him privacy.
After seventeen minutes, the library door opened.
Gabriel stood there.
His eyes were red.
Rebecca had never seen him cry.
He did not seem ashamed of it.
“What did he say?” she asked.
Gabriel held a folded letter.
“My father knew.”
“About Enzo?”
“He knew Enzo was stealing.”
Rebecca waited.
“And?”
Gabriel looked down.
“He knew I was angry with him.”
His voice broke slightly.
“He wrote that he hoped someday I would understand why he pushed me so hard.”
Rebecca said nothing.
“He said he wanted me to become better than the family name.”
That sentence seemed to hurt more than anything else.
Gabriel looked at her.
“My whole life I thought he wanted me to inherit his empire.”
“What did he want?”
May you like
Gabriel unfolded the last page.
“He wanted me to change it.”
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