Chapter 6 - The Uncle Who Would Not DieFor one heartbeat, Gabriel Costa was sixteen again.
Rain. Blood. Sirens that came too late.
His uncle Salvatore kneeling beside him, pressing a hand to Gabriel’s shoulder and saying, Be strong, boy. Your father is gone. The family needs you now.
Then the funeral. The closed casket. The black suits. The weeping relatives.
All lies.
Now Salvatore stood beneath Lydia Hayes’s apple trees, alive and smiling like a man arriving for Sunday dinner.
Gabriel kept the gun trained on him.
“You died.”
Salvatore chuckled.
“Many useful men do.”
Norah’s grip tightened around the ledger.
Elias and two guards moved into position, but the men stepping from Salvatore’s SUVs were better armed and not afraid.
Rosa stood near Lydia with one hand inside her handbag.
Gabriel did not look at her, but he knew that handbag contained the small pistol she had once used to chase loan sharks from her brother’s bakery.
Salvatore’s eyes moved to Norah.
“Thomas Hayes’s daughter. How poetic.”
Norah lifted her chin.
“You knew my father?”
“Knew him? I made him.”
Gabriel’s voice was deadly calm.
“You framed him.”
“I used him.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only answer that matters.”
Salvatore took a slow step forward.
“Your father was soft, Gabriel. Noble. Sentimental. He wanted to clean the family business, make it respectable, pay taxes like a frightened shopkeeper. He forgot that empires are not inherited by good men. They are taken by necessary ones.”
“You killed him.”
“I preserved what he was too weak to hold.”
Gabriel’s hand did not shake.
“And Isabella?”
For the first time, Salvatore’s smile thinned.
“An unfortunate complication.”
Norah spoke sharply.
“She heard you.”
Salvatore looked at her with mild irritation.
“Children hear too much.”
Gabriel moved half a step forward.
“If she is alive—”
“She is alive because Thomas Hayes betrayed me instead of you.”
A gust of cold wind moved through the orchard.
Norah opened the ledger.
“My father wrote everything.”
“Yes,” Salvatore said. “Thomas always had that accountant’s disease. He believed paper could save him.”
“It can bury you,” Norah said.
Salvatore laughed.
“My dear, I have been buried once already.”
One of Salvatore’s men raised his weapon slightly.
Gabriel’s guards answered.
The orchard became a breath away from war.
Then Lydia shouted, “Stop!”
Everyone looked at her.
She stepped forward, shaking but furious.
“You ruined my sister’s life. You ruined that child’s life. You will not turn my yard into another grave.”
Salvatore regarded her.
“Lydia Hayes. Still dramatic.”
“You came here because you’re afraid.”
His smile vanished.
Lydia pointed to the ledger.
“You could have taken that box years ago. But you didn’t know where it was. Now you know, and you came yourself because whatever is in there can still destroy you.”
Salvatore’s eyes darkened.
Gabriel noticed.
Norah did too.
She opened to the back of the ledger. Several pages were stuck together with age. Carefully, she separated them.
There, folded between two pages, was a photograph.
Not Isabella as a child.
Isabella as a young woman.
Maybe twenty-five.
Standing beside Victor Hale.
Behind them was a sign: Mercer House Foundation Annual Gala.
Norah looked at Gabriel.
“Mercer House?”
Elias went pale.
Gabriel turned to him.
“What is that?”
Elias’s jaw tightened.
“My father’s veterans charity.”
Norah’s eyes dropped to the photo again.
The woman beside Victor wore a red coat.
Salvatore’s gaze hardened.
“Give me the ledger.”
Gabriel’s answer was immediate.
“No.”
Salvatore sighed.
“I was hoping you had grown wiser.”
“I grew exactly as you designed me,” Gabriel said. “Paranoid. Ruthless. Alone.”
“And powerful.”
“No. Useful.”
The word seemed to strike Salvatore harder than a bullet.
Gabriel continued.
“You left me alive because a grieving boy with my name could inherit the empire while you ruled from the shadows.”
Salvatore smiled again, but there was no warmth now.
“And you did beautifully.”
Gabriel fired.
Not at Salvatore.
At the tire of the nearest SUV.
The explosion cracked through the orchard.
Chaos erupted.
Elias shoved Norah behind the apple tree as Gabriel’s men moved. Rosa grabbed Lydia and pulled her toward the farmhouse. Salvatore’s guards scrambled, not prepared for Gabriel to start a fight over rubber instead of blood.
“Run!” Gabriel shouted.
Norah clutched the ledger and ran toward the farmhouse.
A man lunged from the side path. Norah swung the rusted tin box into his face with every ounce of rage she had been swallowing for twenty-one frozen nights. He dropped.
Rosa saw it and shouted, “Good girl!”
Norah almost laughed, breathless and terrified.
Inside the farmhouse, Lydia opened a cellar door hidden beneath a braided rug.
“Down!”
Norah descended first, then Rosa, then Lydia. Gabriel appeared last, blood on his cheek but moving steadily.
He slammed the cellar door above them and locked it from within.
Darkness swallowed them.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Rosa’s flashlight clicked on.
The cellar was narrow and old, lined with canned peaches, paint cans, and dusty furniture.
Gabriel turned to Norah.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Look at me.”
“I said no.”
“Norah.”
She looked up. Her face was streaked with dirt. Her hair had come loose completely. She was shaking, but her eyes were bright and fierce.
Gabriel’s expression softened for one dangerous second.
Then footsteps thundered above.
They listened as men searched the farmhouse.
Lydia whispered, “There’s a tunnel.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“You mention this now?”
“It was built during Prohibition. My grandfather moved liquor and bad decisions through it.”
Rosa nodded approvingly.
“I like your family better now.”
Lydia led them behind shelves to a low wooden door. Cold air rushed from beyond it.
The tunnel was cramped, damp, and black. They moved single file, Elias first, Gabriel behind Norah, Rosa muttering prayers and insults in equal measure.
After several minutes, the tunnel opened near a creek behind the property.
A vehicle waited there.
Not one of Gabriel’s.
A black sedan.
Its headlights turned on.
Gabriel raised his gun.
The driver’s door opened.
A woman stepped out.
Dark hair.
Pale face.
Red coat.
Gabriel stopped breathing.
She looked at him for a long moment.
“Hello, brother.”
Norah clutched the ledger.
Isabella Costa was alive.
And she was pointing a gun at Salvatore’s men behind them.
“Get in,” Isabella said. “Unless you all prefer dying during a family reunion.”
Gabriel did not move.
Isabella’s eyes softened, barely.
“I know you hate me already,” she said. “But I didn’t bring them here.”
Shots cracked from the woods.
Gabriel shoved Norah toward the car.
They piled in as bullets struck tree bark and dirt.
Isabella slammed the car into reverse, then spun onto a hidden road with reckless precision.
For several miles, no one spoke.
Gabriel stared at the back of Isabella’s head.
Norah watched him from beside the door.
Finally, Isabella looked into the rearview mirror.
“Before you ask, yes, Thomas Hayes saved my life.”
Norah’s breath caught.
“And yes,” Isabella continued, “your father died because he refused to tell them where he hid me.”
The car filled with the weight of twenty-two years.
Norah pressed one hand to her mouth.
Gabriel closed his eyes.
May you like
The man he had hated had died protecting his sister.
And the woman sleeping in his garage was the daughter of the man his family owed everything.
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