Chapter 7 - BLACKWOOD
They reached Virginia before sunset.
Not by helicopter.
Norah won that argument.
Gabriel traveled in the back of a reinforced SUV with medical equipment, antibiotics, and a doctor who threatened to turn the vehicle around every time he coughed.
Blackwood stood beyond iron gates at the end of a forest road.
The estate had once been beautiful.
Now vines covered the stone walls. Several windows were boarded. No lights showed inside.
Amos had positioned men in the trees.
Agent Keller waited near the gate with a federal tactical unit.
“No movement for three hours,” she said. “Thermal imaging shows six people inside.”
“Lucian?” Gabriel asked.
“Likely.”
“Evelyn?”
“One heat signature in the east wing. Minimal movement.”
Norah held the brass key Sloan had given her.
Her hand trembled.
Gabriel noticed.
“You don’t have to go inside.”
“She is my mother.”
“And Lucian wants you emotional.”
“I am emotional.”
“That is the problem.”
“No. The problem is that men keep deciding what women can survive.”
Keller looked between them.
“I like her.”
Gabriel did not.
Or at least pretended not to.
They entered through the old greenhouse.
The glass roof had collapsed years earlier. Rainwater gathered in broken stone planters.
Matteo led the first team.
Gabriel and Norah followed.
Inside the house, dust covered the furniture.
Family portraits lined the corridor.
Sloan appeared in several as a child. Perfect dresses. Controlled posture. No smile.
Norah wondered how many people Lucian had damaged while calling it discipline.
They reached the locked east wing.
Norah inserted the key.
The mechanism turned.
Beyond the door, the air smelled of bleach and medicine.
This section of the house was not abandoned.
A tray of food sat near the stairs.
Medical supplies filled a cabinet.
A woman began singing somewhere above them.
Blue Moon.
Norah froze.
Her face broke.
“Mom?”
The singing stopped.
A door opened upstairs.
A woman stepped into the corridor.
Her hair was almost entirely gray. She was thin, with one hand braced against the wall.
But Norah knew her.
“Norah?”
The voice was older.
Still hers.
Norah climbed the stairs.
The wound in her leg vanished beneath shock and hope.
Evelyn Quinn reached for her daughter.
They met halfway.
Norah held her mother and began to cry.
Not quietly.
Not with the discipline she had practiced for years.
She cried like the twenty-one-year-old girl who had searched salvage yards and hospitals alone.
Gabriel turned away to give them privacy.
Then a gun clicked behind him.
Lucian stood at the far end of the hall.
His left sleeve was stained with blood.
A pistol pointed at Gabriel’s chest.
“Move away from the women,” Lucian said.
Matteo raised his weapon.
Two doors opened behind them.
Armed men emerged.
Keller’s team had entered the wrong wing.
Lucian had expected them.
“Drop the guns,” he ordered.
Gabriel did not move.
“You’re injured.”
“So are you.”
“I still have enough strength to kill you.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
Lucian smiled.
“Because Evelyn has something I need.”
Norah held her mother.
“What?”
Evelyn looked at Lucian.
“The original ledger.”
Lucian’s smile disappeared.
Gabriel understood.
The ledger Norah memorized was not the first record.
Evelyn had hidden evidence from the beginning.
“Where is it?” Lucian asked.
Evelyn’s voice shook, but she stood straighter.
“Somewhere you will never find.”
Lucian aimed at Norah.
“Then she dies first.”
Gabriel stepped between them.
The gun remained pointed at his heart.
Lucian looked amused.
“You would die for an assistant?”
“No.”
Gabriel’s eyes became cold.
“I would kill for her.”
A shot exploded from the staircase.
One of Lucian’s men fell.
Sloan stood below with a gun in both hands.
Federal officers moved behind her.
Chaos erupted.
Matteo fired.
Gabriel pulled Norah and Evelyn into a doorway.
Lucian ran toward the back stairs.
Sloan followed.
“Father!”
He turned and shot.
The bullet struck Sloan in the abdomen.
She collapsed.
Lucian continued running.
Gabriel went after him.
They entered the winter garden at the rear of the house.
Rain fell through holes in the glass ceiling.
Lucian reached the far door.
Gabriel tackled him.
Both men struck the stone floor.
Lucian’s pistol slid beneath a bench.
He drove his fist into Gabriel’s cracked ribs.
Gabriel’s vision flashed white.
Lucian reached for a knife.
Gabriel caught his wrist.
“You destroyed my family,” Lucian hissed.
“Your family destroyed itself.”
“You stole the docks.”
“My father won them.”
“Your father was a coward.”
“My father tried to stop you.”
“And died for it.”
The admission sharpened Gabriel’s rage.
He twisted Lucian’s wrist until the knife dropped.
Then he struck him.
Once.
Twice.
Lucian laughed through the blood.
“You think the woman will love you when she learns what you are?”
Gabriel hit him again.
“She already knows.”
Lucian reached toward his ankle.
A second weapon.
Before he could draw it, Norah appeared in the doorway.
“Gabriel!”
He turned.
Lucian raised the gun.
Norah fired first.
The bullet struck Lucian’s shoulder.
He fell backward.
Gabriel kicked the weapon away.
Federal officers rushed into the garden.
Keller forced Lucian onto his stomach and cuffed him.
“You are under arrest,” she said.
Lucian laughed against the stone.
“For what?”
Evelyn entered behind them.
Her hand was wrapped around Norah’s.
“For everything,” she said.
Sloan survived the gunshot.
Barely.
As paramedics carried her from the house, she caught Norah’s hand.
“Did you find her?”
“Yes.”
Sloan closed her eyes.
“Then I did one thing right.”
Norah looked at her.
“You did one thing late.”
Sloan gave a weak smile.
“That sounds more accurate.”
At dawn, Evelyn revealed where she had hidden the original ledger.
Not in a bank.
Not in a safe.
Inside the frame of the Romano family portrait hanging in Gabriel’s childhood home.
She had placed it there the night his father died.
The night she tried to warn him.
Gabriel returned to the city with Norah and Evelyn.
At the hospital entrance, reporters waited behind barriers.
Questions exploded around them.
Was Gabriel involved in the bombing?
Was the wedding a trap?
Was Sloan Devereaux under arrest?
Gabriel ignored them.
Norah stepped from the SUV beside her mother.
A camera captured Gabriel placing his hand at the small of Norah’s back.
By noon, the image appeared everywhere.
The dead assistant.
The abandoned groom.
The touch no one could explain.
Norah stared at the headline on her phone.
MYSTERY WOMAN AT THE CENTER OF ROMANO WEDDING WAR.
Gabriel looked over her shoulder.
“They make you sound interesting.”
“I was presumed dead yesterday.”
“You have had a productive week.”
She turned toward him.
“This will destroy your public reputation.”
“I’m a suspected criminal whose wedding exploded.”
“You still had a reputation.”
“Did I?”
Her mouth curved.
Then Evelyn entered the hospital room.
She held an old envelope.
“Your father wrote this for you,” she told Gabriel.
“He asked me to give it to you when you were ready to leave the life he built.”
Gabriel stared at the envelope.
“What if I am not ready?”
May you like
Evelyn looked at Norah.
“Then perhaps you should decide what matters more.”
