The Name Her Father Left Behind
Chapter 02 - The Name Her Father Left Behind
Gabriel did not take Norah home.
He took her to a twenty-four-hour private clinic in River North where no one asked for insurance cards and everyone understood discretion.
Norah sat on an examination table beneath harsh white light while a doctor cleaned the cut across her palm. Four stitches, no tendon damage, bruised ribs, mild concussion. The doctor asked twice if she felt safe going home.
The second time, Norah looked at Gabriel.
“Yes,” she said.
He did not know whether that was trust or resignation.
Outside the treatment room, Ezra Bell, Gabriel’s head of security, arrived carrying a tablet and the unpleasant expression he reserved for news that would cost someone money or freedom.
“The man who attacked her is missing.”
Gabriel leaned against the wall.
“From police custody?”
“He was never booked.”
Gabriel’s gaze sharpened.
Ezra lowered his voice.
“Patrol picked up Miss Hayes after a witness saw her hit him. By the time officers searched the alley, he was gone. Blood on the pavement, no body, no identification.”
“So someone collected him.”
“That would be my guess.”
Gabriel looked through the narrow glass panel in the door.
Norah was speaking to the nurse.
Calmly.
She had always been calm.
He was beginning to wonder how much of that calm had been constructed for survival.
“Find the witness.”
“Already working on it.”
“And Daniel Hayes.”
Ezra’s brows lifted.
“That Daniel Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“I thought your father—”
“So did I.”
Ezra studied him, then walked away.
When Gabriel returned to the room, Norah had put her blazer back on despite the nurse’s disapproval. One side of her blouse had been cleaned with something that left a pale ring around the old bloodstain.
She looked ordinary again.
Almost.
“We need to talk,” Gabriel said.
“I need sleep.”
“You need protection.”
“I need my apartment.”
“That is the last place you’re going.”
Norah slid off the table.
“You don’t decide that.”
“No. The man who followed you decided it when he called you my secretary.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I’m not staying in your house.”
“I didn’t invite you.”
“Good.”
“You’re staying in a hotel under another name.”
“I can pay for my own hotel.”
“You were arrested because someone linked you to me.”
“I was attacked because someone linked me to you.”
A beat passed.
She had meant it as an accusation.
Gabriel accepted it as one.
“Yes.”
The simple answer took some of the air from her anger.
He handed her a paper cup of coffee.
She stared at it.
“You put milk in this.”
“You always take milk.”
“You notice that?”
“I notice everything you put on my desk.”
For the first time that night, something almost human crossed her face.
It vanished quickly.
They sat in a small waiting room with fake leather chairs and a television playing weather reports without sound.
Norah wrapped both hands around the coffee.
“My father was an accountant,” she said.
Gabriel said nothing.
“He worked for a shipping company near the river. That’s what my mother told me. He came home late, kept his office locked, never talked about work. When I was thirteen, he started checking the windows at night.”
“How old were you when he died?”
“Fourteen.”
Gabriel knew the answer, but he wanted to hear how she had been taught to remember it.
“What happened?”
“My mother said his car went off an overpass during a storm.”
“No body?”
Norah looked up sharply.
“How do you know that?”
“Because Daniel Hayes didn’t die in a car accident.”
She set down the coffee.
“Then tell me.”
Gabriel considered lying.
It came easily to men raised in his family. Lies had been dinner conversation, business strategy, protection and punishment.
But Norah had sat outside his office for six years and never once lied to him about something that mattered.
“He worked for my father.”
Her face went pale.
“In what capacity?”
“He handled private accounts.”
“For Rossi Holdings?”
“Not officially.”
She gave a small humorless laugh.
“Of course.”
“My father believed he stole from him.”
“How much?”
“Three million.”
Norah stared at him.
“My father could barely keep our electricity on.”
“That does not mean he didn’t steal it.”
“No. It means if he did, he was remarkably bad at enjoying it.”
Gabriel could not argue with that.
“Your father disappeared two days before mine sent people looking for him.”
“People including you?”
There it was.
The question he had been hoping she would not ask.
He looked at her.
“Yes.”
Norah’s fingers went still around the cup.
“You were what, twenty-four?”
“Twenty-five.”
“And you hunted my father.”
“I looked for a man accused of stealing from my family.”
“Did you find him?”
“No.”
“Did you hurt anyone trying?”
Gabriel held her gaze.
“I don’t know what answer would make you feel better.”
“The true one.”
“Yes.”
She looked away.
No dramatics.
No accusation.
That was worse.
The nurse entered with discharge papers. Norah signed them with her left hand.
In the parking garage, Gabriel’s phone rang.
Ezra.
He answered.
“I found something,” Ezra said. “Daniel Hayes rented a deposit box in 2009 under a corporate alias.”
Gabriel glanced at the brass key hanging beneath Norah’s blouse.
“Which bank?”
“The old Marquette Trust building.”
Gabriel stopped walking.
The bank had been closed for twelve years.
The private vault beneath it, however, had not been demolished. Gabriel knew because Rossi Holdings now owned the building.
Ezra continued.
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“The box was accessed once after Daniel disappeared.”
“By whom?”
A pause.
“Your mother.”
Gabriel said nothing.
His mother had been dead for eleven years.
Norah was watching him.
“What is it?”
Gabriel lowered the phone.
He had spent most of his life believing his father’s story about Daniel Hayes.
Now, for the first time, he wondered whether the thief had been someone else.
“Your key opens a box my mother visited after your father vanished.”
Norah stared at him.
“Why would your mother know about my father?”
Gabriel did not answer because he suddenly remembered an old photograph he had once found in her desk.
His mother had been standing beside an unfamiliar man at a charity dinner.
The man had Daniel Hayes’s eyes.
And on the back, in his mother’s handwriting, were six words Gabriel had never understood.
If Vittorio learns the truth, we are finished.
Norah watched his face change.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Gabriel looked toward the garage exit where rain poured silver beyond the concrete.
May you like
Then he said, “I think my mother knew why your father disappeared.”
And the truth, whatever it was, had been dangerous enough to bury two families with it.
