The Lie He Chose to Keep
Chapter 05 - The Lie He Chose to Keep
Norah did not scream.
She wished later that she had.
Screaming would have been simple. Clean. It would have given the fear somewhere to go.
Instead, she stood in her mother’s kitchen and looked at Gabriel Rossi while the refrigerator hummed behind them.
“You found him.”
Gabriel folded the note once.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
“You looked me in the face this morning and said you never found him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the truth was worse.”
Her laugh was quiet.
“That sentence should be carved over the door of every Rossi house.”
He flinched.
Barely.
Norah saw it anyway.
“Tell me.”
Gabriel looked toward the dark hallway.
“We should leave first.”
“My mother is missing.”
“And whoever took her may still be nearby.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
Something in his voice made her stop.
Not authority.
Fear.
For her.
Norah hated that it still mattered.
They left through the back door and met Ezra’s security team two blocks away. Gabriel had summoned them during the drive without telling her.
She was too angry to object.
In the rear seat of another SUV, with Ezra driving and two cars behind them, Gabriel finally spoke.
“I found Daniel in Milwaukee.”
Norah stared ahead.
“He was using another name. He had been hiding for six weeks.”
“From your father?”
“From everyone.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“No.”
“Did your men?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Gabriel rubbed his thumb against the edge of his phone.
A nervous habit.
She had never seen him nervous before.
“He told me my father was behind the bombing.”
Norah turned.
“He told me Elena had discovered Vittorio and Marco were moving money through construction accounts to pay for violence. Daniel had moved records and funds because she asked him to.”
“Then why didn’t you believe him?”
“I was twenty-five.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“My father had spent my entire life teaching me that loyalty was the only difference between family and enemies.”
Norah’s voice went flat.
“So you chose your father.”
“At first.”
“At first.”
Gabriel looked at her now.
“Daniel showed me proof.”
“What proof?”
“Photographs. bank transfers. A recording of Marco arranging the bomb.”
Norah closed her eyes.
“And then?”
“I agreed to help him disappear.”
Her eyes opened.
“What?”
Gabriel’s face tightened.
“I gave him money. New papers. A car. I sent him north toward Canada.”
Hope rose so fast in Norah that it hurt.
“Then he may still be alive.”
Gabriel did not answer.
The hope died.
“What happened?”
“He never reached the border.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You seem to say that often around dead people.”
Ezra glanced into the mirror.
“Miss Hayes.”
“No. Let her.”
Gabriel’s voice was tired.
“I found the car two days later near Green Bay. Blood inside. No body.”
“Whose blood?”
“We didn’t have the testing then.”
“Did you tell my mother?”
“No.”
“Did you tell your mother?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She told me to leave Daniel buried.”
Norah stared at him.
“Buried?”
“She meant the story.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
“You let my mother think he died in an accident.”
“I did not know what she believed.”
“You never asked.”
“No.”
“Because it was inconvenient.”
Gabriel looked away.
“Yes.”
There was no defense.
That made it harder to hate him cleanly.
Ezra’s phone rang.
He answered through the car speakers.
“Bell.”
A distorted male voice filled the cabin.
“Mr. Rossi.”
Gabriel’s entire posture changed.
“Marco.”
Norah’s breath caught.
The voice laughed softly.
“You always were quick.”
“Where is Elaine Hayes?”
“Safe.”
“I want proof.”
“You received it.”
“I want to hear her voice.”
A pause.
Then another voice.
“Norah?”
Her mother.
Norah leaned forward.
“Mom!”
“Norah, don’t—”
The line muffled.
Marco returned.
“Bring the ledger tomorrow at noon.”
“Where?”
“You’ll get instructions.”
Gabriel’s voice was calm enough to frighten Norah.
“If you touch her—”
“You’ll do what? Become your father?”
Silence.
Marco laughed.
“That has always been your problem, Gabriel. You wanted his power but insisted on pretending you were cleaner.”
“I am cleaner.”
“No. You simply employ accountants.”
The call ended.
Ezra swore under his breath.
Norah stared at the dead phone.
“Tomorrow.”
Gabriel nodded.
“We won’t wait.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Marco made a mistake calling from a phone.”
Ezra was already typing.
“It bounced, but I may have a region.”
Norah pressed her uninjured hand to her forehead.
Then something occurred to her.
“Why does he need the ledger?”
“To destroy evidence.”
“No.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“If he only wanted it destroyed, he could have killed me outside the train station and taken the key.”
Ezra slowed his typing.
Norah continued.
“The man who attacked me called me a bonus. He wasn’t after the ledger.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“Then what was he after?”
Norah remembered the alley.
The man’s hand around her coat.
The smell of cigarettes.
A sentence she had not mentioned because, at the time, it had sounded meaningless.
“He asked where Daniel kept the second book.”
Ezra turned slightly.
“Second ledger?”
“I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.”
Gabriel leaned back.
“There’s another set of records.”
“Maybe.”
Norah looked again at the photograph of her mother.
Then she remembered something else.
Her father’s locked office.
A loose floorboard.
A small tin box her mother had once caught Norah trying to open.
Her mother had slapped her hand away so hard Norah cried.
The only time Elaine Hayes had ever struck her.
Norah stared out into the darkness.
“My mother knows where it is.”
Gabriel’s phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number.
One photograph.
It showed Elaine Hayes seated beside a man whose face had aged but whose eyes Norah recognized from an old family picture.
She stopped breathing.
Gabriel took the phone from her.
“What?”
Norah pointed at the man.
“That’s my father.”
May you like
Daniel Hayes was alive.
And he was sitting beside the woman who had spent seventeen years telling Norah he was dead.
