The Apartment With No History
Chapter 05 - The Apartment With No History
Gabriel did not take Norah back to the garage.
He took her to a safe apartment in Tribeca with two exits, bulletproof windows, and no photographs on the walls. The place had been designed for men who needed to disappear temporarily and return with cleaner stories. Its furniture was expensive, impersonal, and untouched by any human softness.
Norah stood in the living room holding her handbag like a shield.
“I’m not staying here.”
Gabriel removed his coat. “You are.”
“No.”
He turned.
The word no, coming from her, sounded nothing like defiance for show. It had weight. It had history. It was the word of someone who had already lost too many choices and would not surrender another one just because a powerful man thought he was being kind.
Gabriel softened his voice. “Victor knows about the garage. He knows about Leo. Until I know who else he told, you need a secure place.”
“And if I say I prefer my car?”
“Then I’ll sleep in the hallway beside your car.”
That stopped her.
He had not meant it charmingly. He had meant it literally, which seemed to irritate her more.
“Do you understand how absurd you sound?”
“I’ve sounded worse.”
Norah looked away before the faintest smile could decide whether to become real.
Elias brought her bag from the office. Not the handbag. A duffel he had found in the Honda’s trunk, packed with folded clothes, toiletries, a pill organizer, and the kind of thrift-store orderliness that made poverty look almost elegant if one did not look too closely.
Norah saw it in his hand and flushed.
Gabriel turned to Elias. “Kitchen.”
Elias set it down and left without comment.
Norah stared at Gabriel. “You ordered him away so I wouldn’t be embarrassed.”
“Yes.”
“I’m still embarrassed.”
“I know.”
That answer did something neither of them expected.
It made the room honest.
Norah sat on the edge of the sofa as if the fabric might accuse her of theft. Her fingers found the frayed seam of her handbag.
“My mother kept asking me to let Leo go.”
Gabriel remained standing.
“She said I was ruining both our lives. She wasn’t cruel. She was tired. She had loved him through the first year, the second. But she couldn’t watch the bills turn every meal into arithmetic.”
Norah swallowed.
“The week before she died, she said someone had called about Leo’s accident. She said there were papers we never got. I thought it was grief. She was short of breath. Confused sometimes.”
“What happened after that?”
“She went to St. Agnes to request his full medical and legal file. Two days later she collapsed in the grocery store.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Norah looked at him sharply. “Don’t make that face.”
“What face?”
“The one men make when they’re about to turn pain into a strategy.”
A reluctant respect moved through him.
“You are very hard to manipulate.”
“I’ve had practice.”
His phone vibrated.
Elias again.
Gabriel answered on speaker because hiding things now felt insulting.
“We opened the flash drive,” Elias said. “It’s encrypted, but the outer file has metadata. Created three years ago. Modified two weeks after Norah’s mother died.”
Norah went still.
“By who?” Gabriel asked.
“User ID belongs to Celia Costa.”
Gabriel did not recognize the name for a second because no one had called his mother Celia since before his father died.
Then the name struck.
“My mother?”
Norah’s face turned toward him.
Gabriel tightened his grip on the phone. “She’s been in Palermo for months.”
“She flew into New York yesterday,” Elias said. “Private jet. No announcement.”
Gabriel’s jaw shifted.
His mother had avoided the city since his father’s funeral. She claimed Manhattan smelled of betrayal. She sent gifts, warnings, and holy medals, never herself.
“Where is she now?”
“At the old townhouse.”
Gabriel ended the call.
Norah stood. “Your mother modified the file after my mother died?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“But you know it means something.”
Yes.
He knew that.
Celia Costa never entered a room by accident. If she was in New York, she had either come to bury a secret or resurrect one.
Gabriel moved toward the door.
Norah followed.
“No,” he said.
She grabbed her coat.
“Mr. Costa, with respect, I have been cold, hungry, overworked, underpaid, lied to, and apparently watched by your accountant. I am not adding left behind to the list.”
He stared at her.
Then he opened the door.
In the hallway stood Elias, his face pale.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“Victor Hale is dead.”
Norah’s fingers tightened around her coat.
May you like
Elias glanced at her, then back to Gabriel.
“And whoever killed him left your mother’s rosary in his hand.”
