Chương 13
“That Carlo would do something.”
“You called a man you were blackmailing and told him my mother was taking evidence to a lawyer.”
“I thought he’d make an offer.”
“To who?”
“To her.”
Elena laughed.
It came out broken.
“My mother hated him.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You knew nothing about her by then.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.”
Gabriel’s voice cracked for the first time.
“I loved your sister.”
“My mother was not your sister.”
“She was family.”
“No.”
Elena stepped closer to the phone though there was nowhere closer to go.
“Family doesn’t sell the time someone leaves the house.”
Gabriel said nothing.
The traffic behind him had stopped.
Elena could hear a train horn somewhere far away.
Adrian asked, “Do you know who drove the truck?”
Gabriel answered immediately.
“No.”
“Did Carlo ever mention the crash afterward?”
“Yes.”
Elena’s stomach tightened.
“What did he say?”
“That things had gotten out of control.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Vincent stared at him.
Elena whispered, “Those exact words?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Two days after.”
“Where?”
“In his office.”
“You met him after my mother died?”
“Yes.”
“For money?”
Gabriel did not answer.
Elena looked at Vincent.
He looked sick.
Adrian asked, “Did Dad pay you again?”
Gabriel’s voice came back thin.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Fifty thousand.”
No one spoke.
Elena looked down at her hands.
They had stopped shaking.
That frightened her more than the shaking.
“So he paid you after she died.”
“Yes.”
“And then you used my father’s name years later to take another hundred thousand.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel’s voice cracked.
“I’m not proud of it.”
Elena almost laughed.
“That would be an extraordinary place to find pride.”
Adrian’s eyes remained fixed on the phone.
“Address.”
Gabriel hesitated.
“Why?”
“Because we’re coming.”
“You aren’t bringing police.”
Adrian looked at Elena.
She finally met his eyes.
“No,” she said.
He nodded once.
“No police yet.”
Vincent stared at him.
“You cannot promise that.”
Adrian ignored him.
Gabriel said, “I want protection.”
Elena answered.
“You want leverage.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“At least say it correctly.”
Gabriel breathed out.
Then Vincent’s phone chimed.
A text message appeared with an address in College Point.
Below it was one more line.
Come alone or the documents disappear.
Elena read it over Vincent’s shoulder.
She looked at Adrian.
“I’m going.”
He said nothing for a moment.
Then he nodded.
“So am I.”
Vincent took a step forward.
“No.”
Elena turned to him.
He looked genuinely frightened now.
“Gabriel is unstable.”
“So are half the people in this ballroom.”
“This is different.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Neither do you anymore.”
The sentence hit close enough to be true.
Elena held his gaze.
“Then I’ll meet him as he is now.”
Vincent shook his head.
“You’re walking into extortion.”
“No.”
She looked down at the address again.
“I’m walking into the first room in eleven years where somebody might finally have to tell me the truth to my face.”
Adrian looked at her for a long moment, then reached into his jacket and took out his phone.
“I’m sending the address to one person.”
Elena’s expression hardened.
“You said no police.”
“Not police.”
“Who?”
“My head of security.”
Vincent gave a humorless laugh.
“Of course you have a head of security.”
Adrian ignored him.
Elena said, “No one comes inside unless I say so.”
Adrian met her eyes.
“Agreed.”
Vincent stepped between them.
“This is insane.”
Madison’s voice came from behind him.
“No, what’s insane is that you still think you’re the person in charge.”
They all turned.
She had changed out of the gown.
She wore a plain cream dress and carried the folded veil over one arm.
Her face had been washed clean of most of its makeup.
Vincent stared at her like someone seeing the end of a life he had assumed would continue.
“Maddie.”
She shook her head.
“Not now.”
Then she looked at Elena.
“I’m coming.”
Vincent said, “Absolutely not.”
Madison looked at him.
“You don’t get that sentence anymore.”
Elena almost told her no.
Then she saw something in Madison’s face that had not been there an hour earlier.
Not guilt.
Responsibility.
“Fine.”
Vincent swore under his breath.
He followed them anyway.
The ride to Queens was nearly silent.
Adrian drove.
Elena sat in the passenger seat because she refused to sit behind him.
Madison and Vincent occupied opposite sides of the rear seat with enough space between them to feel like another passenger.
Traffic moved slowly across the bridge.
At one red light, Adrian glanced at Elena’s hands.
She had folded them together so tightly that her knuckles were pale.
“Coffee,” he said.
She looked at him.
“What?”
“You always wanted coffee when you were scared.”
“That was eleven years ago.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
The light turned green.
She looked out the window.
Five minutes later, he pulled into a gas station.
Vincent said, “We don’t have time.”
Adrian shut off the engine.
“We have three minutes.”
Elena almost protested.
Then she realized she was hungry.
Not dramatically hungry.
Ordinarily hungry.
She had not eaten since a piece of toast before dawn.
Inside the store, she bought burnt coffee and a packaged cheese sandwich she would normally have mocked.
Adrian bought nothing.
Madison bought gum.
Vincent stayed in the car.
For two minutes, Elena stood beside a display of windshield fluid and chewed while trucks passed on the road outside.
The normality of it felt obscene and necessary.
When they reached the storage facility, the late afternoon sun had begun to lower behind industrial buildings and rows of chain-link fence.
Gabriel waited beside a faded green sedan near the far end of the lot.
Elena recognized him before he recognized her.
Age had bent him slightly at the shoulders.
His hair was mostly gray.
The scar through his eyebrow had faded.
He looked smaller than the man who had occupied her childhood.
That angered her too.
He lifted one hand.
“Elena.”
She stopped six feet away.
May you like
“No hugs.”
His hand dropped.
