Chapter 4 - THE EMERALD BRACELET
The silence in the attic was suffocating. The rain battered against the high windowpanes, but inside, the air felt completely completely still.
Sofia took a slow step backward, her small hands curling into fists. She looked from the photograph in Gabriel’s hand to his pale face.
“No,” Sofia said, her voice shaking but fiercely defiant. “My mom is Elena. She read to me every night. She smelled like vanilla. Madeline smells like chemicals and yells at the maids. She’s not my mother.”
Gabriel dropped to one knee, bringing himself to eye level with the nine-year-old girl. His dark eyes were filled with an agony I had never seen in a man so feared. “Sofia, mia piccola, listen to me. I love you more than my own life. Who brought you into this world doesn’t change that you are mine.”
“But if Madeline is my mother,” Sofia’s voice cracked, tears finally spilling over her lashes, “then why did she steal Mom’s sewing machine? Why did she want to marry you if she’s my real mom?”
I stood by the cedar wardrobe, holding Lily close to me. My mind raced through the implications. If Madeline was Sofia’s biological mother, she had likely given her to Elena to raise. But why? And why re-enter Gabriel’s life, pretend to be a devoted assistant, orchestrate her sister's death, and then try to marry the mafia boss who was raising her child?
“Mr. Moretti,” I said quietly, interrupting the heartbreaking moment. “Look at the Swiss bank document.”
Gabriel stood up, wiping a hand across his face to compose himself. He broke the red wax seal on the thick envelope and pulled out the crisp, heavy parchment pages.
He read the first page, his brow furrowing deeply. Then he flipped to the second, and his breath hitched.
“This is a trust fund,” Gabriel said, his voice cold and flat. “Established twelve years ago by the former boss of the syndicate. The man whose cufflink was inside the rosary.”
“Who is the beneficiary?” I asked.
“Sofia,” Gabriel read, his finger tracing the typewritten lines. “A trust worth fifty million dollars, locked until she turns eighteen… or until her legal mother claims guardianship in the event of Elena’s death.”
The pieces of the nightmare suddenly snapped into a terrifying, cohesive picture.
“That’s why Madeline wanted to marry you,” I whispered, the horror creeping up my throat. “If she married you, she officially becomes Sofia’s stepmother. But if you were out of the picture, and she proved she was the biological mother, she would get sole control of the fifty million.”
Gabriel’s eyes darkened with a lethal, terrifying rage. “She wasn’t just trying to marry me for power. She was securing her claim before she killed me, too.”
Suddenly, the heavy oak door of the attic creaked open.
We all spun around. Standing in the doorway, dripping wet and breathing heavily, was one of Gabriel’s security guards. The same man who had driven Madeline away in the black SUV just twenty minutes ago.
He wasn't holding a gun. He was clutching his ribs, and blood was seeping through his white dress shirt.
“Boss,” the guard choked out, leaning against the doorframe. “We didn’t make it to the warehouse. An armored truck T-boned us on the coastal highway. They hit us hard. Six guys with automatic weapons pulled her out of the back seat.”
“Who?” Gabriel demanded, closing the distance between them and gripping the man’s uninjured shoulder. “Who took her?”
“It was the old crew,” the guard coughed, his knees buckling slightly. “It was him, Boss. The old man. He’s out of federal prison.”
Gabriel’s face went rigid. The former boss. The man who owned the gold cufflink. The man who had established the fifty-million-dollar trust for Sofia.
“Why would the old boss set up a trust fund for your daughter?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
Gabriel looked at Sofia, then at me. “Because before I took over the family, Madeline was his mistress. Sofia isn't my biological daughter. She’s his.”
My blood ran cold. Sofia wasn't just a child caught in a crossfire. She was the sole heir to the old empire, and Madeline had been playing a long, bloody game to reclaim both her daughter and the throne.
“Get the cars ready,” Gabriel ordered the guard, turning instantly into a commander. “We lock down the estate. Nobody gets in or out.”
As Gabriel turned to usher us toward the stairs, my daughter, Lily, pulled away from my side.
She walked over to the cedar wardrobe. She wasn't looking at the red winter coat. She was looking at the bottom of the wardrobe, where Elena’s old leather boots were lined up.
“Mommy,” Lily said, pointing her small finger at the floorboards. “There’s something shiny down there.”
I knelt down beside her. Wedged between the floorboards, hidden entirely by the shadow of the boots, was a piece of jewelry. I pried it loose with my fingernail and pulled it out into the dim attic light.
It was a heavy, platinum bracelet embedded with square-cut emeralds. But the clasp was violently twisted and broken, as if it had been ripped off someone’s wrist.
Gabriel saw it, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Where did you find that?” Gabriel breathed.
“In the floorboards,” I said, holding it out. “Is it Elena’s?”
“No,” Gabriel said, staring at the broken emeralds with absolute dread. “I bought that bracelet for Madeline three weeks ago. She was wearing it tonight at the party.”
I looked down at the heavy platinum piece in my hand.
“If Madeline was wearing this tonight,” I said, my voice trembling, “how did it get broken and shoved under the floorboards of a locked attic while we were at the hotel?”
May you like
Gabriel reached for his gun holster beneath his jacket.
“Because she didn’t just get kidnapped on the highway,” Gabriel whispered. “She staged it. Madeline is already inside the house.”
