Chapter 11 - Tomas's Worst Mistake
Sadi did not take her eyes off Victor.
"You used my father."
Victor looked at the cassette recorder instead of her.
"Keep listening."
"Answer me."
Enzo's gun rose another inch.
"She asked you a question."
Victor finally looked at Sadi.
"Tomas volunteered."
"For what?"
"To get me away from Matteo."
Sadi almost laughed.
"You expect me to believe Matteo was your enemy?"
"He became my enemy the moment I stopped being useful."
"When was that?"
"Twelve years ago."
"The year you died."
"Exactly."
Sadi pressed play again.
Tomas's voice returned.
"Victor came to me saying he had proof Matteo ordered Rosa's death."
Sadi looked at Victor.
He did not react.
"He said he wanted to testify, but Matteo would kill him before he reached a courtroom."
The recording hissed.
"I believed him because I wanted someone to pay for what happened to your mother."
Sadi felt anger rising toward a dead man she loved.
Tomas continued.
"I helped falsify the access logs at a marina."
"I gave Victor a route out through a G.F.H. cargo vessel."
"I did not fake the body."
"That part was already arranged."
Enzo looked at Victor.
"By Harker."
Victor nodded once.
The recording continued.
"Three weeks later, I learned Victor had taken two cases of Vascorin-X from the old clinic archive."
Mara's drug.
Gabriel's poisoning.
Sadi's skin turned cold.
"He never planned to testify."
Tomas's voice roughened.
"He planned to disappear with the one thing Matteo could not reproduce."
Victor stepped toward the recorder.
Sadi blocked him.
"Do not touch it."
Tomas continued.
"The original manufacturing file."
Enzo frowned.
"Why would he need that?"
Victor answered before the tape did.
"Insurance."
Sadi looked at him.
"Against Matteo?"
"Against everyone."
Tomas's recorded voice overlapped him.
"Victor believed the drug could make any death look like medical failure."
"He was right."
"I realized too late that I had not helped a frightened man escape."
"I had helped a dangerous man become invisible."
Sadi turned the recorder off.
The silence felt heavier than the words.
Victor looked almost bored.
"He always did enjoy speeches."
Sadi hit him.
Her fist landed against his mouth.
Victor stumbled into the lockers.
Enzo did not stop her.
Victor touched his lip and looked at the blood on his fingers.
"Definitely Tomas's daughter."
Sadi raised her fist again.
Victor's hand closed around her wrist.
Enzo cocked the gun.
"Let go."
Victor released her.
"The moral outrage is charming, but Gabriel is still dying."
Sadi looked toward the phone held by one of Victor's men at the basement stairs.
Gabriel's heart rate had fallen again.
"What do you need from the locker?"
Victor pointed to the second key.
"That."
Sadi picked it up.
Unlike the brass key, this one was blackened steel with no markings.
"What does it open?"
"A door Tomas helped design."
"Where?"
"The old G.F.H. surgical center."
Enzo's eyes narrowed.
"It was demolished."
Victor smiled through the blood on his lip.
"The building was."
Sadi understood first.
"The archive was underground."
Victor looked at her.
"Exactly."
Enzo stared at him.
"You have been looking for the archive for twelve years."
"So has Matteo."
"Why could neither of you open it?"
Victor looked at Sadi's key.
"Because Tomas changed the internal lock after he discovered I had lied to him."
Sadi looked at the envelope from the false panel.
Her name was not on this one.
Only two letters.
G.F.
Gabriel Falcone.
Victor's expression sharpened when he saw it.
"Open that."
Sadi held it away from him.
"It is not addressed to you."
"It was hidden in the same locker."
"And your name is not Gabriel."
"Close enough."
"Not according to your father."
Victor's eyes darkened.
That hit harder than the punch.
Sadi opened the envelope.
Inside was a folded sheet of paper.
Tomas had written a short note.
Gabriel,
If this reaches you, the same people who killed Rosa have come back for your family.
The archive door requires the Moreno key and the Falcone signet.
Do not use Victor's ring.
His ring opens the wrong door.
Sadi stopped.
Enzo leaned closer.
"Wrong door?"
Victor moved forward.
"Give me that."
Enzo shoved the gun against his chest.
"Stay where you are."
Victor looked at Sadi.
"Tomas was paranoid."
"He was usually paranoid about real people trying to kill him."
She kept reading.
If Victor is alive, he will tell you Matteo controlled everything.
Matteo controlled much of it.
Not all.
Victor made his own choices.
Ask him who drove the black truck on Route Nine.
Sadi stopped breathing.
Victor's face changed.
Enzo saw it too.
"You."
Victor's calm cracked.
"Tomas did not know what he thought he knew."
Sadi stepped toward him.
"Were you driving?"
"No."
"Were you in the truck?"
"No."
"Then why are you afraid of a dead man's note?"
Victor looked at the phone showing Gabriel.
"Because dead men cannot be cross-examined."
Enzo's voice dropped.
"You were eighteen."
Victor turned toward him.
"And you were already carrying a gun for Vittorio."
"I never ran a woman down with a truck."
"Neither did I."
Sadi read the final line.
The truth is in Rosa's file beneath the clinic.
Do not let Matteo or Victor reach it first.
She folded the note.
"We go to the archive."
Victor smiled slightly.
"Finally."
"Gabriel goes too."
Victor's smile faded.
"No."
"The note says the door needs the Falcone signet."
Victor lifted his ring.
"I have one."
"It says not to use yours."
Enzo looked at Victor's black stone ring.
"You said Gabriel was somewhere Matteo would not look."
Victor's jaw tightened.
"He is close."
"Bring him."
"No."
Sadi held up the black key.
"Then this stays in my hand, and the archive stays closed."
Victor stared at her.
"You think you control the situation."
"No."
Sadi slipped the key into her closed fist.
"I think my father built one thing you cannot shoot open."
Victor looked at Enzo.
"She always like this?"
Enzo answered.
"You have known her longer than I have tonight."
Victor exhaled.
Then he made a call.
"Bring Gabriel."
Sadi's heart jumped.
The man on the phone asked something.
Victor's expression hardened.
"I said bring him."
He ended the call.
"Satisfied?"
"No."
"Good."
They waited in the old basketball court.
Sadi sat on the first row of bleachers while Victor's men watched every exit.
Enzo stood beside the scorer's table.
Victor paced beneath a banner from a high-school tournament held sixteen years earlier.
Sadi remembered her father replacing those ceiling lights on a Sunday afternoon.
She had sat on the floor doing homework.
He had dropped a screwdriver and made her climb the ladder to bring it back.
She had complained the entire way.
He had laughed.
Now she wondered whether he had been teaching her not to fear heights or teaching her how to move through spaces other people ignored.
A van arrived twenty minutes later.
Gabriel was brought through the service entrance.
He walked under his own power for five steps.
Then his right knee nearly folded.
Sadi moved before she thought.
One of Victor's men blocked her.
"Move," she said.
The man looked at Victor.
Victor nodded.
Sadi reached Gabriel.
His skin was cold.
"You look terrible."
His mouth moved faintly.
"Mara said the same thing."
Relief hit Sadi so hard she became angry at him for it.
"Where is she?"
"Escaped."
Victor looked irritated.
Gabriel continued.
"She broke a man's hand with an oxygen cylinder."
Sadi almost smiled.
"I like her."
"Most people do after she injures someone else."
Victor approached.
"Touching reunion over?"
Gabriel looked at him.
The brothers stood ten feet apart for the first time in twelve years.
Nobody spoke.
Victor smiled first.
"Hello, Gabriel."
Gabriel's expression did not change.
"You look disappointingly alive."
Victor laughed.
"You look appropriately miserable."
Gabriel's eyes dropped to the ring.
"You wore Father's signet to poison me."
"Technically, it was my signet."
"You lost the right to it when we buried you."
"You buried a stranger."
Gabriel took one slow step closer.
"I can correct that."
Victor's men raised their weapons.
Sadi stepped between the brothers.
"We are going to the archive."
Gabriel looked at her.
She handed him Tomas's note.
He read it.
His expression changed at Route Nine.
Then he looked at Victor.
"You drove the truck."
Victor's smile vanished.
"Your waitress has been filling your head."
"Tomas wrote it."
"Tomas hated me."
"He helped save you."
"And regretted it."
"Smart man."
Victor looked at Sadi.
"Enough history."
He pointed toward the door.
"We leave now."
The old G.F.H. surgical center lay beneath the remains of a warehouse forty minutes from the gym.
Concrete rubble covered the lot.
Only a loading ramp remained intact.
Victor led them through a locked service tunnel.
The air became colder as they descended.
At the bottom stood a steel door without a handle.
Two narrow slots were embedded in the wall.
One was brass.
One was black.
Sadi looked at her key.
Gabriel removed a plain gold signet ring from a chain beneath his shirt.
Victor stared at it.
"You kept Father's ring."
Gabriel ignored him.
Sadi inserted the black key.
Gabriel pressed the gold signet into the second slot.
The steel door unlocked with a deep mechanical sound.
Victor smiled.
"At last."
Gabriel looked at Sadi.
"Ready?"
"No."
"Good answer."
They opened the door.
Motion lights flickered on one by one.
Rows of sealed archive cabinets stretched into darkness.
At the center stood a glass enclosure with two biometric terminals.
Victor stepped forward.
A speaker above the door crackled.
A recorded voice began playing.
It was Tomas.
"If both of you are standing here, then I failed to keep Sadi out of this."
Gabriel looked at her.
Victor stopped moving.
Tomas's voice continued.
"The archive requires two living keys."
"One from the Falcone bloodline."
"One from Rosa Moreno's bloodline."
Sadi stared at the biometric terminals.
Victor turned toward her slowly.
May you like
His eyes changed.
"Now," he said, "I understand why Matteo wanted you alive."
