Chapter 4 - The Night on Route Nine
Sadi did not remember deciding to hit him.
One second she was staring at Gabriel.
The next, her palm cracked across his face.
Every man in the drainage chamber went still.
Gabriel did not raise a hand.
He did not look angry.
He simply turned his face back toward her.
"You knew."
Sadi's voice shook.
"You knew my mother died that night."
"I knew a woman died."
"Her name was Rosa Moreno."
"I learned that later."
"How much later?"
Gabriel's silence lasted one second too long.
"Years."
Sadi laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
"That is convenient."
Enzo stepped between them before she could strike Gabriel again.
"We need to leave."
Sadi pointed at Gabriel.
"He was there when my mother died."
"And if Matteo reaches us before we move, more people will die."
"I do not care about Matteo right now."
Gabriel answered quietly.
"You should."
Sadi glared at him.
"Do not tell me what I should care about."
The captured attacker laughed from the floor.
Enzo hit him hard enough to stop it.
"Take him," Gabriel said.
The loyal guard pulled the prisoner upright.
Sadi did not move.
Gabriel leaned against the concrete pillar.
His strength was fading by the minute.
He still looked at her directly.
"I will tell you what happened on Route Nine."
"Now."
"In the car."
"Now."
Enzo cursed under his breath.
Gabriel gave a small nod.
"Fine."
Rain hammered the drainage grates above them.
The air smelled like wet concrete and gunpowder.
Gabriel began speaking.
"My father had been in a private clinic for three days."
Sadi folded her arms.
"Why?"
"He collapsed during a meeting."
"Heart attack?"
"That was what they told us."
Gabriel glanced toward Enzo.
"My father did not believe them."
Enzo looked away.
Gabriel continued.
"He left the clinic against medical advice."
"And my mother?"
"She was one of the nurses assigned to him."
Sadi's breath caught.
Her mother had worked at St. Catherine's Memorial when Sadi was young.
At least that was what Sadi had always been told.
Gabriel saw the confusion in her face.
"The clinic was not St. Catherine's."
"Then where was it?"
"A private surgical center owned through G.F.H."
Sadi's stomach tightened.
"Giovanni Falcone Holdings."
"Yes."
"Why would my mother work there?"
"Because she found something in my father's blood that the clinic director wanted ignored."
Sadi stared at him.
"What?"
"A drug that was not on his chart."
The words seemed to echo.
She thought of the clear syringe in the bedroom.
The tiny cap beneath Gabriel's chair.
The surgeons insisting his arm had to be removed.
"The same thing they gave you?"
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
"Maybe."
Enzo interrupted.
"We do not know that yet."
Sadi turned on him.
"You knew this too?"
Enzo did not answer.
That answer hurt more than a denial would have.
Gabriel continued before she could confront him.
"Your mother contacted my father privately."
"Why him?"
"Because she believed someone inside the clinic was trying to kill him."
"And then?"
"He arranged to meet her away from the facility."
Sadi could barely breathe.
"On Route Nine."
Gabriel nodded.
"At an abandoned service station near mile marker forty-two."
Sadi knew the place.
It had been demolished years ago.
Her father used to avoid that stretch of road even when it added twenty minutes to a trip.
She had once asked why.
He had said he hated the traffic.
Now she understood that he had lied.
"Who was in the first car?"
Gabriel answered.
"My father, Enzo, and Tomas."
Sadi looked at Enzo.
His face had gone hard.
"My father was there too?"
"Yes."
"Then why did you say you were in the second car?"
Gabriel took a breath.
"Because I followed them."
"Why?"
"I was seventeen."
"That is not an answer."
"I thought my father was hiding another woman."
For one absurd second, Sadi almost laughed.
Gabriel continued.
"I stole my cousin's car and followed from half a mile back."
"Matteo's son's car?"
"Matteo did not have children."
"Then whose?"
Gabriel ignored the question.
"I saw my father's car stop near the service station."
His voice became quieter.
"I saw a woman standing beside a silver sedan."
Sadi's throat tightened.
"My mother."
"I know that now."
"What happened?"
Gabriel looked toward the drainage tunnel as if the answer were still somewhere in the dark behind them.
"Before I reached them, a truck came down the hill."
"What kind of truck?"
"Black utility vehicle with no plates."
"And?"
"It did not slow down."
Sadi felt her nails digging into her palms.
"It hit her car?"
"It hit the silver sedan hard enough to spin it across two lanes."
Sadi closed her eyes.
She had spent years imagining the crash from police photographs her father kept hidden in a drawer.
She had never imagined Gabriel watching it happen.
"Was she inside?"
"She had just opened the driver's door."
Sadi opened her eyes.
"So the truck hit her."
Gabriel nodded once.
"Yes."
The word almost broke her.
She forced herself to stay standing.
"What did you do?"
"I ran toward her."
"Was she alive?"
Gabriel hesitated.
Sadi stepped closer.
"Was my mother alive?"
"For about two minutes."
Her breath left her.
Gabriel continued slowly.
"Tomas reached her first."
"My father."
"He held her."
Sadi looked down.
For years, her father had told her Rosa died instantly.
Another lie.
Gabriel's voice remained steady but quieter than before.
"She kept trying to say something."
"What?"
"I could not hear all of it."
"What did you hear?"
Gabriel's eyes met hers.
"She said, 'Not the bullet.'"
Sadi's skin went cold.
"Not the bullet."
"Yes."
Enzo looked at the ground.
Sadi turned toward him.
"You heard it too."
Enzo nodded.
"Yes."
Sadi looked back at Gabriel's bandaged shoulder.
"She was warning your father."
"That is what we believed."
"About what?"
"The drug in his blood."
A sound came from the prisoner.
Not laughter this time.
A cough.
Then another.
The guard looked down.
The man had begun shaking.
Enzo swore.
"Check his mouth."
The prisoner clenched his teeth.
The guard forced his jaw open.
A broken capsule was lodged beneath his tongue.
Sadi's anger turned to dread.
"Again?"
The attacker looked at her with glassy eyes.
"Nobody leaves G.F.H."
Foam touched his lips.
Sadi crouched beside him.
"Who killed Rosa Moreno?"
The man's eyes rolled toward her.
"Ask the boy in the car."
Sadi looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel's face went blank.
"What boy?"
The attacker smiled weakly.
"The one she saved."
Then his body went still.
The drainage chamber fell silent.
Sadi stood slowly.
"What does that mean?"
Gabriel looked genuinely confused.
"I do not know."
"He said ask the boy in the car."
"I was the only boy there."
"Then what did my mother save you from?"
Gabriel said nothing.
A radio chirped beside Enzo.
He answered.
"Rinaldi."
A male voice came through.
"East team has a vehicle at the old orchard."
Enzo looked at Gabriel.
"We move now."
Sadi wanted to keep demanding answers.
She also knew Gabriel might collapse before she got them.
They climbed a maintenance ladder from the drainage basin into the estate's north orchard.
Rain hit Sadi's face like cold needles.
A black SUV waited beneath the trees with its lights off.
Two armed men stood beside it.
Enzo checked them personally before allowing Gabriel inside.
Sadi climbed into the back seat beside him.
Enzo took the front passenger seat.
The loyal guard drove.
"Where are we going?" Sadi asked.
Enzo answered.
"A clinic Matteo does not own."
Gabriel's eyes remained on Sadi.
"There are very few of those."
The SUV rolled through the orchard and onto a service road.
Sadi looked back toward the estate.
Flames glowed behind the trees.
"Your house is burning."
Gabriel did not turn around.
"It is insured."
"You have a strange way of processing disaster."
"I prefer useful disasters."
Sadi looked at his shoulder.
"Is this one useful?"
"Ask me tomorrow."
The answer angered her because it assumed there would be a tomorrow.
She reached toward the bandage.
"Let me see it."
This time Gabriel did not stop her.
Sadi peeled back one soaked edge.
The skin around the wound looked wrong.
Gray discoloration had spread farther down his upper arm.
His fingers were colder than they had been twenty minutes earlier.
"Enzo."
He turned.
"What?"
"His hand is colder."
Enzo's face tightened.
"How cold?"
"Too cold."
Gabriel flexed his fingers.
The movement was weak.
Sadi looked at him.
"Can you feel this?"
She pressed two fingers against his palm.
"Barely."
"We need a hospital."
"No hospitals," Enzo said.
"Then he loses the arm."
Enzo's phone rang.
He looked at the screen and went still.
Gabriel noticed.
"Who?"
"Dr. Mara Klein."
"Answer."
Enzo put the call on speaker.
A woman's voice came through immediately.
"Do not bring him to my clinic."
Enzo frowned.
"Why?"
"Because three men arrived five minutes ago with federal credentials and a court order."
Gabriel's expression hardened.
"For what?"
"They say Gabriel Falcone has been declared medically incapacitated."
Sadi stared at him.
Dr. Klein continued.
"They also have an arrest warrant for Sadi Moreno."
Sadi's blood went cold.
"For what?"
There was a pause on the line.
"Murder."
Sadi almost laughed from disbelief.
"Whose murder?"
May you like
Dr. Klein answered quietly.
"The fake waiter in Belladonna's freezer."
