Chapter 7 - The Brother Who Died Twice
Gabriel looked at the photograph for nearly a minute without speaking.
Nobody interrupted him.
Sadi had seen men react to death before.
She had never seen a man react to resurrection.
"How did Victor die?" she finally asked.
Gabriel handed the phone back to Enzo.
"Boat explosion."
"You saw it?"
"I saw the fire."
"Did you see his body?"
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
"No."
Sadi looked at Enzo.
"Did you?"
"A body was recovered."
"That was not my question."
Enzo rubbed a hand over his face.
"The body was badly burned."
"Who identified it?"
Enzo went silent.
Sadi already knew she was going to hate the answer.
Gabriel supplied it.
"Matteo."
Sadi laughed once in disbelief.
"Of course he did."
Gabriel looked at the photograph again.
"There was dental confirmation."
Mara, still working beside the exam table, stopped.
"Who signed it?"
Gabriel's eyes moved toward her.
Mara already knew.
"Harker," she said.
Enzo checked something on his phone.
His face darkened.
"Leonard Harker signed the forensic report."
Sadi stared at the dead surgeon's name on the screen.
"So the man who tried to poison Gabriel tonight also certified his brother's death twelve years ago."
"Yes," Enzo said.
Gabriel's voice became flat.
"Get the original records."
"Already trying."
Mara injected medication into Gabriel's clean IV.
"You are not going anywhere for twenty minutes."
"Ten."
"Twenty."
"Fifteen."
"You are bargaining with a doctor who controls your pain medication."
Gabriel leaned back.
"Twenty."
Sadi almost smiled despite herself.
Then her mind returned to the photograph.
"Why would Victor fake his death?"
Gabriel stared at the ceiling.
"We fought."
"About what?"
"Control."
"Of the family?"
"Of everything my father left behind."
Sadi waited.
Gabriel continued.
"Victor was older by eleven months."
"Eleven months?"
"Different mothers."
Sadi raised an eyebrow.
"Your family really does not do normal."
"I warned you."
"What happened to his mother?"
"She left when he was six."
"And yours?"
Gabriel's expression changed slightly.
"Died when I was nine."
Sadi did not ask how.
Not yet.
"Victor expected to inherit."
"Yes."
"But you did."
"My father changed the succession plan six months before he died."
Enzo looked at Gabriel.
"Because Victor was working with Matteo."
Gabriel's eyes sharpened.
"You never proved that."
"I did not have to after Victor died."
"Apparently you did."
Mara removed the ultrasound probe.
"Pulse is slightly stronger."
Sadi looked at Gabriel's hand.
Some color had returned to two fingers.
"Is that good?"
"It means I am buying time."
"How much?"
"Not enough."
The answer irritated Sadi because every person in the room seemed to specialize in incomplete information.
Enzo's phone rang.
He answered and listened.
"Send it."
A document arrived seconds later.
He opened the old death certificate.
Sadi leaned over his shoulder.
Victor Falcone.
Male.
Age twenty-six.
Cause of death listed as thermal trauma and blunt-force injury following maritime explosion.
The signature at the bottom belonged to Leonard Harker.
A second signature appeared beside it.
Matteo Falcone.
Then Sadi noticed the time.
"Wait."
Enzo looked at her.
"What?"
She pointed.
"The body was identified at 6:10 a.m."
"Yes."
"When did the boat explode?"
Gabriel answered.
"Just after midnight."
"Where?"
"Forty miles offshore."
Sadi frowned.
"They recovered a burned body from forty miles offshore, transported it to shore, transferred it to a medical examiner, completed enough examination for identification, and had Matteo sign paperwork in under six hours?"
Enzo's face changed.
Gabriel sat up again.
"The Coast Guard report said the wreckage was not recovered until eight."
Everyone became still.
Sadi pointed at the document.
"Then this certificate was signed before they found the body."
Enzo stared at the timestamp.
"Jesus."
Gabriel's expression became frighteningly calm.
"Victor planned his death."
Sadi corrected him.
"Victor and Matteo planned it."
Mara looked toward the door.
"If he has been alive for twelve years, where has he been?"
Gabriel answered without hesitation.
"Inside the things I thought Matteo controlled."
Enzo understood.
"Shell companies."
"Hospitals."
"Security contractors."
"G.F.H."
Sadi felt the conspiracy become larger again.
Victor was not a ghost hiding in another country.
He had been operating inside Gabriel's own world.
"Why reveal himself now?"
Gabriel looked at his injured arm.
"Because he thinks he has already won."
Gabriel stared at Victor's falsified death certificate again.
"He hated the water."
Sadi looked at him.
"What?"
"Victor hated boats."
Enzo's eyes lifted.
Gabriel continued.
"He got trapped beneath a dock when he was ten."
"He would not step onto a boat for years afterward."
Sadi looked at the maritime death report.
"And twelve years ago he suddenly took a boat forty miles offshore at midnight."
"Exactly."
The absurdity made the forgery feel even more obvious.
Gabriel's face changed as old memories rearranged themselves.
"The week before he died, Victor emptied one apartment but left everything in his bedroom at the estate."
"Clothes, watches, photographs, all of it."
Enzo frowned.
"We thought he wanted us to believe he had not planned anything."
"No."
Gabriel looked toward the dark window.
"He wanted me to keep looking at the room instead of asking what was missing."
Sadi asked, "What was missing?"
Gabriel thought.
"One black ledger my father kept in the study."
Enzo went still.
"You never told me that was missing."
Gabriel looked at him.
"I was twenty-seven and burying my brother."
"I thought my father had moved it."
Enzo's face tightened.
"That ledger contained the old trustee map."
Sadi looked between them.
"Meaning Victor knew every dormant G.F.H. company."
"Every one my father knew about," Gabriel said.
Mara removed a blood-pressure cuff from his good arm.
"So your dead brother spent twelve years with a road map to your hidden companies."
Gabriel's expression became cold.
"And I spent twelve years buying companies he was already inside."
Sadi understood the scale of it.
Victor had not returned to Gabriel's world tonight.
He had never left it.
He had simply learned how to stand behind other names.
"That is why the medical contracts were still alive," Sadi said.
Mara nodded.
"And why Harker could keep moving between private hospitals without anyone connecting them."
Gabriel stared at the death certificate one last time.
"I buried a stranger."
Sadi heard the grief beneath the anger.
"You buried what they gave you."
Gabriel looked at her.
For once he did not argue.
As if summoned by the thought, Enzo's phone rang again.
This time the caller ID showed a blocked number.
Gabriel held out his hand.
Enzo gave him the phone.
Gabriel answered.
"Victor."
A man's laugh came through the speaker.
It was quiet and familiar.
"You always were quicker than Enzo."
Gabriel's face hardened.
"Where are you?"
"Close enough to see what they did to my old room."
Sadi realized Victor had been inside the estate.
Gabriel did too.
"You burned my house."
"West wing only."
"Sentimental."
"You kept Mother's piano."
Gabriel's eyes changed.
"You do not get to say her name."
Victor laughed again.
"Still angry."
"Still alive."
"For now."
Sadi moved closer to the phone.
Victor heard the movement.
"Is Rosa's daughter there?"
Sadi's skin went cold.
Gabriel answered.
"You do not say her name either."
"Protective already."
"Interested in keeping witnesses alive."
Victor sighed.
"She was never supposed to become a witness tonight."
Sadi leaned toward the phone.
"Then why was I there?"
Silence.
Victor's tone changed.
"Hello, Sadi."
"Answer me."
"You sound like Tomas."
"You knew my father."
"Very well."
"Did you kill him?"
Gabriel looked at her sharply.
Victor paused.
"No."
"Did Matteo?"
Another pause.
"No."
Sadi's anger sharpened.
"Then who did?"
Victor's answer was almost gentle.
"Your father killed himself the day he chose Gabriel's family over his own."
Sadi gripped the edge of the exam table.
"You are lying."
"Ask Enzo why Tomas spent his final six years looking over his shoulder."
Enzo said nothing.
Victor continued.
"Ask him why your mother had to die on Route Nine."
"You mean why you killed her."
"Rosa died because she opened a file she was warned not to open."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only one you need."
Gabriel cut in.
"What do you want?"
Victor's voice turned cold.
"What Tomas stole."
"We do not have it."
"Sadi does."
She shook her head even though Victor could not see her.
"I do not know what you are talking about."
"You have had it since you were twelve."
Sadi's mind raced through everything her father had ever given her.
A cheap watch.
A brass key.
A stack of old photographs.
A toolbox after she moved into her first apartment.
Nothing seemed valuable.
Victor continued.
"Your father thought ordinary things were invisible."
Sadi's pulse jumped.
The toolbox.
She still had it.
It sat in the closet of her apartment beneath a winter coat.
She forced her face to remain blank.
Gabriel noticed anyway.
Victor's voice softened.
"You remembered something."
Sadi said nothing.
"Good."
Gabriel looked at her.
"Victor, if you want something, come ask me for it."
"I already did."
"When?"
"Nine seventeen."
Gabriel's hand tightened around the phone.
Victor continued.
"The bullet was never meant to kill you."
Sadi looked at Gabriel's shoulder.
"We figured that out."
Victor laughed.
"Then you also know why the arm matters."
Gabriel said nothing.
"A Falcone principal who cannot sign, cannot hold a weapon, cannot appear before the trustees, and requires narcotics to remain conscious is medically compromised."
"The clause requires twelve hours."
"It used to."
Gabriel's eyes narrowed.
"What did you do?"
"Matteo amended the emergency protocol after the warehouse bombing last year."
Enzo's face went white.
"Six hours."
Victor smiled through the phone.
"Exactly."
Sadi looked at the clock.
It was 2:41 a.m.
The deadline was not 9:17.
It was 3:17.
They had thirty-six minutes.
Gabriel understood at the same moment.
Victor's final words came softly.
May you like
"You should have let them take the arm, brother."
The line went dead.
