Chapter 2 - THE WATCH ON HER WRIST
“Say it again,” Gabriel murmured. “Looking right at me.”
Francesca stared at him.
One of the guards beside the glass wall seemed deeply interested in the city skyline.
The other was studying the floor.
Frankie folded her arms.
“You want me to insult you again?”
“I want to hear whether you lose your nerve the second time.”
That did it.
She stepped closer until only Gabriel’s desk stood between them.
Then she repeated the Sicilian phrase exactly as her grandmother would have delivered it.
Slow.
Precise.
Utterly disrespectful.
Gabriel listened.
When she finished, he nodded thoughtfully.
“Better.”
Frankie blinked.
“Better?”
“More conviction.”
“You’re insane.”
“Possibly.”
He returned to his chair.
That bothered her more than shouting would have.
Frankie had walked into the penthouse prepared for intimidation.
She knew men like Gabriel Costa existed because men like him had always existed.
Different suits.
Different buildings.
Same belief that everyone had a price.
But Gabriel wasn’t behaving the way she expected.
He poured himself water.
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t an order.”
“It sounded like one.”
“Most things I say do.”
Frankie remained standing.
Gabriel almost smiled again.
Then his expression changed.
“Your brother told me he owned the garage.”
“He lied.”
“So I’m discovering.”
“He owns forty percent.”
“And you own sixty.”
“Yes.”
“Your father’s will?”
Frankie’s eyes narrowed.
“You investigate everyone who comes upstairs?”
“I investigate everyone who owes me three hundred thousand dollars.”
There was no threat in his voice.
That somehow made the number heavier.
Frankie planted both hands on the desk.
“Leo made the debt. Leo repays the debt.”
“With what?”
“That sounds like his problem.”
“It became mine when he borrowed my money.”
“He borrowed money from a card game.”
“A card game operating in a club I own.”
Frankie straightened.
“So you admit this is yours.”
“The debt is.”
“And the men who did that to his face?”
Gabriel stopped.
“What men?”
Frankie laughed once.
“Don’t.”
“I asked you a question.”
“My brother came into my garage looking like somebody introduced his face to a staircase.”
Gabriel’s eyes sharpened.
“You believe I ordered that?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
He reached for the phone on his desk.
Frankie moved instantly.
“No.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“You don’t get to make another call and then tell me nobody knows where my brother is.”
For the first time, one guard moved.
Gabriel raised one finger without looking at him.
The guard stopped.
Gabriel’s attention remained on Frankie.
“I was going to ask who collected from Leo.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
That answer disturbed her.
Gabriel leaned back.
“My club has rules. One of them is that debts do not get collected by breaking faces.”
“How civilized.”
“I didn’t say the club was a church.”
“No. Churches usually steal less.”
One guard coughed.
Gabriel’s mouth twitched.
Then he became serious again.
“Leo came here yesterday afternoon. He had no swollen eye.”
Frankie stared at him.
“You saw him?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He asked for forty-eight hours.”
“He told me you demanded the garage.”
Gabriel was quiet.
“I was told the garage had been offered as collateral.”
“By Leo?”
“By someone speaking for him.”
“Who?”
Gabriel didn’t answer immediately.
That was the first time Frankie saw genuine suspicion in his face.
Not toward her.
Toward something behind the story.
“He told me the property was his,” Gabriel said.
“Then whoever checked didn’t check very hard.”
“No.”
A beat passed.
“They did not.”
Frankie didn’t like how calmly he said it.
Men with Gabriel’s kind of control became dangerous when they discovered someone had used their name without permission.
But that was Gabriel’s problem.
She had her own.
“I’m leaving with one thing clear. You’re not getting my father’s garage.”
Gabriel studied her.
“What if I offered fair market value?”
“No.”
“Double.”
“No.”
“Triple.”
“You could offer me the building we’re standing in.”
“That would be financially irresponsible.”
“I’d still say no.”
“Why?”
Frankie stared at him.
“You have to ask?”
“I understand sentiment. I’m asking whether that’s all.”
She looked down at the grease beneath her thumbnail.
“My father arrived in this country with eighty-seven dollars.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“He rented one service bay behind a tire shop. Slept there for six months. Built his first toolbox from scrap lumber because he couldn’t afford a real one.”
Her voice hardened.
“When my mother got sick, that garage paid for medicine. When Leo needed braces, the garage paid for them. When my father died, that garage was the last place that still smelled like his coffee.”
Gabriel’s expression shifted.
Only slightly.
Frankie continued.
“So no. It isn’t real estate.”
Something quiet settled between them.
Gabriel looked away first.
“My father used to say buildings were only valuable because of what people survived inside them.”
Frankie hadn’t expected that.
She also hadn’t expected sadness.
It disappeared quickly.
Gabriel opened a drawer.
He removed Leo’s debt marker and placed it on the desk.
“Forty-eight hours.”
“For what?”
“For me to find out who told me your garage was available.”
Frankie looked at the paper but didn’t touch it.
“And after forty-eight hours?”
“If Leo owes the money legitimately, he still owes it.”
“And my property?”
“Remains yours.”
She searched his face.
“Just like that?”
“No.”
“There it is.”
“You stop your brother from disappearing.”
Frankie frowned.
“He isn’t disappearing.”
“You sure?”
“He came home.”
“After somebody beat him.”
She didn’t answer.
Gabriel tapped the debt marker once.
“People who use someone else’s name usually don’t like loose ends.”
That landed.
Frankie hated it because he was right.
“I can protect my brother.”
Gabriel’s eyes dropped briefly to her hands.
Grease-stained.
Callused.
A shallow burn scar crossed the base of her thumb.
“I believe you think that.”
Her temper returned.
“I don’t need—”
She pushed away from the desk.
Her canvas sleeve pulled back.
Gabriel stopped speaking.
His eyes had fixed on her wrist.
Frankie followed his gaze.
An old steel watch sat against her skin.
The crystal was scratched.
The black leather strap had been replaced twice.
She had worn it almost every day since her father died.
Gabriel stood.
Every trace of humor disappeared.
“Where did you get that?”
Frankie instinctively covered it.
“My father.”
Gabriel came around the desk.
Not threatening this time.
Something else.
He looked shaken.
“Take it off.”
“No.”
“Francesca.”
“Don’t.”
Gabriel stopped.
She had never heard her name sound like that from him.
Not ownership.
Recognition.
He looked at the watch again.
“There’s an engraving beneath the back plate.”
Frankie frowned.
“How would you know?”
Gabriel did not answer.
Slowly, she removed the watch.
He didn’t take it.
Instead, he pointed toward the clasp.
“Turn it over.”
She did.
There were tiny marks she had never noticed beneath years of wear.
V.C.
Frankie looked up.
Gabriel’s face had gone pale.
“My father’s initials,” he said.
Her stomach tightened.
“That was Salvatore Moretti’s watch.”
“It was my father’s.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel’s eyes lifted to hers.
“Because my father gave it to him.”
Frankie stared.
“For what?”
For several seconds Gabriel seemed to be looking at something twenty years away.
Then he answered.
“Because your father pulled me out of my father’s car the night it crashed.”
Frankie stopped breathing.
Gabriel looked at the old watch between them.
“My father died in that car.”
He raised his eyes.
May you like
“And Salvatore Moretti was the last man to see him alive.”
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