Chapter 2 - What Was Hidden in the Floorboards
“Gabriel,” I whispered, “what exactly were you planning to do in our home after I was supposed to die?”
The heart monitor beside his bed seemed to mock the silence in the room, beeping in a steady, rhythmic taunt.
Gabriel’s face, already pale from the surgery, turned the color of ash. He looked away from me, his eyes fixing on the sterile white tiles of the hospital floor.
“It wasn’t like that, Maggie,” he rasped, his voice trembling in a way I hadn’t heard since his father’s funeral. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand,” I said, keeping my voice terrifyingly calm. I had spent three decades married to the head of the Romano family. I knew how to wait out a liar.
Rebecca stepped forward, her hands tightly clutching her camel coat. “He told me there was a safe. He said there was something inside it that belonged to me. That I could only safely retrieve it once the house was empty.”
I didn’t look at her. My eyes remained locked on my husband.
“We don’t have a safe, Gabriel,” I said.
For thirty-four years, I had run that house. I knew every creaking floorboard, every hidden corner of the wine cellar, every locked drawer in his mahogany desk. If there was a safe, it meant there was a part of my home—and my life—that had never been mine.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut. “Maggie, please. Just go home. Lock the doors. Call Thomas and have him post guards.”
“Where is the safe, Gabriel?”
“Under the floorboards in the nursery,” Rebecca answered for him.
The breath left my lungs.
We didn’t have a nursery. Not anymore. We had a guest room at the end of the hall that we never used. It was the room we had painted yellow in 1994, the room that had stayed empty after the doctors told me I would never carry a child to term.
Gabriel had never let me change the flooring in that room. He always said he liked the original oak.
“You put a safe in that room?” My voice finally broke. The betrayal of another woman was one thing. The desecration of my private grief was another entirely.
Gabriel reached out, his IV line pulling taut. “Maggie, I did it to keep you safe.”
I stepped back, out of his reach.
I turned on my heel and walked out of the hospital room. I didn’t look back when Rebecca called my name. I didn’t stop when Gabriel’s heart monitor began to beep faster.
I drove home through the morning rain, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles ached. The imposing iron gates of our estate opened smoothly. The house stood just as I had left it hours ago, quiet and dark.
I walked straight past the kitchen, past the blood pressure medication still sitting on the counter, and climbed the sweeping staircase.
The door to the yellow room was closed. I turned the brass knob and pushed it open. The air inside felt stale.
I walked to the center of the room, dropped to my knees, and began pressing my hands against the oak floorboards.
It took me ten minutes to find it. The wood near the window didn't sit perfectly flush.
I grabbed a heavy brass bookend from the shelf and jammed it into the seam, prying the wood up with a loud crack.
Beneath the board was a heavy steel lockbox.
It had a simple four-digit combination lock.
My hands shook as I tried my birthday. Nothing.
Gabriel’s birthday. Nothing.
Our anniversary. Nothing.
Then, a sickening thought hit me. I entered the date Rebecca had mentioned earlier—the date of my supposed funeral in November. 1-1-1-5.
The lock clicked open.
I lifted the heavy lid. Inside, there wasn't money, or diamonds, or love letters.
There was a small, worn silver rosary. The one Gabriel’s mother had given him on her deathbed.
And beneath it, a child's birth certificate.
The mother’s name was Rebecca. The father’s name was Gabriel Romano.
But it was the child’s birth date that made the room spin.
The child was seven years old.
Gabriel hadn't been seeing Rebecca for eighteen months. He had been seeing her for almost a decade.
And then I saw the second piece of paper underneath the certificate.
It was a life insurance policy in my name, recently altered. The sole beneficiary wasn't Gabriel. It was the seven-year-old child.
I reached for the policy, my fingers trembling, when I heard a heavy footstep behind me.
I spun around.
Thomas, Gabriel's most loyal enforcer, was standing in the doorway. He was holding a silenced pistol.
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"I'm sorry, Mrs. Romano," Thomas said quietly. "Gabriel said you weren't supposed to find this until November."
TITLE: The Enforcer's Apology
