Chapter 4 - THE SHATTERED GLASS
Glass rained down on us like ice.
I instinctively threw my body over Sofia, shielding her head as the heavy velvet curtains billowed inward from the force of the blast.
The library went completely dark. Outside, car alarms shrieked into the Boston night.
“Sofia! Rachel!” Gabriel’s voice cut through the ringing in my ears.
“We’re okay!” I coughed, tasting dust and smoke. I pulled Sofia tightly against my chest. She was trembling violently but perfectly silent.
Gabriel crawled over to us in the dark. He ran his hands quickly over Sofia’s arms and legs, checking for injuries.
“Stay down,” he commanded, pulling a heavy, dark handgun from a holster beneath his suit jacket. I had never seen him with a weapon before, but he held it like it was an extension of his arm.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“A message,” Gabriel said grimly. “Someone just blew up my front gates.”
He crept to the edge of the shattered window, keeping low.
“Marcus,” he muttered, his jaw clenched tight.
If Marcus had been having an affair with Elena, if he was the one who tore the necklace from her throat and sent Celeste to clean up the mess... he was now making his final move to take Gabriel out.
Suddenly, heavy boots pounded against the hardwood floor in the hallway.
Someone was running toward the library.
Gabriel positioned himself by the door, raising his weapon.
“Boss!” a voice yelled through the thick oak. “Gabriel! It’s Marcus!”
My heart hammered in my throat. The killer was right outside the door.
“Stand back, Rachel,” Gabriel whispered, leveling the gun at chest height.
“Gabriel, let me in!” Marcus shouted. He sounded panicked, out of breath. “They hit the front courtyard. We’re compromised!”
Gabriel didn’t answer. He just tightened his finger on the trigger.
“Gabriel, please!” Marcus yelled. “Celeste set us up! She brought them here!”
Gabriel froze.
The reversal hit me like a physical blow.
Marcus wasn't attacking us. He was warning us.
But what about the photograph? What about the affair?
“Unlock it,” Gabriel ordered me, never taking his eyes off the wood.
I scrambled forward, my hands shaking as I twisted the deadbolt. I threw myself back against the sofa as the door burst open.
Marcus stumbled in. His expensive suit was covered in plaster dust, and blood trickled from a cut on his forehead.
He saw Gabriel’s gun pointed squarely at his chest and stopped dead.
“Boss?” Marcus breathed, raising his empty hands. “What are you doing?”
“Take your gun out,” Gabriel ordered calmly. “Two fingers. Drop it.”
Marcus looked confused, hurt, but he complied. He slowly pulled his weapon and let it clatter onto the rug.
“Why was my wife holding your hand in a photograph, Marcus?” Gabriel asked.
Marcus blinked, the blood dripping into his eye.
“What photograph?”
Gabriel kicked the Polaroid across the floor. It landed at Marcus’s feet.
Marcus looked down at it. A sad, painful smile touched his lips.
“She wasn’t holding my hand, Gabe.”
Gabriel stepped closer. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Look at the picture closely,” Marcus pleaded. “Look at her wrist.”
I squinted in the dim light.
Elena wasn’t holding Marcus’s hand.
Marcus was holding her wrist. Firmly.
“She was trying to buy drugs, Gabriel,” Marcus said softly. “Down at the docks. That was three years ago. I caught her. I stopped her. Celeste was there, enabling her, like always.”
Gabriel’s gun wavered for the first time.
“Elena was clean,” Gabriel said, but his voice cracked.
“She was trying, boss,” Marcus said gently. “But she relapsed. Celeste kept supplying her. I was trying to keep it from you, to protect your family.”
The pieces shifted horribly.
Celeste wasn’t an innocent friend. She was toxic. She kept Elena sick to keep herself relevant, to wedge her way into the Romano family.
“If you were protecting us,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping, “why did you introduce me to Celeste after Elena died?”
“Because I needed to keep her close,” Marcus said. “I needed to figure out who she was working for.”
“Working for?” I interrupted, stepping forward. “You think someone hired her?”
Marcus looked at me, then back at Gabriel.
He reached into his inner jacket pocket. Gabriel tensed, but Marcus only pulled out a folded piece of paper.
Not a photograph. A child’s drawing in crayon.
“I found this in Celeste’s room tonight, when I went up to search her things after you locked down the dining room,” Marcus said.
He handed it to Gabriel.
I leaned in.
It was a drawing Sofia had made a year ago. It showed the grand staircase.
At the bottom was a stick figure of a woman with yellow hair. Elena.
But at the top of the stairs, there were two distinct, black shadows.
“Celeste didn’t act alone that night,” Marcus said grimly. “There was a man with her. A man who pulled that necklace. A man who threw your wife down those stairs.”
“Who?” Gabriel demanded.
Marcus pointed to a tiny detail in the child’s drawing.
Drawn on the wrist of the second shadow was a very specific, bulky silver watch.
I gasped.
I recognized that watch. I had seen it every single day I worked in this house.
“That’s impossible,” Gabriel whispered, staring at the crayon drawing.
May you like
Because the watch in the drawing belonged to his own uncle. Vincenzo.
And Vincenzo was currently upstairs with the rest of the frightened guests.
