Chapter 6 - THE CONFESSION
The sterile white walls of the estate’s underground medical wing felt like a prison.
I sat on a stainless-steel stool, watching an underground doctor stitch the massive wound in Gabriel’s side. Maya was asleep on a small cot in the corner, exhausted by the trauma of the night.
I clutched the DNA paper so tightly it was almost shredded.
My older sister, Sarah, had always been reckless. She disappeared for days, ran with dangerous crowds, and refused to talk about Maya’s father. She died in an overdose when Maya was four, leaving me to pick up the pieces.
Gabriel gritted his teeth as the doctor finished the final stitch and left the room, closing the heavy glass door behind him.
Gabriel looked at me, his chest rising and falling heavily.
“When did you meet her?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm.
“Seven years ago,” Gabriel said softly, leaning his head back against the pillows. “Before I took over the family. I was trying to go legitimate. Sarah was a bartender at a club I owned. We were together for six months. I loved her, Emily.”
“If you loved her, why did she hide her pregnancy from you? Why did she let us live in poverty?”
Gabriel closed his eyes, a tear escaping and tracking through the dried blood on his cheek.
“Because she found out who my family was. She found out my mother killed your father.”
The pieces fell into place with devastating clarity. Sarah had known. She had known the Vance family destroyed our family, and she had been terrified that Gabriel would take her baby and raise her in the same empire of blood.
“She ran to protect Maya from me,” Gabriel whispered, his voice cracking. “And she was right to do it.”
I stood up, pacing the small room. My niece was the heir to the Vance syndicate. The granddaughter of the woman who murdered my father.
“Where is Clara?” I demanded.
“Locked in the west wing,” Gabriel said, his voice hardening into cold steel. “She will face the cartel for what she did to your father. I will not protect her anymore.”
“What about the microchip?” I asked. “Victor is dead, but the cartel still thinks I have it. I threw the coat away, Gabriel. It’s sitting in the city dump.”
Gabriel slowly sat up, wincing in pain.
“The chip isn't in the coat, Emily,” he said quietly.
I stopped pacing. “What?”
“Your father was a brilliant man. He knew if he was killed, the cartel would search his body and his belongings. He wouldn't put the only leverage he had in the lining of a jacket.”
Gabriel reached toward the bedside table. He picked up the heavy silver pocket watch—my father’s watch, which the thug had dropped in my apartment.
“My men recovered this from the intruder,” Gabriel said. He pressed a tiny, hidden latch near the winding stem.
The back casing of the watch popped open.
Nestled inside the intricate, ticking gears of the antique watch was a tiny, black microchip.
I gasped, covering my mouth. I had carried my father’s death warrant in my purse for ten years.
“With this,” Gabriel said, carefully removing the chip, “I can dismantle the cartel’s political protection in Texas. I can end the war.”
“Then do it,” I said fiercely. “Burn it all down.”
Before Gabriel could respond, his secure cell phone buzzed on the table. He put it on speaker.
“Boss,” his head of security sounded panicked. “We have a massive problem.”
“Report.”
“Victor wasn't working alone. The cartel just pulled up to the front gates. Fifty men. Heavily armed.”
Gabriel’s face went completely pale.
“They don't just want the chip, Gabriel,” the security chief yelled over the sound of incoming gunfire. “They have your mother. They broke her out of the west wing.”
And then, a new voice came through the speaker. A voice that made my blood freeze in my veins.
May you like
“Hello, little sister.”
It was Sarah. My dead sister.
