Chapter 8 - THE MOTHER'S RECKONING
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The grandfather clock in the third-floor gallery struck two in the morning as our footsteps echoed across the parquet floor.
The east wing of the estate was dead silent.
Two armed guards stood at rigid attention outside the double oak doors of the master guest suite.
When they saw Gabriel approaching with me at his side, they immediately bowed their heads and stepped aside.
Gabriel turned the brass handle and pushed the door inward without knocking.
Inside, the grand bedroom was illuminated only by the fire crackling in the hearth.
Elena Romano sat on the edge of the king-sized four-poster bed, still wearing her burgundy wedding dress.
She had not slept.
Her hair was coming undone from its elaborate updo, and an empty bottle of Chianti sat on the nightstand beside her.
When the door opened, she leaped to her feet, her eyes wild with a mixture of fear and lingering arrogance.
“Gabriel!” she gasped, rushing forward two steps before freezing when she saw the blood on his boots.
Her gaze flicked to me, standing in Gabriel’s heavy wool coat, my splinted arm resting securely against my waist.
“Why is she still here?” Elena demanded, pointing a trembling, manicured finger at me.
“Why haven't you sent her back to the gutter where she belongs?”
Gabriel walked into the room, his stride slow, deliberate, and suffocating in its quiet authority.
He reached into his pocket and dropped a heavy audio cassette recorder onto the glass coffee table.
He pressed the play button with his thumb.
The machine clicked, and Arthur’s ragged, weeping voice filled the luxurious bedroom.
“Donna Elena told me to make sure the girl’s hand was broken so she couldn't sign the registry.”
“She said if the girl didn't sign the witness book before midnight, the wedding alliance could be challenged under church law.”
“She said Vittorio had already promised the Marchesi family her father’s shipping docks.”
Elena’s face drained of every drop of color, turning a sickly, ashen gray beneath her makeup.
She backed away until the backs of her knees hit the edge of the mattress.
“He’s lying,” she whispered, her lips barely moving.
“Gabriel, your own flesh and blood... you cannot believe this garbage.”
Gabriel reached over the table, hit the stop button, and picked up the recorder.
“Vittorio is dead, Mother,” Gabriel lied smoothly, his voice dropping into a register that made the room feel twenty degrees colder.
Elena gasped, clutching her throat in absolute horror.
“You... you killed your uncle?”
“I wiped out his entire crew at Slip Four twenty minutes ago,” Gabriel continued, watching his mother’s soul unravel before his eyes.
“And before he died, Vittorio signed a full confession detailing every dollar you funneled through the family accounts to finance his coup.”
Elena dropped onto the edge of the bed, her hands shaking violently in her lap.
Tears of raw, selfish humiliation finally broke through her painted mask, ruining her expensive mascara.
“I did it for you, Gabriel!” she wailed, rocking back and forth like a madwoman.
“You were giving our empire away to peasants!”
“The Romano name is three hundred years old!”
“We don't marry daughters of truck drivers and bricklayers!”
“We marry royalty!”
“We marry power!”
Gabriel walked over until he stood directly over his weeping mother.
He looked down at her not with anger, but with an icy, absolute contempt that was far more devastating.
“My wife protected this house with her bare hands while you were selling our crest to our bitterest enemies,” Gabriel said softly.
“She bled on the concrete to keep my name honorable while you were plotting treason in the shadows.”
He reached out and slowly took the gold signet ring from his pocket, tossing it onto the mattress beside her.
“You are no longer Donna Elena of the Romano family,” Gabriel declared, his voice echoing with the finality of a funeral bell.
Elena looked up, her tear-streaked face twisted in utter disbelief.
“What are you saying?”
“At sunrise, a private car will take you to the estate in upstate Maine,” Gabriel commanded.
“You will have a modest allowance and four guards to ensure you never cross the state line.”
“You will not attend Nicholas’s future children’s christenings.”
“You will not attend family dinners.”
“And if you ever set foot in the city of Chicago again, Mother, I will not treat you like a relative.”
“I will treat you like a traitor.”
Elena let out a choked, broken scream of despair, burying her face in her hands as her entire world collapsed into dust.
Gabriel turned his back on her without another word.
He walked across the room, took my uninjured hand into his, and guided me back out into the grand hallway.
The guards pulled the heavy doors shut behind us, locking the deadbolts with a sharp, definitive click.
As we walked down the grand gallery toward the master wing, Gabriel stopped before the full-length gilded mirror near the terrace.
He looked at our reflection: a mob boss covered in the dust of war, and the bruised builder’s daughter standing unbreakable at his side.
May you like
“You are the only Donna this house will ever answer to, Catherine,” Gabriel whispered against my hair.
And for the first time since I folded that place card in the ballroom, I believed him.
