Chapter 6 - The Confession in the Library
The library on the second floor smelled of old paper, expensive leather, and cold tobacco.
Behind the massive mahogany desk, beneath a gilt-framed portrait of Gabriel’s grandfather, Celeste Marino sat in a high-backed burgundy chair. Her champagne-colored gown was rumpled, her diamond necklace askew, and two of Gabriel’s armed men stood on either side of the heavy double doors, their hands folded over their weapons like gargoyles.
Across the room, standing beside the cold marble fireplace, was Arthur Vance—the Marino family’s senior attorney. A man who had built a forty-year career out of burying bodies beneath legal technicalities.
“This is an unlawful detention, Gabriel,” Vance said, adjusting his round tortoiseshell glasses with a trembling finger as the library doors swung open. “You have locked the gates of your private residence. You are holding the daughter of Salvatore Marino against her will. If we are not permitted to leave within fifteen minutes, the Boston Police Department will breach this property with a tactical warrant.”
Gabriel entered the room alone.
He didn't look like a man facing a federal warrant. He had removed his torn suit jacket, wearing only a black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing the dark, intricate tattoos of Sicilian guardian saints running from his wrists to his elbows. In his right hand, held casually at his side, was a manila folder containing three printed pages from Elena’s decrypted drive.
He didn't look at the lawyer. He crossed the Persian rug with slow, unhurried steps, stopping three feet in front of Celeste’s chair.
“Arthur,” Gabriel said, his voice flat and conversational. “Shut your mouth before I have Marco remove your tongue.”
Vance opened his mouth to object, took one look at the hollow, murderous stillness in Gabriel’s eyes, and promptly swallowed his words, taking two steps back toward the shadows of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
Celeste tried to maintain her aristocratic smirk, but her lower lip was trembling. “Gabriel, this theater has gone on long enough. You let a paranoid maid and a traumatized child turn a dinner party into an interrogation. My father is already on his way from the Cape. When he gets here—”
Gabriel dropped the manila folder onto her lap.
The pages fluttered open, exposing Elena’s handwriting, the high-resolution scan of the mother-of-pearl button, and the bank transfer records showing sixty thousand dollars wired from a Marino offshore account to an officer in the Boston Police Department’s homicide unit forty-eight hours after Elena’s death.
Celeste looked down. Her breath caught in her throat. The color drained from her cheeks until she was the shade of skim milk.
“November fourteenth,” Gabriel said, leaning forward, placing both hands on the arms of her chair, trapping her within his space. His face was six inches from hers. The scent of woodsmoke, rain, and cold iron radiated from him. “Two years ago. You took a charter flight from Teterboro to Norwood Memorial Airport at seven in the evening. You were driven to the back alley of this house by your brother’s driver.”
“Gabriel—no—”
“You used the key you stole from my office safe the week before,” he continued, his voice so quiet, so devoid of emotion that it sounded like a recording. “You came up the pantry stairs. Elena caught you going through her jewelry box looking for the ledger she kept on your father’s shipping lines.”
“It wasn't like that!” Celeste cried, pressing herself as far back into the leather cushions as she could. “She attacked me! She had a letter opener! She was hysterical, Gabriel—she was out of her mind!”
“She was protecting our daughter,” Gabriel snarled, his voice finally breaking into a low, predatory growl. “You pushed her, Celeste. You stood at the top of the third-floor landing, you grabbed her by the shoulders, and you threw my wife down twenty-two wooden stairs.”
“It was an accident!” Celeste screamed, her composure shattering completely, tears cutting black tracks through her mascara. “She wouldn't listen! She was going to ruin everything! My father was going to lose the docks—we had to protect the family!”
The silence that followed her confession was like the drop before an executioner’s axe.
In the corner of the room, Arthur Vance closed his eyes and turned his face toward the wall, knowing that whatever legal defense he had prepared had just evaporated into thin air.
Gabriel slowly straightened his spine. He looked at Celeste not with rage, but with profound, utter disgust.
“You stood over her broken body,” Gabriel said softly. “You saw that she wasn't moving. And instead of calling an ambulance, you walked past my sleeping seven-year-old daughter, threatened her into silence, and got back on a plane to New York to drink champagne with your sister.”
“Gabriel, please,” she sobbed, reaching out to touch his arm. “I love you. Everything I did, I did so we could be together! Elena was weak—she was never built for this life! She was going to get you killed!”
Gabriel stepped back, her manicured fingers slipping off his linen shirt as if touching poison.
“My wife was worth ten of you,” Gabriel said.
He turned his back on her, walking toward the library doors.
“What are you going to do?” Celeste panicked, scrambling out of the chair, falling to her knees on the rug, her expensive gown twisting around her legs. “Gabriel! You can’t touch me! My father controls the waterfront! If you hurt me, Boston will burn!”
Gabriel paused at the threshold, looking back over his shoulder.
“Boston is already burning, Celeste,” he said quietly. “And your father’s empire is going to be the kindling.”
May you like
He looked at the two armed guards flanking the door.
“Take her to the cellar beneath the old bakery in the North End,” Gabriel ordered. “Do not harm her. Not yet. I want Salvatore Marino to know she is still breathing when I take everything he owns.”
