Chapter 23 - THE SIX HOURS PAOLO LIED ABOUT
Gabriel confronted Paolo before Dante could.
“Where were you?”
Paolo looked at his son.
“Driving.”
“Where?”
“North.”
“That's not a place.”
“Gabriel—”
“No.”
The boy's voice cracked.
“Everybody did this to me when I was little. Mom. Elias. You.”
Alina flinched at Mom.
He meant Rosa.
Gabriel continued.
“Everybody had a reason I couldn't know.”
Paolo closed his eyes.
Then:
“I met Elias.”
Dante stood.
“You what?”
Elias Rosselli had completed his sentence eighteen months earlier.
He lived quietly under financial restrictions.
No management role.
No family trust authority.
Dante had contact with him twice a year.
Supervised by attorneys when business issues arose.
Paolo had met him secretly.
“Why?”
“Because he contacted me.”
“About Pier 14?”
“Yes.”
Gabriel laughed bitterly.
“So you did know.”
“I knew somebody had asked questions about it.”
“And you didn't tell me?”
“I didn't know you were the potential buyer.”
“That doesn't make it better.”
No.
It did not.
Elias claimed someone had been searching archived Rosselli properties.
He feared the person wanted Tomas Ortega’s old evidence.
Paolo met him at a highway diner.
For six hours they drove through former storage sites checking whether physical caches remained.
Pier 14 was last.
“When did you go inside?”
“I didn't.”
“Why?”
“The gate had new surveillance.”
Paolo showed photographs from his phone.
Time stamped.
Pier 14 gate.
Warehouse.
Exterior only.
Then a black SUV appeared in the final image.
Dante zoomed in.
License plate partly visible.
His security team traced it.
Registered to Renwick Maritime.
Gabriel frowned.
“Who's that?”
Dante knew.
A legitimate shipping corporation that had spent fifteen years buying distressed port assets.
Its CEO:
Jonathan Renwick.
Not mafia.
Not officially.
But Jonathan’s father had been Dante’s father’s attorney.
One of the men who transformed Rosselli criminal holdings into lawful companies after the old network collapsed.
Alina asked:
“Why would Renwick burn the warehouse?”
“We don't know that he did.”
Dante had learned to say it.
Gabriel hated hearing it.
Jonathan agreed to meet.
He arrived with attorneys.
Calm.
Expensive.
Polite.
“I had no reason to burn Pier 14.”
“Your vehicle was there,” Paolo said.
“One of our survey teams inspected the property.”
“Why?”
“Because Gabriel Vale isn't the only potential buyer.”
Gabriel stiffened.
Renwick Maritime had already offered three times his proposed price.
The seller declined.
Why?
The municipal trust required the property be used for community redevelopment, not commercial shipping.
Gabriel’s apprenticeship project qualified.
Renwick’s port expansion did not.
Jonathan looked at Gabriel.
“You accidentally blocked a forty-million-dollar acquisition.”
Gabriel stared.
“I haven't bought anything.”
“No.”
Jonathan smiled slightly.
“But somebody wanted everyone to believe you were about to.”
Then he placed a document on the table.
Gabriel’s boatyard proposal.
Confidential.
Only five people should have had it.
Gabriel.
Mara.
Paolo.
The independent trustee.
And Alina.
Yet Jonathan had received it anonymously three weeks earlier.
Attached was a message:
IF THE VALE BOY GETS PIER 14, THE ROSSELLIS LOSE EVERYTHING.
Gabriel looked around the table.
May you like
Someone inside his own circle had leaked the plan.
---
