Chapter 3 - ROSA'S SECOND CHILD
Z
I didn’t sleep.
Gabriel gave me a bedroom on the third floor overlooking the city.
Calling it a bedroom felt ridiculous.
My entire apartment could have fit inside the bathroom.
There were clean clothes laid across the bed by the time I entered.
Sweatpants.
A sweater.
A new toothbrush.
No labels.
No questions.
That should have felt thoughtful.
Instead it reminded me how easily Gabriel Hayes could rearrange somebody’s life.
At four in the morning, I sat beside the window and remembered Rosa.
Not Gabriel’s mother.
Mine.
At least, that was how she had felt.
My mother worked double shifts at St. Anne’s Hospital.
Sometimes sixteen hours.
Sometimes more.
Rosa packed my lunches, helped with homework, and sat beside my bed when thunderstorms made the apartment windows shake.
She taught me to cook because, according to her, everybody should know how to feed themselves before they learned how to fall in love.
Once, when I asked whether she had children, she became very quiet.
“One,” she said.
“Where is he?”
“Far away.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Every minute.”
At nine years old, I hadn’t understood how someone could survive missing another person every minute.
Now I did.
A soft knock came at the door.
Gabriel entered before I answered.
Typical.
“You don’t knock and then immediately open the door.”
“I did knock.”
“You ignored the purpose of knocking.”
He placed a plate on the small table near the window.
Toast.
Factory-sealed jam.
An unopened bottle of water.
I looked at it.
“You made breakfast?”
“My cook did.”
“And you trust it?”
“No.”
That caught me.
Gabriel sat opposite me.
“I watched him open everything.”
“How romantic.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Was that sarcasm?”
“Do crime bosses understand sarcasm?”
“Some of us attend school.”
I almost smiled.
Then I remembered Vincent downstairs.
The fire.
The message.
“Did he talk?”
Gabriel’s expression changed.
“No.”
“Did you hurt him?”
He didn’t answer.
That was an answer.
I looked away.
“I don’t want to know.”
“Good.”
“Don’t say that like you’re protecting me.”
“I am protecting you.”
“You’re protecting whatever information is in my head.”
Gabriel leaned forward.
“If that were true, you’d be downstairs being questioned instead of sitting in a guest room complaining about toast.”
I met his eyes.
Neither of us spoke.
Finally, I told him about Rosa’s sentence.
If Gabriel ever finds me, they’ll kill the Bennett girl first.
His reaction was immediate.
“Why didn’t you say that last night?”
“Because I remembered it ten minutes after you left.”
“You should have called someone.”
“At four in the morning?”
“There are phones beside the bed.”
“I assumed those were decorative. Everything else in this house is.”
He rubbed a hand over his face.
Exhaustion remained visible beneath his anger.
“When did she say it?”
“The night before she vanished.”
“Who was she talking to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man.”
“Vincent?”
“I never saw.”
Gabriel stood.
“We’re going somewhere.”
I glanced at the toast.
“I thought you were starving.”
“I’ll eat in the car.”
“You’re going to eat toast in an armored SUV?”
“Yes.”
“This is the strangest kidnapping I’ve ever experienced.”
His jaw tightened.
“You’re not kidnapped.”
“Can I leave?”
“No.”
“Kidnapping.”
His mouth twitched again.
Two hours later, we were standing inside a storage unit my mother had rented seventeen years ago.
Gabriel’s people discovered it by digging through old financial records.
The payments had continued automatically from a savings account even after my mother died.
I never knew it existed.
The unit smelled like cardboard, dust, and trapped summers.
There were boxes of childhood clothes.
Christmas decorations.
Hospital uniforms.
Old photographs.
Gabriel stood behind me while I opened them.
The fourth box contained Rosa.
Not literally.
Pieces of her.
A cardigan.
An old cookbook.
A framed photograph of me at age ten sitting beside Rosa on a fire escape.
Gabriel picked up the picture.
His face tightened.
“She looks older.”
“It was fifteen years after your photograph.”
“I know.”
His thumb touched the edge of the frame.
He didn’t say anything else.
In the bottom of the box, beneath old newspaper, I found a metal cash box.
Locked.
Gabriel reached toward it.
I pulled it away.
“Mine.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“It’s a cash box, not a grenade.”
“With my family, the distinction is occasionally small.”
I searched my mother’s old key ring.
One tiny brass key fit.
Inside were three things.
A passport under the name Rosa Bellini.
A bundle of letters.
And a birth certificate.
Gabriel picked up the passport.
I unfolded the certificate.
Then stopped breathing.
Name of child:
Norah Catherine Bennett.
Mother:
Elizabeth Bennett.
Father:
Blank.
Attached to the back was a handwritten note.
My mother’s handwriting.
Norah,
If you ever find this, then I failed to tell you the truth myself.
Rosa saved both of us.
She also gave you something I could never repay.
Your father’s name is not missing because I didn’t know him.
It is missing because writing it down would have gotten you killed.
Rosa knew exactly who he was.
I looked at Gabriel.
He read the letter over my shoulder.
“Who was your father?”
“I don’t know.”
We opened the other letters.
Most were written by Rosa.
Some to my mother.
Some never sent.
One had Gabriel’s name across the envelope.
His hands froze when he saw it.
I gave it to him.
He didn’t open it.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Twenty-two years.”
His voice cracked on the final word.
For once, Gabriel Hayes didn’t look like a crime boss.
He looked like the sixteen-year-old boy Vincent said had been left behind.
Finally, he broke the seal.
My Gabriel,
If this reaches you, something has gone wrong.
I need you to understand that leaving you was never the same as abandoning you.
There are people who believe your father left behind something worth killing for.
Money, yes, but also names.
Records.
Evidence.
He hid part of it with someone called Thomas Bennett.
Gabriel’s eyes lifted toward me.
My grandfather’s name was Thomas.
I kept reading over his shoulder.
Thomas has a daughter, Elizabeth, and a granddaughter named Norah.
If anyone discovers what Thomas carried, they will use the girl.
Protect her if you can.
Do not trust anyone who tells you I died before 2009.
The letter slipped slightly in Gabriel’s hands.
“What year did she disappear from your apartment?”
“2009.”
He read the final lines.
And Gabriel, forgive me.
Vincent knows more than he admits.
Leo knows nothing.
The man you must fear is the one who helped you build everything.
Gabriel went still.
“So Vincent.”
“Maybe.”
“No.”
He pointed to the sentence.
“The man who helped you build everything.”
“Vincent helped you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“But?”
Gabriel folded the letter.
“My empire wasn’t built by Vincent.”
He looked toward the entrance of the storage unit.
“It was built with my uncle.”
I knew that name from television.
Daniel Hayes.
Philanthropist.
Real estate investor.
Chairman of Hayes Development.
The respectable face of Gabriel’s family.
Gabriel grabbed his phone.
Before he could call anyone, a shot exploded through the storage-unit door.
He knocked me to the floor.
Another shot struck a metal shelf above us.
Boxes crashed.
Gabriel drew his gun.
“Stay down.”
Men shouted outside.
More gunfire.
Then silence.
My ears rang.
Gabriel crouched beside me.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
He grabbed my face between his hands.
“Norah.”
“I said no.”
His breathing was uneven.
For the first time, I realized he was terrified.
Not for himself.
For me.
Leo appeared at the doorway seconds later.
“Shooter’s gone. Car waiting outside.”
Gabriel stood.
“What did they want?”
Leo looked at the open cash box.
“Probably that.”
I picked up the birth certificate.
Something had fallen from beneath it.
A tiny photograph.
A young man holding me as a baby.
My mother stood beside him.
On the back, Rosa had written one sentence.
Thomas Bennett was not the only man hiding you.
Your father is alive.
I turned the photograph over again.
Gabriel stared at the man’s face.
Then his expression became deadly.
“You know him?”
Gabriel looked at me.
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
He took the photograph from my hand.
“That’s Federal Prosecutor Samuel Bennett.”
I felt dizzy.
“My last name is Bennett.”
“Yes.”
“That could be coincidence.”
Gabriel looked almost pitying.
“It isn’t.”
May you like
Samuel Bennett was the man who had spent the last twelve years trying to put Gabriel Hayes in prison.
And apparently, he was my father.
