Chapter 7 - A Secret Hidden for Six Years
Father Gabriel Rossi looked twenty years older than Alejandro remembered.
His face was bruised.
One wrist was bandaged.
A monitor tracked his heartbeat with indifferent electronic beeps.
Two Moretti guards stood outside the hospital room.
Marco had cleared the hallway.
Alejandro entered first.
Isabella followed.
Father Gabriel opened his eyes.
When he saw her, tears immediately formed.
“Bella.”
Isabella stopped near the door.
For six years she had trusted this man more than almost anyone alive.
Now she did not know whether to embrace him or accuse him.
“You lied to me.”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Alejandro pulled a chair beside the bed.
“Start talking.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“You're like Vittorio when you're angry.”
“Do not compare me to my father.”
“That's why I said when you're angry.”
Marco closed the door.
Gabriel breathed painfully.
“I need water.”
Isabella helped him.
Alejandro waited.
He was capable of patience when necessary.
Barely.
Gabriel finally began.
“Your father knew Isabella was pregnant.”
Alejandro's expression went blank.
“How?”
“He had people watching you.”
“Why?”
“He didn't trust love.”
Alejandro almost laughed.
That sounded exactly like Vittorio.
His father believed affection created leverage.
He had hated Isabella because Alejandro listened to her.
Because she made him question the family business.
Because she once convinced Alejandro not to retaliate after a warehouse dispute.
Vittorio had called her weakness wearing a pretty face.
Gabriel continued.
“Isabella went to the doctor. One of Vittorio's people was connected to the clinic.”
Isabella whispered, “But Vittorio was dead by then.”
Gabriel looked at Alejandro.
“No.”
Alejandro went still.
“My father died seven years ago.”
“Publicly.”
Silence.
Marco stepped forward.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Gabriel struggled to breathe.
“Vittorio knew he was dying. Cancer. Months, maybe a year. He was also under federal pressure. He arranged his own disappearance.”
Alejandro stared.
“I saw his body.”
“A body.”
“I identified him.”
“After a fire.”
Alejandro remembered.
His father's car had exploded on a rural road.
The remains were badly damaged.
Dental records confirmed identity.
Alejandro had never questioned it.
“Impossible.”
Gabriel whispered, “I helped.”
Alejandro stood.
Isabella grabbed his arm.
“Alejandro.”
He looked at her hand.
Then at Gabriel.
“You have thirty seconds before I forget you're a priest.”
“I'm not asking forgiveness.”
“Good.”
“Vittorio survived another fourteen months.”
Alejandro's entire understanding of his life began breaking apart.
“Where?”
“Canada. Then northern Maine.”
“Why?”
“He wanted to watch what you became without him.”
Marco muttered a curse.
Gabriel continued.
“He believed you were making the Moretti family soft.”
“By keeping people alive?”
“By turning criminal operations into legitimate companies.”
Alejandro laughed bitterly.
“My father thought murder was tradition.”
“He thought fear was inheritance.”
“And Isabella?”
Gabriel's eyes filled with shame.
“When Vittorio learned she was pregnant, he panicked.”
Isabella stared.
“Why?”
“Because a child would make Alejandro harder to control.”
Alejandro understood immediately.
A man with nothing to lose was useful.
A man with a family made different choices.
Gabriel nodded.
“Vittorio believed Isabella would pull you completely away.”
“So he threatened her.”
“Yes.”
Isabella stepped backward as if struck.
“The voice?”
“One of his men.”
“You found me at the bus station.”
“Vittorio told me to.”
“You told me Alejandro sent you.”
“Yes.”
Her face crumpled.
“I trusted you.”
“I know.”
“You watched me cry for years.”
“I know.”
“You told me he stopped looking.”
Gabriel began crying.
“I know.”
Alejandro's voice was deadly calm.
“Why?”
“Because Vittorio ordered me to keep you apart.”
“My father was dead a year later.”
“Yes.”
“Then why continue?”
Gabriel looked away.
That was the question.
After Vittorio died for real, Gabriel could have revealed everything.
He did not.
“Why?” Alejandro repeated.
Gabriel whispered, “Because by then I was afraid of what would happen.”
“To whom?”
“To Emma.”
Isabella's anger erupted.
“You were the one keeping her hidden!”
“Yes.”
“From a dead man!”
“Not only him.”
Gabriel looked toward Alejandro.
“Vittorio told others.”
“Names.”
“I never knew all of them.”
“Dominic?”
Gabriel hesitated.
Alejandro saw it.
“Dominic knew?”
“Yes.”
Isabella covered her mouth.
Gabriel continued.
“But he wasn't the only one.”
“Who else?”
“Vittorio formed a group inside the family. Old loyalists. Men who believed you were betraying everything your grandfather built.”
Marco's expression hardened.
“The Old Guard.”
Gabriel nodded.
Alejandro had heard the phrase occasionally.
Mostly from older captains complaining that the new Moretti businesses were too clean.
He had treated it as nostalgia.
Apparently it had become conspiracy.
“What did they want?”
“You removed them from power.”
“They were killers.”
“They believed that was the point.”
“Did they attack my convoy?”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
“I think so.”
“Think?”
“They took me because they knew Isabella had been found.”
“Who took you?”
“I never saw faces.”
“Voice?”
“One I recognized.”
“Whose?”
Gabriel looked terrified.
Alejandro leaned closer.
“Whose?”
Before Gabriel could answer, the heart monitor began accelerating.
A nurse entered.
“You need to leave.”
Alejandro did not move.
“Mr. Moretti—”
Marco touched his shoulder.
“Let them stabilize him.”
Alejandro stood reluctantly.
Isabella remained beside Gabriel.
He grabbed her wrist weakly.
“I'm sorry.”
She looked at him.
For a moment, six years of pain passed across her face.
“You don't get forgiveness because you're hurt.”
Gabriel nodded.
“I know.”
She pulled away.
In the hallway, Alejandro stared through the glass.
Isabella stood beside him.
“So your father destroyed us.”
“Partly.”
“You still said those things that night.”
Alejandro looked at her.
“Yes.”
“You told me maybe there wasn't room for me.”
“Yes.”
He did not hide from it.
“I was cruel.”
Isabella's eyes filled.
“You were.”
“I thought power required becoming him.”
“And now?”
Alejandro looked at the phone wallpaper Marco had changed as a joke years ago—Moretti company logo.
For the first time, he thought about how much of his identity existed because his father had decided what a Moretti man should be.
“I don't know.”
A nurse rushed past.
Then another.
Alejandro turned.
Inside Gabriel's room, alarms sounded.
Doctors crowded around the bed.
Isabella stepped forward.
Marco held her back.
Minutes passed.
Then the doctor emerged.
“He's stable.”
Alejandro exhaled.
“Can he talk?”
“Not tonight.”
They returned home after midnight.
Emma had fallen asleep on a sofa waiting for them.
A book rested open on her chest.
Two guards stood nearby as though protecting royalty.
Alejandro stopped.
Isabella softened.
“She waited.”
Alejandro walked over.
He carefully lifted Emma.
The little girl stirred.
“You came back.”
“Yes.”
“You promised.”
“I know.”
She laid her head against his shoulder and immediately fell asleep again.
Alejandro carried her upstairs.
Every man they passed became still.
Their boss—whose reputation had been built on fear—was carrying a sleeping six-year-old with one hand supporting her head so gently that nobody recognized him.
Alejandro laid Emma in the guest bed.
When he tried to leave, her fingers remained hooked around his lapel.
He carefully loosened them.
Isabella watched from the doorway.
“You're good with her.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I have known her two days.”
“She trusts you.”
“That might mean she has poor judgment.”
Isabella smiled faintly.
Alejandro pulled the blanket higher.
Then he noticed the drawing on the bedside table.
Emma had drawn three people.
A woman.
A girl.
A man in black.
Above them she had drawn a crooked house made of colorful squares.
Alejandro stared.
Isabella came closer.
“She remembers everything people promise.”
Alejandro looked at her.
“So do I.”
Their eyes held.
Six years existed between them.
So did something that had survived those years.
But before either could speak, Marco appeared at the doorway.
His face was serious.
“We got a partial match from the voice Gabriel described before he crashed.”
Alejandro stepped into the hall.
“Who?”
Marco handed him a photograph.
An older man.
Silver hair.
Heavy shoulders.
A familiar face from Alejandro's childhood.
Salvatore Rizzo.
Vittorio Moretti's former security chief.
Officially retired.
Unofficially dangerous.
Alejandro remembered one more detail.
Salvatore had been one of the three men named in the succession council.
If Alejandro died without an heir, Salvatore gained enormous power.
Now Emma existed.
That power would vanish.
Marco said, “Our people found Rizzo's last known address.”
“Empty?”
“Yes.”
“Anything inside?”
Marco nodded.
“A wall covered with photographs.”
“Of me?”
“Some.”
“Isabella?”
“Some.”
“Emma?”
Marco looked toward the sleeping child.
“Hundreds.”
Alejandro's face hardened.
“How long?”
“Since she was born.”
That meant Isabella's hiding had never worked.
Not really.
Someone had known where Emma was every year of her life.
Someone had simply chosen not to act.
May you like
Until now.
And in the center of Rizzo's wall was a photograph dated three nights before the convoy attack—with a red circle drawn around Alejandro's head.
