Chapter 2 - The Doctor Who Came Too FastGabriel did not move for three full seconds.
That was how Marco knew the shock had hit deep.
Gabriel Romano did not freeze. He calculated, advanced, destroyed, repaired, and erased. But he did not freeze.
Yet Cassandra Vale stood on the security feed in the front hall of a supposedly inactive family brownstone, holding a leather medical bag and speaking calmly to one of Gabriel’s guards as if she had every right to be there.
Marco’s hand moved toward his weapon.
Gabriel caught his wrist.
“No.”
Marco stared at him. “Boss—”
“She came here for a reason,” Gabriel said. “Let her show it.”
Behind them, Mia made a small sound.
Gabriel turned.
She had gone white.
Leo whimpered in her arms.
“You know her,” Gabriel said.
Mia swallowed hard.
“I know what she did.”
The sentence dropped into the room like a match into gasoline.
Gabriel stepped closer. “What did she do?”
Mia’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Pain twisted across her face. She swayed.
Gabriel reached for Leo before she could drop him.
This time, Mia did not fight.
That frightened him more.
She let Gabriel take the baby, then pressed one trembling hand against her ribs and tried to breathe through something sharp and brutal.
Gabriel held Leo against his chest.
The baby cried once, then quieted as if some instinct understood the man holding him was blood.
Gabriel looked down.
For a moment, everything else disappeared.
Leo’s cheek rested against his black shirt. His tiny mouth opened in a sleepy sigh. He smelled faintly of baby formula, rain, wool, and Mia’s torn coat.
Daniel’s son.
Alive.
Gabriel closed his eyes.
Then Mia whispered, “She can’t see him.”
His eyes opened.
“Why?”
“Because if she came here, she already knows he survived.”
Marco’s expression darkened.
Gabriel passed Leo gently to him.
“Get the baby to Sofia. Use the tunnel exit. No calls. No radio. No one sees him until he is in her arms.”
Marco nodded. “And you?”
Gabriel looked at the screen.
Cassandra smiled at the guard in the hallway.
“I’m going upstairs.”
Mia grabbed his sleeve.
It was weak. Barely pressure at all.
But Gabriel stopped.
“Don’t let her touch you,” she whispered.
Gabriel looked at her hand on his sleeve.
Blood had dried beneath her fingernails.
“I am not the one bleeding.”
“She doesn’t use knives.”
He looked back at her face.
“She uses paperwork.”
The words should not have frightened him.
They did.
Gabriel crouched in front of her. “Mia, listen to me. I need you awake for five minutes. Tell me what Cassandra Vale has to do with Daniel.”
Her eyes filled again.
“I tried to prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That Daniel’s crash wasn’t an accident.”
Gabriel’s body became dangerously still.
Marco stopped at the door with Leo in his arms.
No one breathed.
Mia’s lips trembled. “I found the payment trail after he died. It was hidden inside old consulting fees. I thought it was Sterling moving money through Romano vendors.”
Gabriel heard his pulse in his ears.
“Who was paid?”
“I don’t know the real name. It went through three shell vendors. But the last approval before the money disappeared came from Cassandra’s research foundation.”
Marco cursed under his breath.
Gabriel did not blink.
“You’re telling me a doctor killed my brother.”
“I’m telling you she helped hide who did.”
Gabriel stood.
The room seemed colder now.
“Mia,” he said, “why didn’t you come to me?”
She laughed once.
It was small and bitter and broken.
“You’re Gabriel Romano.”
The answer was simple.
It should not have cut him.
To Mia, he was not a grieving brother.
He was the man whose name made employees lower their voices.
She had found evidence tied to his family, his doctor, his dead brother, and possibly his own business empire.
And she had been alone.
“Who else knows?” he asked.
“Nobody.”
“That’s not true. Sterling came after you tonight.”
Her eyes flicked toward his.
For a moment, Gabriel saw the accountant again—the woman who lived in numbers, patterns, inconsistencies.
“Sterling didn’t come after me,” she said. “He came after Leo.”
“Yes.”
“But he knew I would be in that SUV.”
Gabriel’s face changed.
Mia nodded faintly.
“I was added to the convoy seven minutes before it left.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Marco’s voice was low. “Only four people had access to that transport manifest.”
Gabriel did not have to ask who.
Marco.
His assistant.
The driver coordinator.
And Gabriel himself.
Mia watched the realization move across his face.
“That’s why I didn’t want to talk until Leo was safe,” she whispered. “Because if someone inside your house arranged this, then the kidnapping wasn’t just about Sterling.”
Gabriel’s phone buzzed again.
A message appeared from the guard upstairs.
DR. VALE SAYS SOFIA CALLED HER. SAYS BABY MAY NEED IMMEDIATE EVALUATION IF FOUND.
Gabriel read it twice.
Sofia did not know Leo had been found.
Gabriel looked at Marco.
Marco understood immediately.
“She lied.”
Gabriel’s voice became cold. “Take the tunnel.”
Marco left with Leo.
Mia tried to stand.
Pain folded her in half.
Gabriel caught her before she hit the floor.
She gasped and gripped his shirt.
For one second, her forehead rested against his chest.
The contact shocked both of them.
Gabriel looked down at her.
She was burning with fever.
“You need a doctor.”
“Not her.”
“No,” he said. “Not her.”
He lifted her into his arms.
Mia made a weak protest, but the sound vanished into pain.
Gabriel carried her toward the hidden staircase at the back of the safe room.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“Away from the woman upstairs.”
“And then?”
Gabriel looked down at her.
His voice was quiet.
“Then you are going to tell me everything you know about my brother’s death.”
Mia’s eyelids fluttered.
“There’s more.”
Gabriel paused.
“More than Daniel?”
She nodded once, barely.
“The payment trail didn’t start with Daniel.”
“Where did it start?”
Her eyes closed.
“With your father.”
Gabriel stopped walking.
His father, Antonio Romano, had ruled Chicago like a king with clean hands and dirty shadows. He had died six years ago, leaving Gabriel a family empire, a list of enemies, and a silence so heavy nobody dared question it.
Mia opened her eyes one last time.
“Gabriel,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“Your father didn’t leave you the company.”
The house above them creaked.
A door opened.
Cassandra’s voice floated faintly down the hall.
“Gabriel? I know you’re here.”
Mia’s hand tightened weakly against his collar.
May you like
“He stole it from Daniel.”
Then she passed out in his arms.
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