Chapter 4 - sworn brothers
Gabriel hung up the phone without another word. He picked up the silver locket from the table, slid it into his pocket, and walked out of the conservatory, leaving Bernadette alone in the cold glass room.
He marched down the broad marble corridor leading to the east wing, where the private guest quarters were located. Two armed bodyguards stood outside the mahogany door of suite 204.
"Keys," Gabriel commanded.
The guard handed over the keycard instantly. Gabriel swiped it, unlocked the heavy door, and stepped inside.
The suite was warm and brightly lit. Claire was sitting on the edge of a velvet armchair, holding a sleeping Mia in her lap, wrapped in a fleece blanket. Claire jumped up the moment the door opened, her eyes filled with apprehension.
"Mr. Valenti..." she whispered, clutching her daughter tighter.
Gabriel closed the door behind him and locked it. He walked over to the desk, pulled out a heavy oak chair, and sat down across from her.
"Sit down, Claire," Gabriel said gently.
Claire hesitated, then slowly sank back onto the armchair.
Gabriel pulled the silver locket from his pocket and set it on the table between them. Next to it, he placed a small, yellowed black-and-white photograph he had pulled from his desk safe years ago—a twin copy of the photo inside her locket.
Claire looked down at the two photos sitting side by side.
"Marcus talked about you every night," Claire said softly, her eyes filling with tears as she looked at Gabriel's face. "He kept that locket in his toolbox for ten years. He told me that if anything ever happened to him, if he didn't come home one night, I had to find a man named Gabriel Valenti."
"Why didn't you come to me three years ago when he died?" Gabriel asked.
"Because I was terrified," Claire confessed, wiping a stray tear from her cheek. "Three days after Marcus died, two men in dark suits broke into our apartment in South Chicago. They turned the place upside down looking for a black leather ledger Marcus kept hidden under the floorboards."
Gabriel leaned forward, his brow furrowing. "A ledger?"
"Marcus worked as a senior mechanic for a luxury transport company," Claire explained, her voice trembling. "Two months before he died, he discovered that someone was using his garage to smuggle unregistered weapons and untraceable cash through Chicago. He wrote down every vehicle registration, every driver's name, and every shipment date in that ledger."
"Did he tell you who was running the smuggling ring?" Gabriel asked.
"He didn't know the head boss," Claire said. "But he told me the man making the payments wore a expensive charcoal suit and had a silver-gray hair."
Gabriel’s chest tightened. The description matched Thomas Reed perfectly.
"Where is the ledger now, Claire?" Gabriel asked softly.
"I hid it," Claire whispered. "Marcus told me never to touch it unless I had no other choice. It's inside Mia’s stuffed velvet bear—the one she carries everywhere."
Gabriel looked at the sleeping three-year-old girl in Claire’s arms. Clutched tightly against Mia's chest was a worn, dark-brown velvet teddy bear with one missing button eye.
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Before Gabriel could reach for the bear, a sharp, deafening crack shattered the silence of the night.
The high-pressure glass of the suite's window exploded inward in a shower of sharp fragments. A high-powered sniper round tore through the heavy curtains, missing Gabriel’s head by inches, and embedded itself deep into the wooden frame of the armchair right beside Mia's head.
