Chapter 35 - The Bloodline Secret
The quiet in the kitchen became absolute. The only sound was the radiator's metallic clinking against the cold Queens air leaking through the cracked windowpane.
Sophia.
Gabriel stood completely paralyzed, his gun still drawn, his boot still pressing against Sal’s chest, but the soul had evaporated from his eyes. Sophia was his younger sister—twenty-four years old, gentle, a conservatory pianist who had always stayed entirely outside the family’s violent underworld. Gabriel had spent his entire adult life shielding Sophia from their father’s brutality and Dominic’s venom.
"She's lying," Gabriel whispered. His voice was cracked, raw, devoid of its usual authority. "Sophia didn't even visit the estate that month. She was in Boston at the New England Conservatory."
Elena didn't blink. She reached out and took Gabriel’s gun hand, gently pushing the barrel downward until it pointed at the floor. Then, with calm, deliberate grace, she began to sign again.
Chloe felt as though she were standing on the edge of a bottomless abyss. She forced her voice to work, translating each fluid movement of her mother’s fingers.
"*Sophia came home on the midnight train every Thursday,*” Chloe translated, her voice trembling. “*She didn't use the front gates. She used the service tunnel behind the greenhouse. The digitalis wasn't bought on the dark web, Gabriel. Sophia obtained it through the botanical greenhouse at the conservatory. The foxglove extracts.*"
Sal let out another jagged laugh from the floor, his face purple from lack of air. "The prodigal son... always so blind to his own blood. Dominic didn't want the old man dead yet, Gabriel! Dominic wanted Vittorio alive long enough to sign the trust over to him! It was Sophia who wanted the monster buried before he married her off to the Carbone syndicate in Chicago!"
Gabriel looked down at Sal, then slowly pulled his boot back, stepping away as if the man were radioactive. He walked toward the kitchen window, leaning his forehead against the cold glass, staring out into the snow-filled alley below.
The entire foundation of the Costello war had just fractured into a thousand jagged pieces.
Dominic wasn't the mastermind behind Vittorio's murder. Dominic had merely been an opportunist trying to seize power in the chaotic vacuum left behind. The true killer was the one person Gabriel had sworn an oath to protect with his life.
Elena walked over to Chloe, gently wiping a tear from her daughter's cheek. She signed: *Forgive me. I promised Vittorio I would keep silence until the wolves showed their teeth.*
*Why did Vittorio protect Sophia?* Chloe signed back, her hands frantic. *If he knew Sophia was poisoning him, why didn't he stop her?*
Elena looked at Gabriel’s rigid back, her eyes filled with ancient sorrow.
She signed: *Because Vittorio knew he deserved to die for what he did to Sophia's mother.*
Gabriel spun around from the window, his eyes blazing. "What did you say?"
Chloe translated, her throat dry as sand. "My mother says... Vittorio knew he deserved it. Because of what he did to your mother."
"My mother died of ovarian cancer when I was twelve," Gabriel stated flatly. "I was in the room when she took her last breath."
Elena shook her head slowly. She raised her hands, forming a shape Chloe had never seen before—a sign reserved for an ancient, hidden truth.
*Your mother didn't die of cancer, Gabriel,* Elena signed. *Vittorio locked her away in a sanitarium in upstate New York because she tried to take you and Sophia to the police twenty years ago. The cancer was the story the family told the streets to cover the shame of her rebellion.*
Gabriel’s chest heaved. The room seemed to shrink around him. The empire he thought he understood—the empire he had just burned down using Dominic's ledger—was built on a labyrinth of lies deeper and far more horrific than simple mafia extortion.
Before Gabriel could speak, the younger enforcer by the radiator took advantage of the emotional shockwave. He lunged toward the kitchen counter, grabbing a heavy brass meat mallet and swinging it directly at Elena’s head.
"Look out!" Chloe screamed.
Gabriel moved on pure animal instinct. He didn't use the gun. He stepped between the enforcer and Elena, catching the man’s descending wrist with his left hand, twisting the joint violently until the bone dislocated with a sharp *snap*. In the same continuous motion, Gabriel drove his right elbow into the man’s jaw, knocking him unconscious onto the linoleum beside Sal.
Gabriel stood over the two fallen men, breathing hard, his knuckles split and bleeding.
"We have to go," Gabriel said, his voice flat, terrifying in its composure. "Sal’s phone has been buzzing in his pocket for the last five minutes. Dominic’s backup is already on its way."
"Where do we go, Gabriel?" Chloe asked, wrapping her arm tightly around her mother’s trembling shoulders. "Where in this city can we possibly hide from Sophia, Dominic, and the Department of Justice?"
May you like
Gabriel looked at Elena, then at Chloe.
"We go to Our Lady of Sorrows," Gabriel said. "We get my father’s real journal before Sophia finds it. Because if my sister has the journal... the feds won't just arrest her for murder. They’ll execute her."
