Chapter 9 - The Price of Blood
The revelation hung between us like a suspended guillotine. All these years, I had believed Gabriel had grown tired of me, that he had chosen his ambition and a wealthy mistress over our fragile marriage. I never knew that his coldness had been a twisted, desperate attempt to shield me from a cartel war.
"You should have told me," I said, my voice cracking. "We were partners, Gabriel. Marriage isn't about keeping secrets to play the savior."
"I know that now," he said softly. He reached out, his hand hesitating in mid-air before his calloused fingertips gently brushed a stray strand of hair from my cheek. The familiar warmth of his touch sent a violent shiver down my spine. "I learned the hard way that keeping you in the dark only left you vulnerable to the shadows."
Before I could pull away from his touch, a sharp chime sounded from the tablet mounted on the corridor wall.
Gabriel’s entire posture shifted back into tactical lethality within a fraction of a second. He touched the intercom. "Speak."
"Boss, it’s Marco," the speaker crackled from the subterranean security room. "We have a critical situation at the harbor."
Gabriel stepped away from me, his jaw tightening. "Did Serena reach her father?"
"Worse," Marco replied grimly. "Serena never made it to the train station. A convoy of black Suburbans ambushed our transport unit two miles from the Queensboro bridge. They hit our men with military-grade armor-piercing rounds. Two guards are dead. Serena was taken."
Gabriel’s eyes darkened into twin pools of black ice. "Who took her?"
"The plates trace back to a shell company registered in New Jersey. Boss... it’s the Moretti cartel. Don Moretti himself is in town."
I felt the blood drain from my face. My hand flew to my mouth to stifle a cry.
"She didn't just run to her father," Gabriel whispered, realizing the depth of the betrayal. "Serena was feeding the Morettis our internal security protocols from the very beginning. She wasn't just ambitious. She was a mole."
"What does this mean?" I whispered, grabbing Gabriel’s forearm in terror. "Gabriel, what does this mean for our sons?"
Gabriel looked down at my hand clutching his arm, then looked up into my terrified eyes. His expression was no longer that of a remorseful ex-husband. He was the king of New York’s underworld, preparing to wage total war.
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"It means," Gabriel said, his voice deadly and cold, "that Don Moretti now knows I have three heirs. And he knows they are the only thing on this earth I would burn the world to protect."
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