Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Sarah spent the next four days inside Gabriel Rossi’s private medical wing.
She discovered quickly that being wounded in a mafia mansion came with better healthcare than being healthy almost anywhere else.
A surgeon from Manhattan visited twice daily.
Two nurses rotated twelve-hour shifts.
A physical therapist appeared every morning.
Nobody presented Sarah with a bill.
Nobody even asked for insurance.
Gabriel had apparently decided that money was no longer something she was permitted to worry about.
The stranger development was Gabriel himself.
He visited constantly.
Sometimes he brought Leo.
Sometimes he stood at the window speaking on the phone while Sarah slept.
Once she woke at three in the morning and found him sitting beside her bed reading security reports.
“You have a house full of offices,” Sarah murmured.
Gabriel looked up.
“So?”
“So why are you working here?”
He returned his attention to the report.
“Convenient chair.”
Sarah stared at the rigid wooden chair.
“Looks extremely convenient.”
For half a second, something almost resembling amusement touched his mouth.
Then it disappeared.
Gabriel Rossi did not smile easily.
Sarah suspected the expression had become unfamiliar to his face.
The investigation into Mrs. Gable was less amusing.
The nanny had vanished forty minutes before the attack.
Her car was found at Albany International Airport.
She had not boarded a flight.
Security footage showed her entering a parking structure.
She never appeared leaving it.
And the payment made to her came from an offshore account registered through layers of shell companies.
The final ownership record carried one name.
Isabella Rossi.
Gabriel’s dead wife.
Sarah learned the details from Leo.
Children heard more than adults realized.
“My mommy died in a car,” he said one afternoon.
Sarah was sitting upright for the first time.
Leo arranged wooden tracks across her blanket.
“I know.”
“Daddy doesn’t talk about her.”
Sarah looked toward Gabriel, who stood outside the room speaking with Marco.
“Maybe talking hurts him.”
Leo considered this.
“Does not talking make it stop hurting?”
The question struck Sarah harder than she expected.
“No.”
“What makes it stop?”
Sarah touched the little locomotive.
“I don’t think it completely stops. You just find more things to love around the hurt.”
Leo stared at her.
Then at his father through the glass.
“Daddy needs more things.”
Sarah smiled sadly.
“Yes.”
“He could love you.”
Sarah nearly dropped the train.
“Leo.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The door opened.
Gabriel entered.
Sarah prayed he had not heard.
His expression suggested he might have.
Leo immediately announced, “Sarah says you need more things to love.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
Traitor.
Gabriel raised one eyebrow.
“Did she?”
“That is not exactly what I said.”
Leo continued happily.
“I said you could love Sarah.”
Gabriel stared at her.
Sarah wanted the mattress to swallow her.
“Leo,” Gabriel said calmly, “go find Marco.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m paying him too much money to stand in the hallway.”
Leo collected his train.
At the door, he turned.
“You should marry her.”
Then he disappeared.
Silence.
Sarah stared at her hands.
Gabriel stared at the doorway.
Finally Sarah said, “Children say strange things.”
“Apparently.”
“He’s been through trauma.”
“So have you.”
“I’m hoping mine didn’t damage the part of my brain responsible for marriage proposals.”
Gabriel looked at her.
And this time he actually smiled.
It transformed him.
Only briefly.
But Sarah saw the man he might have been before power, death, and fear had turned his face into armor.
That evening, Gabriel finally told her about Isabella.
They had married young.
Their families knew each other.
Isabella had been elegant, clever, and restless.
Gabriel had loved her.
He did not romanticize the marriage.
They fought.
She hated the security.
He hated her habit of disappearing without protection.
Then, three years earlier, her car had left a mountain road.
The vehicle burned before rescue crews arrived.
Dental records identified her.
Gabriel never questioned it.
“Until now,” Sarah said.
“Until now.”
“Do you think she’s alive?”
Gabriel looked toward the dark window.
“I don’t know what I think.”
Sarah studied him.
“What do you want to be true?”
That question bothered him.
She could tell.
“I want whoever targeted my son found.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
His eyes returned to hers.
For once, Gabriel did not have an answer.
Two days later Sarah began walking.
The first attempt lasted twelve steps.
Gabriel stood on one side.
The therapist on the other.
Sarah hated every second.
“I can do it.”
“You’re shaking,” Gabriel said.
“I’m recovering from three gunshot wounds. Shaking seems reasonable.”
“Sit.”
“No.”
“Sarah.”
“Gabriel.”
The therapist looked between them and quietly stepped backward.
Gabriel noticed.
“Why are you moving?”
“I’ve learned when to leave a disagreement.”
Sarah laughed.
Pain shot through her ribs.
She immediately regretted it.
Gabriel caught her around the waist.
For a moment they were too close.
His hand rested carefully against her side.
Sarah could feel his breathing.
Gabriel looked down at her.
Something unspoken passed between them.
Then Sarah stepped away.
“I’m fine.”
Gabriel’s expression hardened.
“You almost died.”
“I noticed.”
“You keep behaving as though that means nothing.”
“And you keep behaving as though it gives you ownership over me.”
The room went still.
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
Most people probably apologized when Gabriel Rossi looked at them that way.
Sarah was too tired.
“You paid my doctors. I’m grateful. You protected me afterward. I’m grateful for that too. But I didn’t save Leo so you could spend the rest of my life treating me like another thing behind your gates.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Sarah expected anger.
Instead, he nodded once.
“You’re right.”
That surprised her more than anger would have.
That night he did not visit.
Sarah told herself she preferred it.
At eleven, she was still awake.
At midnight, still awake.
At 12:30, someone knocked.
“Come in.”
Gabriel entered carrying a folder.
“I thought you were angry.”
“I was.”
“And now?”
“I’m still angry.”
Sarah smiled.
“At me?”
“At myself.”
He put the folder on her table.
“What’s this?”
“Your employment contract.”
Sarah opened it.
Across the first page, a red line had been drawn through the document.
“You no longer work for me.”
Her stomach dropped.
“You’re firing me?”
“Yes.”
“Because I disagreed with you?”
“No. Because you took three bullets protecting my son, and I refuse to let you scrub my floors afterward.”
Sarah stared at him.
“I need a job.”
“You have one.”
“I thought you just fired me.”
Gabriel placed another document beside the first.
Sarah read the heading.
Leo Rossi Educational and Personal Care Trust.
She looked up.
“What is this?”
“A position.”
“Doing what?”
“Helping Leo.”
“I’m a maid.”
“You’re the only person besides me he asks for when he wakes from nightmares.”
Gabriel pulled out the chair.
“You’re the only person he voluntarily speaks to for more than five minutes. His therapist says he trusts you.”
Sarah stared at the document.
The salary made her blink.
“That number has an extra zero.”
“No.”
“Gabriel.”
“You nearly died.”
“That doesn’t qualify me for a six-figure salary.”
“No.”
His gaze softened.
“But what you did before the shooting does.”
Sarah thought of the train.
The blue paint.
Leo’s hand on her wrist.
“I need time.”
“You have it.”
Gabriel stood.
At the door, he stopped.
“One more thing.”
Sarah looked up.
“We found Mrs. Gable.”
“Where?”
“An abandoned motel north of Albany.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Sarah felt relief.
Until she saw Gabriel’s face.
“What did she say?”
Gabriel walked back toward the bed.
“She says Isabella Rossi paid her.”
Sarah’s breath caught.
“So your wife is alive?”
“Gable claims she never met Isabella directly.”
“Then how does she know?”
“She received instructions, photographs, schedules.”
Gabriel placed a photograph on Sarah’s blanket.
Sarah picked it up.
Her stomach tightened.
The picture showed Leo leaving school.
Another showed Gabriel outside a restaurant.
The third showed Sarah.
Taken months before the attack.
Sarah looked up sharply.
“Why would anyone photograph me?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
She turned the photograph over.
There were handwritten words on the back.
Gabriel had apparently not seen them.
Sarah read them once.
Then again.
Her fingers began trembling.
“What?”
Gabriel reached for the photograph.
Sarah handed it over.
On the back, in black ink, someone had written:
THE MAID DOESN’T KNOW WHO HER FATHER WAS. KEEP IT THAT WAY.
Gabriel’s face changed.
Sarah felt suddenly cold.
“My father died when I was a baby.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“Who told you that?”
“My mother.”
“When?”
“My whole life.”
Gabriel’s gaze dropped again to the photograph.
“Sarah.”
“What?”
“I knew your father.”
Her heart stopped.
Gabriel turned the picture toward her.
“And if I’m right about why someone is watching you…”
He paused.
May you like
“…then you were never accidentally hired into this house.”
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