Chapter 3 - THE MARKS BENEATH HER BANDAGES|
Gabriel took Catherine upstairs before anyone could ask another question.
He led her into his private study, closed the door, and ordered his security team to keep everyone out.
Catherine remained near the window.
“You’re angry,” she said.
“I’m trying to decide whether I’m angry with you for keeping this secret or with myself for making you believe you had to.”
She had expected a reprimand. His answer unsettled her more.
“I didn’t know who I could trust.”
“You could have trusted me.”
“Could I?”
Gabriel fell silent.
Their marriage had begun as a bargain. He had protected her father’s company from bankruptcy, and she had agreed to become his wife. He had never threatened her, but neither had he offered the kind of honesty that made trust possible.
Catherine removed the remaining scrap of paper from her sleeve.
“This was inside the case. The other piece is missing.”
Gabriel examined it beneath the desk lamp.
The fragment contained three words written in faded ink: North. Fourth. Elena.
He looked up sharply.
“What does this mean?”
“I don’t know.”
He reached for the medical kit in the desk drawer.
“Sit down.”
“My hand is fine.”
“Catherine.”
She sat.
He carefully removed the outer bandage. The bruising around her knuckles was worse than he had realized, and a shallow cut crossed the back of her hand.
His jaw tightened.
“Who did this?”
“The shelf collapsed. Arthur grabbed my wrist afterward, but he didn’t cut me.”
Gabriel looked at the injury, then at her face.
“Why didn’t you call for help?”
“Because I was trying to understand what I had found before someone decided I had discovered too much.”
He cleaned the wound with steady hands.
Catherine watched him work. The feared businessman everyone described as ruthless was concentrating on a small cut as if nothing else in the world required his attention.
“You don’t have to do this,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“Then why are you?”
He paused.
“Because you’re my wife.”
The answer should have comforted her.
Instead, it reminded her of how little she knew about the man she had married.
When he finished, he wrapped a fresh bandage around her hand and leaned back.
“Tell me everything from the beginning.”
She described the passage, the velvet case, the fallen shelf, and Arthur’s warning. She also mentioned a detail she had initially dismissed: the room smelled strongly of cedar, although the rest of the passage smelled of damp stone.
Gabriel listened without interrupting.
When she finished, he opened a cabinet and removed an old photograph of his father, Lorenzo Romano, standing beside a warehouse.
The building number matched the fragment.
“My father closed this facility before I took over the company,” he said. “He claimed it had been used for illegal shipments.”
“Was it?”
“I thought so.”
“Did he ever mention a woman named Elena?”
Gabriel studied the paper.
“My grandmother was Elena. She died before I was born.”
Catherine pointed to the second word.
“North. Fourth. Elena. It could be a location, a room, or a person.”
A knock sounded.
Gabriel’s security chief, Marcus, entered after receiving permission.
“We found Arthur’s car,” he reported. “The trunk was open, and there was blood on the lining.”
Catherine stood too quickly.
“Whose blood?”
“We don’t know.”
Marcus looked at Gabriel.
“There’s another problem. Arthur has disappeared.”
Gabriel closed the medical kit.
“Lock down the property. Nobody leaves without being searched.”
Marcus hesitated.
“Your mother has already left.”
Gabriel’s expression became dangerous.
Catherine looked at the old photograph again.
The first piece of evidence had led them to a hidden room.
The second had connected that room to Gabriel’s dead father.
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Now the man who had threatened her was missing, and her mother-in-law had vanished before anyone could question her.
The marriage bargain was beginning to look like a trap.
