Chapter 1 - The Third Treatment|
Gabriel Moretti had negotiated peace between rival crime families, survived two assassination attempts, and watched men twice his size lower their eyes when he entered a room.
Yet nothing had prepared him for the sight of his wife sitting on the bathroom floor, cutting off her own hair.
Anna Moretti kept her face turned toward the mirror. Dark strands lay scattered across the white porcelain sink, and the scissors in her hand trembled every time she tried to lift them.
“Tomorrow is my third treatment.”
For several seconds, Gabriel couldn't move.
The words were simple. Their meaning was not.
“Third?” he repeated.
Anna closed her eyes.
“Please don't make me explain everything tonight.”
“How long have you known?”
“Six weeks.”
Six weeks.
Gabriel looked at the hospital envelope beside her slipper. Her full name appeared beneath the logo of a cancer center in downtown Chicago. The paper was creased from being opened and closed, and a date had been written across the front in Anna's handwriting.
Six weeks ago, he had been in New York negotiating a shipping agreement.
Five weeks ago, he had flown to Miami to settle a dispute with one of his captains.
Four weeks ago, he had promised Anna that things would be quieter soon.
He had made the same promise for three years.
“What did the doctors say?” he asked.
“That I have cancer.”
The word landed between them with terrible finality.
Gabriel lowered himself onto the cold tile. His expensive trousers gathered dust, but he barely noticed.
“What kind?”
“Lymphoma. They found it after I went in because I couldn't stop getting sick.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Anna gave a small, exhausted laugh.
“I tried.”
He remembered the phone call.
Can you talk?
I’ll call you back.
He remembered the message she had sent two days later.
I need you home tonight.
He had answered that he would try.
He had not come home until nearly midnight.
“I thought I could understand it first,” she continued. “I thought if I had the scans, the treatment plan, the numbers, then I could tell you without falling apart.”
“You didn't have to be strong for me.”
“Yes, I did.”
Her voice cracked.
“Because every time something goes wrong in your world, everyone expects me to be the woman who smiles beside you. The woman who never complains. The woman who understands that your phone has to be answered, that your men come first, that dinner can wait because somebody in Milwaukee is threatening somebody in Indianapolis.”
Gabriel looked down.
Anna had never spoken to him like this.
Not because she had been afraid to. Because she had spent years trying to protect the fragile peace between them.
“I didn't know,” he whispered.
“You didn't ask.”
He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her that he had been building an empire that would eventually give them a safe life, a life where nobody could threaten their home or touch the people he loved.
But the excuses sounded pathetic even inside his own head.
Anna lifted the scissors again.
Gabriel reached out, then stopped when she flinched.
“Can I help?”
“No.”
He pulled his hand back.
She cut another section. The scissors closed with a soft metallic click, and a lock of hair fell into her lap.
“I don't want to wait for it to fall out,” she said. “I want to choose what happens to me for once.”
Gabriel swallowed the ache rising in his throat.
“Then choose. I'll stay right here.”
She looked at him through the mirror.
“You have a meeting tomorrow.”
“I'll cancel it.”
“You have twelve men waiting for a decision.”
“They can wait.”
“You always say that, Gabriel. But the world doesn't stop because you say it should.”
“No,” he said quietly. “It doesn't. But I can stop pretending that the world matters more than you.”
Anna's scissors lowered.
For the first time that night, she looked directly at him.
He saw fear in her eyes, but also something more painful: the uncertainty of a woman who wanted to believe her husband and no longer knew whether she could.
“I'm not asking you to save me,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I'm asking you not to disappear when this becomes difficult.”
Gabriel moved closer, slowly enough that she could refuse him.
“Then let me prove I can stay.”
After a long moment, Anna placed the scissors in his palm.
He didn't cut her hair. He simply set the scissors aside and gathered the loose strands from her lap, placing them on a towel.
Then he sat beside her until the rain stopped.
At three in the morning, Anna finally fell asleep against his shoulder.
Gabriel carried her to bed, tucked the blanket around her, and returned to the bathroom.
He found the hospital envelope and opened it with hands that had never shaken while holding a gun.
The diagnosis was clear.
So was the treatment schedule.
But beneath the medical paperwork lay a second document, folded into quarters.
It was a financial statement from a private account.
The account had paid for Anna's consultations, scans, medication, and the first two treatments.
Gabriel recognized the bank.
He also recognized the name listed beside the transfers.
Lucia Moretti.
His mother.
And the final payment had been authorized three days earlier.
Gabriel stared at the paper, trying to understand why his mother had been paying for his wife's treatment in secret.
May you like
Then he noticed the handwritten message in the margin.
Do not tell Gabriel until the matter is settled.
