Chapter 2 - THE WARNING IN THE RAIN|
Catherine had learned early that powerful men rarely delivered warnings without expecting something in return.
Her father had taught her that lesson before his trucking company collapsed beneath a mountain of debt. Matteo had reinforced it during their marriage, where every favor carried an invisible price and every silence concealed a negotiation.
So when Gabriel Voss offered to escort her out of the Bellevue, she declined.
"I don't know you."
"That's wise."
"And I don't accept protection from strangers."
"That's less wise."
His expression remained calm, but his eyes moved toward the ballroom doors.
"Your uncle-in-law has been asking questions about your medical appointments. Someone accessed the records from your cardiologist's office this afternoon."
Catherine felt the envelope inside her handbag.
"How could you possibly know that?"
"Because the same person tried to access records belonging to my sister."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"Nothing yet. That's what worries me."
He stepped aside when a group of guests approached.
"Leave through the kitchen entrance. Take a car that isn't registered to the Balori family. And don't tell your husband where you're going."
Catherine almost laughed.
"You're asking me to disappear because of a photograph."
"No. I'm asking you to stay alive long enough to understand it."
She studied his face.
Gabriel was in his early forties, with dark hair beginning to gray at the temples and a thin scar running from his left ear to his jaw. He wore no visible jewelry except a plain silver ring.
He looked less like a businessman than a man who had survived too many rooms where other people carried guns.
"What do you want from me?" she asked.
"Nothing tonight."
"Nobody in your world wants nothing."
"Then consider this a debt to a woman who once helped my sister."
Catherine had never met his sister.
Before she could ask, a photographer approached, and Gabriel stepped away as if they had never spoken.
She left through the kitchen.
Outside, rain struck the pavement hard enough to blur the streetlights. Catherine ordered a rideshare using her own phone, then canceled it when she noticed a black sedan following her reflection in a shop window.
Her hands began to shake.
She called Samuel Price, Matteo's longtime driver.
Samuel answered on the second ring.
"Mrs. Balori?"
"I need a favor."
"Of course."
"Can you come to the side entrance of the Bellevue? Don't use the company car."
There was a pause.
"Are you in danger?"
"I don't know."
"Then I'll be there in eight minutes."
Samuel arrived in an old blue sedan that smelled faintly of leather and peppermint. He was fifty-eight, silver-haired, and the only person in Matteo's household who had never treated Catherine like a contractual obligation.
When she climbed inside, he took one look at her face.
"Where to?"
"My father's old house in Myers Park."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely not."
Samuel nodded.
"At least we're being honest."
They drove through the rain without speaking.
Halfway there, Catherine's phone vibrated.
Matteo.
She let it ring.
A second call came.
Then a message.
Where are you? We need to talk.
Catherine stared at the words.
For four years, she had waited for her husband to make time for difficult conversations.
Now that she had finally stopped waiting, he had discovered urgency.
She switched off her phone.
At the old Bennett house, the windows were dark and the garden had grown wild. Her father had sold the property before his death, but Catherine had retained a small storage unit in the basement through an arrangement with the current owner.
Inside, beneath old account books and boxes of family photographs, she found a folder marked with her mother's handwriting.
IF THE BALORIS EVER TURN AGAINST YOU.
Her mother's final years had been spent fighting the financial arrangements that nearly destroyed Bennett Freight. Catherine had assumed the folder contained old loan documents.
Instead, the first page listed payments from Mercer Holdings to a company called Arden Strategic.
The second page carried a signature.
Enzo Balori.
The third page listed a date.
Six weeks earlier.
The night Matteo had claimed he was working late at the flooded warehouse.
Catherine felt the floor tilt beneath her.
Samuel leaned over her shoulder.
"That's not a shipping ledger."
"No."
She turned another page.
A handwritten note had been clipped to the back.
The waterfront permits are only the beginning. If anything happens to me, find Gabriel Voss. He knows what happened to your father.
Catherine stopped breathing.
Her father had died of a heart attack three years before she met Matteo.
At least, that was what she had been told.
A sound came from upstairs.
Footsteps.
Samuel closed the folder.
"Mrs. Balori, we need to go."
The basement lights went out.
A second later, glass shattered above them.
Samuel pulled Catherine behind a concrete pillar as a man's voice called from the darkness.
"Miss Bennett? We're here to bring you home."
Catherine recognized the voice.
May you like
It belonged to Matteo's head of security.
And then she heard the metallic click of a gun being loaded.
