Chapter 4 - The Brother Nobody Mentioned
Serena’s brother, Caleb Voss, had not been invited to the wedding.
Gabriel remembered that now.
At the time Serena had described him as unstable, resentful, and permanently estranged from the family after years of bad choices. Gabriel had accepted the explanation because every family contained one relative people preferred not to discuss.
His own family contained several.
Marco found Caleb living in a small apartment above a tire shop in Milwaukee.
“He doesn’t look rich,” Marco said.
“People doing expensive things rarely do.”
“He also doesn’t look like a man secretly paying a security chief.”
Gabriel stared through the car window as rain streaked the glass.
“Neither did my wife.”
Caleb opened the apartment door holding a coffee mug and wearing socks.
He looked at Gabriel, then Marco, then the two men behind them.
“Serena finally got herself in trouble.”
It was not a question.
Gabriel entered.
The apartment smelled like coffee and motor oil from the shop below.
“You called me?”
Caleb nodded.
“I figured you’d trace it eventually.”
“You paid Pike?”
“No.”
“You told me to ask Serena’s brother.”
“I told you to ask why her brother paid him.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
Caleb walked to a desk and pulled out a file.
“My name was used.”
Inside were bank records.
Transfers from an account carrying Caleb’s name to a shell company connected to Anthony Pike.
Caleb pointed at the signatures.
“Not mine.”
Gabriel looked closer.
“Then whose?”
“My sister’s.”
Caleb sat.
“She has been using me as a ghost for years.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Caleb continued.
“Our father died owing money to people who do not send polite reminders. Serena learned early that if she moved fast enough, blamed the right person, and cried at the right time, she could survive almost anything.”
“That doesn’t explain why she married me.”
Caleb gave him a tired look.
“Doesn’t it?”
Gabriel felt Marco shift beside him.
Caleb leaned forward.
“She didn’t plan to fall in love with you.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
The word was immediate.
“She planned to get close enough to your systems to sell access.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“To Marenzi?”
“At first.”
“At first?”
“Then Pike realized your schedule was worth more than Serena was getting paid. They started selling pieces to multiple people.”
Gabriel’s mind moved backward.
A shipment intercepted.
A meeting that had been compromised.
A warehouse fire where everyone had somehow known which entrance he would use.
He had blamed rival crews.
He had punished disloyal soldiers.
He had never looked at his wife.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
Caleb’s expression hardened.
“Because I saw a video.”
Gabriel’s eyes changed.
“What video?”
“Pike sent it to Serena.”
He took out his phone.
“I still have access to an old family cloud account she forgot about.”
The clip was only seven seconds.
Serena on the lawn.
Lucy crying.
The leash visible.
Pike’s voice, amused, behind the camera.
Gabriel could not listen twice.
He handed the phone back.
“Send it to the investigators.”
Caleb blinked.
“That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. Gunfire?”
Gabriel looked toward Marco.
“Everyone expects gunfire.”
Marco almost smiled.
Caleb did not.
“You’re different from what she said.”
“What did she say?”
“That you love power more than people.”
Gabriel thought of Lucy asking if he would stay home.
“She may have been right.”
Caleb studied him.
“Was?”
Gabriel stood.
“Yes.”
Back at the estate, Lucy was doing homework at the kitchen table with Nora.
Gabriel paused in the doorway.
He had spent the day tracing betrayal.
Lucy was struggling with fractions.
It felt more important.
He sat beside her.
“What are we fighting?”
“Seven-eighths.”
“A dangerous enemy.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Daddy.”
“What?”
“You’re bad at this.”
“I control three shipping companies.”
“That doesn’t mean you know fractions.”
Nora laughed into a dish towel.
For twenty minutes, Gabriel let seven-eighths defeat him.
Then Lucy asked, “Did you find Serena?”
“No.”
“Are you going to?”
“Yes.”
Her pencil stopped.
“Are you going to hurt her?”
Gabriel looked at her.
He understood then that his daughter had never separated his love from his violence.
In her mind, loving someone meant being willing to destroy someone else for them.
That was the language he had taught without ever speaking it.
“No.”
Lucy searched his face.
“Really?”
“I’m going to let the police do their job.”
“What about Mr. Pike?”
“The same.”
She looked down at the page.
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Because I don’t want people getting hurt because of me.”
Gabriel’s throat tightened.
“None of this is because of you.”
“They did it because I saw.”
“No. They did it because they made choices.”
He touched the eraser end of her pencil.
“You telling the truth is not what caused the trouble. The trouble was already there.”
Lucy thought about that.
Then she nodded.
That night, Marco entered Gabriel’s study with new information.
“Pike used a toll transponder registered to a fleet vehicle. We have a route.”
“Where?”
“South toward Joliet.”
“Serena?”
“Possibly.”
Gabriel stood.
Marco hesitated.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“Pike accessed the estate’s remote system again.”
Gabriel’s blood went cold.
“What did he open?”
“The garage.”
“At what time?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
Gabriel looked at the security screen.
Then at the hallway.
Lucy was upstairs.
He reached for the intercom.
Before he could press it, a crash echoed from the rear of the house.
Nora screamed.
Gabriel ran.
Before they left Caleb’s apartment, he stopped Gabriel at the door.
“There’s one more thing.”
Gabriel turned.
Caleb opened a drawer and removed a birthday card with a cartoon horse on the front.
“Serena mailed this to Lucy last year. She asked me to drop it in a Chicago mailbox so it wouldn’t show where she’d been.”
Gabriel frowned.
“Why?”
“Because she was meeting Pike that weekend. She told you she was visiting her aunt.”
Inside the card Serena had written, Love always, Serena.
Gabriel stared at the handwriting.
That was what made betrayal difficult. The lies were not always surrounded by darkness. Sometimes they were written beside hearts in a child’s birthday card.
Caleb watched him.
“You want to hate every moment with her now.”
Gabriel slipped the card back into the envelope.
“I do.”
“Don’t. Some moments might have been real.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“That supposed to help?”
“No. It’s supposed to stop you from teaching Lucy that loving the wrong person makes her stupid.”
Gabriel stood very still.
May you like
Then he nodded once.
It was advice he would remember.
