Chapter 2 - The Thursday Lady|
Isabella gasped, her hand coming up to touch her pearl necklace. “That's absurd! Gabriel, you can't possibly listen to this! Hannah has been filling the poor girl's head with nonsense all week!”
Gabriel slowly stood up to his full height. He didn't raise his voice, which only made him look twice as dangerous.
“Did you tell my daughter I didn't want her at my engagement party, Isabella?”
“Of course not!” Isabella pleaded, reaching out to touch his arm. “I love Sophie! I was only trying to protect her from the loud music!”
Sophie immediately began signing again, faster this time, her hands trembling so violently that the purple butterflies on her hearing aids caught the ambient light.
Gabriel caught only fragments of the movement. He turned his head toward me, his voice dangerously low. “Hannah. Translate. Every word.”
I knelt beside Sophie, taking her small hand to steady her fingers. “She says... she says Isabella told her that after the wedding, she will be going somewhere better.”
Gabriel stared at his fiancée. “Somewhere better?”
Isabella’s artificial composure finally cracked around the edges. She cleared her throat, shifting her weight in her red silk gown. “I... I was going to discuss it with you privately after the weekend, Gabriel. It’s about a specialized boarding school. Upstate. Sophie needs structure, darling! She needs proper attention, expert staff—people who actually understand her difficulties.”
Gabriel’s voice dropped into a pitch that made the nearby pianist stop playing entirely.
“My daughter does not need to be sent away.”
Isabella folded her arms, her chin lifting in stubborn defiance. “And what happens when we have children of our own, Gabriel? Are we supposed to spend our entire lives arranging our schedules around Sophie's special needs?”
An appalling, suffocating silence fell over the grand salon.
Gabriel took a single step toward her. “She is already my family, Isabella. There is no 'our family' without her.”
He reached down to take Sophie's hand. “Come with me, sweetheart. We're leaving the floor.”
I thought the public execution of Isabella’s engagement was over. But as Gabriel reached for his daughter, Sophie pulled her hand back with sudden urgency.
She signed frantic, sweeping gestures: Hannah! Tell Daddy about the Thursday lady!
I went rigid. I had heard Sophie mention that woman before in passing while we were drawing pictures in the nursery. A stranger who came to the DeLuca estate whenever Gabriel was away in New York or Miami. Always on Thursdays. Always carrying a thick black leather folder.
Isabella went entirely pale, the crimson color draining from her lips. “There is no Thursday lady! She’s making things up!”
Sophie shook her head furiously. She reached into her small purple velvet purse and pulled out a glossy photograph, holding it up for her father to see.
It showed Sophie standing beside an unfamiliar, sharp-faced woman in a dark gray suit outside an old brick building. A carved wooden sign behind them read: WESTBRIDGE RESIDENTIAL ACADEMY.
Gabriel took the photograph from his daughter's hands. His broad thumb brushed across the image, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched violently in his cheek.
“Who is this woman, Isabella?” Gabriel growled.
Sophie signed before Isabella could speak: She said she's coming to get me.
Gabriel turned the photograph over. Someone had written a date in crisp blue ink on the back: October 22.
That was the morning after their scheduled wedding.
Beneath the date were three cold, handwritten words: Permanent placement confirmed.
Gabriel stared at the handwriting. A terrifying quiet washed over him—the kind of silence that usually preceded a corporate takeover or a bloodbath on the Chicago docks.
He pulled his phone from his tuxedo pocket and pressed a single speed-dial button.
“Daniel,” Gabriel said into the speaker. “Bring security to the ballroom. And I want every visitor log and gate camera recording from the past six Thursdays brought to my study immediately.”
Isabella grabbed his lapel, her voice rising into a panic. “Gabriel, stop this right now! You can't do this in front of forty-eight of our most important business partners!”
He looked down at her hand on his jacket until she slowly, reluctantly pulled it back.
“You arranged to remove my daughter from my home without my knowledge,” Gabriel said flatly.
“I was trying to solve a problem for us!” she cried.
“Then explain the photograph.”
Isabella opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
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I thought I had seen the worst of the betrayal. But then Sophie tugged hard on my waiter's apron, her eyes overflowing with tears.
When she signed her next thought, my blood turned to solid ice.
