Chapter 11 - ELIAS CHOSE A SIDE
Gabriel aimed his gun at Elias.
Rosa screamed.
“No!”
Elias didn’t reach for a weapon.
He simply stepped away from Raymond.
“You really think I brought him here?”
Raymond’s smile disappeared.
Elias looked down at us.
“I’ve spent five years inside Raymond’s organization.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“As what?”
“A spy.”
Raymond moved.
Elias hit him first.
Chaos exploded.
Leo’s men surged onto the catwalk.
Raymond disappeared through a side door while Elias dropped down the metal stairs toward us.
Gabriel kept his weapon raised.
Elias stopped ten feet away.
“I did not poison Paulie.”
“Prove it.”
“I warned him.”
“Prove that.”
Elias removed a flash drive from his pocket and slid it across the floor.
Vivian picked it up.
“What’s on it?”
“Raymond’s accounts. Payoffs. Shell companies. Food suppliers. Judges. Police. Everybody he bought.”
Rosa stared at her younger son.
“Elias…”
He knelt beside her.
“Hi, Mama.”
She touched his face and broke.
Gabriel turned away.
I understood why.
He had spent twenty-six years dreaming of a mother he thought he could never see again.
Now he was standing three feet away while she embraced the brother who had been allowed to keep her.
I touched Gabriel’s arm.
He didn’t look at me.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he whispered.
“You don’t have to know yet.”
Rosa heard.
She reached toward him.
“Gabriel.”
He finally faced her.
“You thought I was him.”
Rosa started crying harder.
“No.”
“You stayed away because you thought I became Charles.”
“I stayed away because every time I tried to reach you, somebody around you died.”
Gabriel froze.
She told us there had been attempts.
A teacher who tried to pass Gabriel a letter died in a robbery.
A private investigator disappeared.
A former housekeeper was struck by a car.
Rosa finally understood Raymond and Charles had built a system designed to prevent reunion.
After Charles died, Raymond inherited it.
Paulie discovered that network.
That was why he died.
Vivian inserted Elias’s flash drive into a laptop.
Hundreds of files appeared.
Then she stopped.
“There’s a medical folder.”
I leaned closer.
Patient records.
Toxicology reports.
A list of substances.
Paulie’s name.
Gabriel’s name.
And mine.
My blood went cold.
“Why am I in there?”
Elias looked horrified.
“You weren’t when I copied those files.”
The document had been added two days earlier.
Someone had ordered my medical history, class schedule, work schedule, and home address.
At the bottom was a line labeled:
LEVERAGE PROTOCOL.
Gabriel read the next sentence.
SUBJECT N.B. IS NOW PRIMARY CONTROL VECTOR FOR G.H.
He looked at me.
May you like
Raymond had discovered the one thing Gabriel Hayes feared losing.
Me.
