Chapter 2 - THE WIFE WHO HAD NEVER BEEN RANDOM
Gabriel read Norah’s letter standing alone in the nursery.
For three years, he had believed they met by chance.
An art auction.
A damaged seventeenth-century canvas.
Norah had been the restoration consultant.
Gabriel had purchased the painting mostly because he wanted an excuse to see her again.
She laughed when he asked whether varnish removal was really worth more than some cars.
He remembered thinking she was the first woman in years who looked at him without calculating what fear or money might buy.
Now he wondered whether she had calculated everything.
The letter continued.
Daniel Mercer was not killed during a random carjacking.
He was an accountant for Calder Shipping.
He found payments connecting the company to Costa-controlled docks.
Three days before he planned to speak to federal investigators, he disappeared.
His body was found inside his burned vehicle.
The police called it robbery.
Norah never believed them.
Years later, she found Daniel’s old storage box.
Inside was a handwritten list.
Three names.
Vittorio Costa.
Anthony Bell.
And G.C.
Gabriel Costa.
Gabriel sat down.
“No.”
He had never known Daniel.
Had he?
Then memory surfaced.
Eight years earlier.
One accountant.
Young.
Nervous.
Brought into a warehouse office after uncovering payroll discrepancies.
Gabriel was twenty-nine.
Newly taking control.
He remembered telling Vittorio:
Handle it legally. Pay him what he’s owed and get him out of the company.
Had that man been Daniel Mercer?
Gabriel called Vittorio.
No answer.
Luca said:
“He left the city.”
“When?”
“Before midnight.”
Before Norah gave birth.
Before Gabriel came home.
Vittorio had known something was coming.
Then Norah’s letter reached the part that hurt differently.
I did not marry you only because of Daniel.
I wish I had.
I would hate you more cleanly if I had.
Somewhere along the way, I loved you.
And that made everything worse.
Gabriel closed his eyes.
He had cheated on a woman who had been terrified of loving him.
Then another paragraph.
Two months ago, I found Daniel’s hidden audio file.
You did not order his death.
But someone used your approval code afterward.
The same person has been watching my pregnancy.
The same person asked Dr. Harris whether the twins shared a placenta.
Gabriel looked up sharply.
Why would anyone care about placentas?
He called Harris.
The doctor went pale.
He admitted Vittorio had asked detailed questions.
Boy or girl.
Cord blood.
Blood type.
Whether both babies were biologically Gabriel’s.
Gabriel’s voice turned cold.
“Why would he ask that?”
Harris hesitated.
“Because your father left a succession clause.”
Gabriel froze.
His father, Salvatore Costa, had died ten years earlier.
The old family trust carried one strange provision:
If Gabriel produced two biological heirs from the same marriage, a controlling block of legitimate Costa holdings would transfer away from Vittorio’s stewardship and into an independent trust for Gabriel’s children.
The twins had not simply been born.
May you like
They had just cost Vittorio control of hundreds of millions of dollars.
And Norah had disappeared before he could reach them.
