Chapter 5 - THE BOY IN ARIZONA
Gabriel wanted Mateo moved immediately.
Norah refused.
“Not by your people.”
“He’s my son.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“He’s in danger.”
“So send law enforcement information. Do not send twelve armed strangers to kidnap a nine-year-old from the only parents he knows.”
That stopped him.
The boy had adoptive parents.
Rachel and David Moreno.
Teachers.
Married fifteen years.
No criminal connections.
They believed the adoption was legal.
Mateo knew nothing.
Gabriel hated every second of doing nothing.
But he listened.
Federal investigators were brought in through Adrian Keller, an attorney Lucia had trusted.
The Morenos were quietly contacted.
Their first reaction:
Disbelief.
Then terror.
DNA confirmed Gabriel.
Elena Cruz was contacted too.
The reunion was painful.
She cried when told her son lived.
Then became furious.
Not at the Morenos.
At everyone else.
She agreed not to destabilize Mateo before professionals helped.
Gabriel respected her instantly.
Then investigators uncovered something worse.
Mateo’s adoption file contained a payment.
$600,000.
From a Costa family charity to the adoption intermediary.
Signed by Vittorio.
No ambiguity.
Enough to arrest him?
Potentially fraud.
Kidnapping conspiracy required more.
They needed evidence.
Then Norah revealed Daniel had left a second archive.
Not with her.
Inside an artwork.
An eighteenth-century landscape restored by her employer years ago.
Daniel had hidden microfilm beneath a replacement backing board.
Norah discovered his note only after becoming pregnant.
The painting now hung in a private club in Chicago.
Owner?
Vittorio Costa.
Of course.
Gabriel looked at her.
“You married me to get into his house.”
“At first.”
That hurt.
“And later?”
“I stopped knowing where the plan ended.”
Her eyes filled.
“And you made it easier to leave when you started lying.”
Bianca.
There it was.
Gabriel had turned Norah’s conflict into certainty.
Then Luca arrived with news.
Vittorio had disappeared from his lake house.
His private accounts were draining.
Destination unclear.
But one transaction went to Bianca.
$250,000.
Gabriel stared.
His mistress.
Norah went very still.
“What did she sell him?”
Gabriel called Bianca.
Disconnected.
Hotel footage revealed she had left at 4:50 a.m.
Before Gabriel returned home.
She knew something had happened.
Then Luca found a message on Gabriel’s hotel-room service tablet.
Deleted.
Recovered.
From Bianca to Vittorio:
He turned off his phone. You have until dawn.
Gabriel felt physically sick.
May you like
His affair had not merely betrayed Norah.
Bianca had been keeping him away from the estate on purpose.
