Chapter 7 - THE SECRET IN NORAH'S FAMILY
Norah slapped him.
The sound cracked across the room.
Elias looked away.
Gabriel did not move.
“Don’t you ever say that again.”
His cheek reddened.
“I’m trying to understand.”
“He is my brother.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t family.”
“You said—”
“I said maybe someone lied about who his father was.”
Norah froze.
Gabriel turned the monitor.
FOR MY SON.
She stared.
“Our mother never mentioned the Costas.”
“Maybe she had a reason.”
Norah shook her head.
“My father was Daniel Hayes.”
“Where is he?”
“He died before Leo was born.”
“How?”
“Construction accident.”
Gabriel’s expression changed.
“When?”
She told him.
Gabriel recognized the date.
The same month his father, Vincent Costa, disappeared from New York for six weeks.
Norah saw his face.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t need to.”
She backed away.
“No.”
Gabriel ordered a records search.
Marriage certificates.
Hospital records.
Employment.
Old photographs.
One image came back from twenty-three years earlier.
Vincent Costa at a charity dinner.
Beside him stood Norah’s mother, Margaret Hayes.
Young.
Beautiful.
Pregnant.
Norah sat down.
“She worked for your family?”
“For my mother’s charity.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Elias found a sealed birth record.
Leo Hayes’s original certificate listed no father.
Daniel Hayes had been added eight months later.
Norah whispered:
“My mother lied.”
Gabriel’s voice softened.
“Maybe she protected him.”
“From what?”
“From being a Costa.”
That hurt because he meant it.
If Leo was Vincent’s son, then Leo was Gabriel’s half brother.
And Matteo’s nephew.
The accident no longer looked like an attempt to silence a diner employee.
It looked like an attack on a hidden heir.
Then Gabriel remembered something.
His father’s will.
Everything had gone to Gabriel.
Except one clause.
A trust designated for “any acknowledged biological child discovered after execution.”
He had mocked it at the time.
Lawyer language.
Nothing more.
If Leo proved to be Vincent Costa’s son, he could inherit part of an empire worth hundreds of millions.
Matteo would have known.
Norah slowly looked up.
“That’s why he kept Leo alive.”
Gabriel understood.
“A dead man triggers estate review.”
“A disabled man nobody knows about doesn’t.”
Elias’s phone rang.
He listened.
Then his face hardened.
“We found the transport van.”
“Leo?”
“Gone.”
“Matteo?”
“No.”
Inside the van, police found one envelope addressed to Gabriel.
It contained a DNA test.
Probability Vincent Costa was Leo Hayes’s biological father:
99.98%.
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And beneath it:
IF YOU WANT YOUR BROTHER ALIVE, BRING NORAH.
