Chapter 3 - I CANCELED THE WEDDING WITHOUT CANCELING IT
By eight that morning, Celeste had called me twelve times.
I answered the thirteenth.
“Where are you?”
Her voice sounded controlled.
Too controlled.
“At the hospital.”
Silence.
Then:
“How is she?”
“You know her name?”
Another pause.
“Of course.”
“Say it.”
“What?”
“The nurse.”
Celeste exhaled.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Say her name.”
She couldn’t.
That told me more than a confession would have.
“I’ll be home soon.”
“Gabriel—”
It was the first time my name sounded uncertain in her mouth.
I ended the call.
My name is Gabriel Moretti.
For thirteen years, I had controlled the organization my father left behind.
I had survived betrayals, federal investigations, rival crews, and men who believed inheriting power meant inheriting weakness.
But nothing I had faced prepared me for the possibility that my fiancée had been studying my family longer than she had been loving me.
I called the wedding coordinator.
“Postpone every vendor decision.”
She gasped.
“Mr. Moretti, the wedding is in nineteen days.”
“I know.”
“Should I tell Ms. Vandermark?”
“No.”
Then I called my bank.
Every account connected to the wedding was frozen.
Every authorization given to Celeste was suspended.
I did not cancel the ceremony.
Not yet.
If Celeste wanted something from me, I needed her to believe she still had a chance to get it.
Vincent drove me back to the estate.
When we arrived, Celeste was standing on the front steps.
She wore cream trousers and a black sweater.
No makeup.
She had chosen vulnerability as a costume.
“What happened last night was not what it looked like.”
I walked past her.
She followed.
“Delia attacked me.”
I stopped.
“With her skull?”
Celeste’s expression hardened.
“She was stealing.”
“What?”
“She had documents from your mother’s room.”
“What documents?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the mistake.
If she did not know what Delia had, she could not know it had been stolen.
I looked at Vincent.
“Change every interior security code.”
Celeste stared at me.
“Gabriel.”
“Every one.”
“Are you locking me out?”
“No.”
I turned toward her.
“I’m finding out who I let in.”
That afternoon, Delia was moved from the hospital to a private recovery suite under guard.
It cost me something immediately.
Three of Celeste’s family representatives walked away from a port refinancing meeting.
A major lender threatened to accelerate a debt covenant.
One of my captains asked whether I was risking a hundred-million-dollar alliance over “a nurse.”
I stared at him until he looked down.
“She has a name.”
That evening, Vincent handed me the first piece of bad news.
The storage locker Delia had described had been opened forty-eight hours earlier.
Someone had beaten us there.
But they had missed something.
A photograph had slipped behind the metal shelving.
Vincent placed it on my desk.
Pier 44.
Six years ago.
A black sedan parked near Warehouse C.
And beside it stood a woman in a long coat.
The image was grainy.
But I knew the posture.
I knew the profile.
May you like
I knew her.
Celeste.
