Chapter 2 - The Blood on the Heirloom Silver
The silence in the grand ballroom was so dense it felt physical.
Gabriel didn't release my wrist. His fingers were firm, providing a grounding warmth against my trembling arm, yet his touch remained astonishingly gentle despite the deadly rage radiating from his body.
“Gabriel, please,” Elena spoke up, stepping forward with her pearl necklace trembling against her throat. “You are making a scene in front of our distinguished guests. The girl simply had a minor mishap in the service area before dinner. I suggested she compose herself downstairs so as not to draw unwanted attention to Nicholas’s wedding.”
Gabriel turned his head slowly toward his mother. The coldness in his silver eyes was enough to make the matriarch take an involuntary step backward.
“You sent my wife to the kitchen,” Gabriel said, his voice flat, calm, and terrifyingly precise.
“I suggested she seek comfort among people of her own background!” Elena snapped, trying desperately to regain her formidable authority. “Look at her, Gabriel! She doesn't belong at the head table. She came into this family through a financial bailout!”
“She came into this family as my wife,” Gabriel corrected, his voice dropping an octave into a register that made the surrounding bodyguards straighten their spines. “And every person in this room breathes air because I allow it.”
Gabriel looked down at me, his eyes softening for a microsecond. “Tell me what happened downstairs, Catherine. Every word.”
I took a deep breath, looking past his broad shoulder toward Uncle Vittorio, who was standing stiffly near the head table, his knuckles white against his wine glass.
“Last night, when the family vault was reported breached, I remembered seeing Arthur—the night security manager—moving a heavy leather case toward the lower boiler room,” I explained, my voice echoing clearly across the hushed room. “This afternoon, while everyone was preparing for the wedding, I went down to check the storage lockers. I found Arthur transferring the Romano silver into a crate stamped with the Vance family logo.”
A collective gasp swept through the high-society guests. The Vance family was the Romanos' fiercest rival in the Midwest.
“Arthur saw me,” I continued, my fingers tightening slightly against Gabriel’s suit jacket. “He grabbed me. He said... he said Vittorio paid him fifty thousand dollars to stage the theft so we would start a war with the Vances. I fought him off with a brass fire extinguisher. That’s how my knuckles were smashed. I locked Arthur in the linen storage room and brought the silver back up to the display case myself.”
Vittorio’s face drained of every drop of color. He turned abruptly toward the side exit, but before he could take two steps, three of Gabriel’s elite tactical guards stepped out from the shadows, their hands resting on their holstered weapons, completely blocking his path.
“Vittorio,” Gabriel called out softly without turning around. “Sit back down.”
Vittorio froze. His jaw twitched, but he slowly turned around, his eyes filled with rising panic. “Gabriel, listen to me! The girl is lying! She’s trying to drive a wedge between blood relatives! Why would I frame our own family?!”
Gabriel didn't answer his uncle. He pulled his tailored suit jacket off his broad shoulders and gently wrapped it around my cold, silk-clad frame. The fabric smelled of sandalwood, fresh rain, and power.
He reached into his inner vest pocket, pulled out his encrypted phone, and handed it to his chief of security, Dante.
“Dante,” Gabriel ordered calmly. “Retrieve Arthur from the lower storage room. Bring him to the private holding suite in the basement. Then take Vittorio’s phone and check his recent encrypted transfers.”
“No! You can't do this to me! I am your father's brother!” Vittorio roared as two guards grabbed his arms, dragging him toward the rear service corridor.
Elena stared at her brother-in-law being hauled away, then looked at her son in utter disbelief. “Gabriel! You are tearing this family apart over a mechanic’s daughter!”
Gabriel took a deliberate step toward his mother. He was towering, imposing, a man who had consolidated Chicago’s underworld in less than three years.
“You humiliated the woman who saved this family from an unnecessary war tonight, Mother,” Gabriel said, his tone colder than the ice floating in Lake Michigan outside. “You stripped her name from the table. You told her to eat with the staff.”
He reached out, grabbed the folded place card bearing my name from the linen table, and slowly unfolded it in front of her face.
“Effective tonight,” Gabriel declared, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings for every guest to hear, “you are stripped of your seat on the Romano Foundation Board. You will vacate the main estate by sunrise tomorrow and relocate to the estate in Naples. You will not return to Chicago without my written permission.”
Elena gasped, clutching her chest, her high-society pride completely shattered into dust. “You... you are exiling your own mother?!”
“I am protecting my wife,” Gabriel replied flatly.
May you like
He turned back to me, taking my uninjured hand in his, his grip warm, solid, and absolute.
“Come with me, Catherine,” Gabriel whispered softly, guiding me away from the stunned crowd. “It’s time we take what belongs to us.”
