Chapter 4: The Thing He Thought He'd Handled
We sat in the back of Gabriel's car — a black SUV with tinted windows and a driver who did not look in the mirror.
The boys were between us.
Eli had fallen asleep against Gabriel's arm within four minutes, which I think surprised Gabriel more than anything that had happened at the gala.
He looked down at my son's head and did not move.
"His name is Dario Reiss," Gabriel said.
"He runs money.
Legitimate on the surface — import logistics, freight brokerage.
Underneath, he moves funds for people who need their transactions to disappear."
"And you handled him two years ago."
"I cut him out of a deal he believed he was owed a share of.
He accepted it.
Or I thought he did."
"And Serena knows him."
"Apparently."
I watched the city move past the window.
"How long have you known Serena?"
"Three years."
"You were with her before the divorce was finalized."
He didn't answer.
That was an answer.
"Gabriel." I kept my voice low so the boys wouldn't stir.
"Did Serena know I was pregnant when I left?"
"I didn't know you were pregnant."
"That's not what I asked."
He turned to look at me.
In the dark of the car his face was difficult to read, but I had spent four years learning that face and some things do not leave you.
He was not lying.
He was calculating — working out what he knew versus what he could prove, the way he always did before he said anything he could not take back.
"I don't know what Serena knew," he said finally.
"But I intend to find out."
Noah was awake, sitting quietly between us, still holding the paper airplane.
He looked up at Gabriel.
"Are you going to come to our house?"
Gabriel glanced at me.
I said nothing.
"I don't know yet," Gabriel told him.
"Would that be all right with you?"
Noah considered this seriously.
"We have a dog.
He bites strangers."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"His name is Biscuit."
"That's a very threatening name."
Noah nodded, satisfied, and went back to examining the paper airplane's wing.
The car stopped at a red light.
Gabriel's phone lit up on the seat beside him.
He turned it face-down without looking at it.
"She'll call," I said.
"She already has.
Twice."
"Are you going to answer?"
"Not tonight." He looked at Eli, still sleeping.
"I need to think before I talk to her.
If I call her now I'll say things I can't use later."
That was Gabriel Cross exactly as I had known him.
Even blindsided, even with his hands still faintly unsteady, he was already thinking three moves ahead.
"I need to ask you something," I said.
"Ask."
"The man.
Dario Reiss.
Is he dangerous to my boys?"
The pause before he answered was one second too long.
"I won't let anything happen to them."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he said.
"It's a promise.
Which is more than an answer."
I looked at him.
He looked back.
Five years of silence sat between us and neither of us tried to fill it.
Marcus stirred, leaned against my shoulder, and went back to sleep.
Gabriel's phone lit up again.
This time the name on the screen was not Serena.
It was a single word: REISS.
Gabriel picked it up.
Looked at it.
Set it face-down again.
"He's making contact," I said.
"Yes."
"Tonight.
Right now."
"Yes."
"Why tonight, Gabriel?
Why does Dario Reiss call you twenty minutes after seeing my children?"
Gabriel was quiet for a moment.
When he spoke, his voice was very controlled.
"Because he recognized them.
The same way I did."
I stared at him.
"He knew about the boys before tonight?"
"I think," Gabriel said slowly, "that someone told him.
A long time ago." He picked up his phone.
"And I think I know who."
He dialed.
Not Reiss.
Not Serena.
Someone else entirely.
"It's me," he said when the line connected.
"I need everything you have on Serena Vale's finances going back four years.
Tonight." A pause.
"Yes, tonight.
And pull the Reiss file.
All of it."
He ended the call.
Put the phone in his jacket pocket.
The car turned onto my street.
I had not told Gabriel where I lived.
"You already knew," I said.
He did not look away.
"I've always known where you were, Claire.
I just never let myself go there."
The car stopped in front of my building.
The doorman looked up from inside the lobby.
"Why not?" I asked.
Gabriel looked at the boys — all three of them, sleeping or nearly so, completely unaware of the world rearranging itself around them.
"Because I thought you were safer without me," he said.
"I'm starting to think I was wrong about that."
He got out and opened the door.
He carried Eli.
I carried Marcus.
Noah walked between us holding his paper airplane, and the doorman held the lobby door open without a word.
We rode the elevator in silence.
When I unlocked the apartment door, Biscuit launched himself at Gabriel's shins immediately.
Gabriel looked down at twelve pounds of furious terrier and said, very quietly, "Fair enough."
It was the first time all evening that I almost smiled.
But upstairs, after the boys were in bed and Gabriel had gone back down to his car, I sat at the kitchen table and thought about what he had said.
*Someone told Reiss.
A long time ago.*
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I answered.
"Mrs.
Cross." A man's voice.
Smooth.
Unhurried.
"We haven't met.
May you like
But I've been watching your sons for quite some time.
We should talk."
