Chapter 4: What the Paper Said
Dr.
Reyes had come and gone by the time Gabriel reached the east corridor.
She was a compact woman in her fifties with silver-streaked hair and the unhurried manner of someone who had treated injuries in rooms where asking questions was not part of the job.
She had cleaned and wrapped Elena's burn in the small staff sitting room off the kitchen, left a tube of ointment on the side table, and told Elena in a low, even voice that the burn was second-degree on a small area, that it would heal cleanly if kept covered, and that she should come to the clinic on Thursday.
Elena had said thank you four times.
Dr.
Reyes had said once was enough.
Marco was waiting outside the sitting room when Gabriel arrived.
He fell into step beside him without being asked.
"She's still in the dining room," Marco said.
"Hasn't moved.
One of the staff said she's been standing at the window for the last ten minutes."
"Let her stand."
"The guests?"
"Send cars.
Apologize for the evening.
Offer dinner at Cavallo next week, my reservation." Gabriel paused at the door to his study.
"And Marco — find out everything you can about Richard Whitaker's finances.
Not the public accounts.
The real ones."
Marco didn't write it down.
He never wrote anything down.
"By morning?"
"By morning."
Gabriel went inside and closed the door.
The study was the one room in the Moretti estate that looked nothing like the rest of it.
No chandeliers.
No oil paintings.
A wide oak desk, two leather chairs, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that held actual books, and a single lamp that threw a warm circle of light over the desk and left the corners of the room in shadow.
His father had used this room to make the kind of decisions that never appeared in any record.
Gabriel used it to think.
He sat down.
He did not pour a drink.
He thought about Newport.
The dinner had been Camille's idea from the beginning.
She had framed it as a romantic gesture — a private celebration before the formal announcement, just family and a few close friends, somewhere beautiful.
Gabriel had agreed because agreeing had seemed easy and the engagement had seemed right and he had been, he understood now, less careful than he should have been.
He had been watching the wrong things.
He had been watching her charm, her intelligence, her ease in rooms full of powerful people.
He had not been watching what she did when she thought no one important was looking.
Elena had been in that room in Newport.
Gabriel remembered her now — dark-haired, quiet, efficient.
She had poured his wine twice.
He had not looked at her face.
He had been looking at Camille.
The question was what Camille had needed Elena to witness.
A knock at the door.
"Come."
It was Elena.
She stood in the doorway still in her uniform, the white bandage bright against her forearm.
She had stopped trembling.
Her eyes were steady.
"Marco said you wanted to speak with me," she said.
"I did.
Sit down, please."
She sat in the chair across from his desk, her back straight, her hands folded in her lap.
Not relaxed.
But not afraid either.
Something in between — the posture of a person who has decided to be brave and is concentrating on keeping that decision.
"Your father," Gabriel said.
"Tell me what you know about him."
Elena was quiet for a moment.
"His name is Thomas Brooks," she said.
"He left when I was four.
My mother said he went to find work and didn't come back.
She stopped talking about him when I was about ten.
I stopped asking." She looked at her hands.
"I didn't think about him much after that.
Until Camille came to my apartment."
"What exactly did she tell you about him?"
"She said he was alive.
That he was in Boston.
That he had been in Boston for years." Elena's voice stayed level, but her fingers tightened against each other.
"She said he had money.
That he had built a life here.
A new family." A pause.
"She said he knew where I was and had chosen not to contact me."
Gabriel watched her face.
"She said if I took the job at the Newport dinner and stayed close to the head table — close to you — she would give me his address." Elena looked up.
"I needed to know if it was true.
I know that's not an excuse.
But I needed to know."
"It's not an excuse," Gabriel said.
"It's a reason.
There's a difference."
He opened the desk drawer and removed a second folded paper — different from the one he had left on the dining room table.
He set it in front of Elena.
She looked at it without touching it.
"What is this?"
"Richard Whitaker — Camille's father — has been a silent partner in four of my import companies for the last eleven years," Gabriel said.
"He invested through a holding company.
The arrangement was legal and, until recently, unremarkable." He paused.
"Three months ago, shortly before Camille and I became engaged, someone began moving funds through those companies in a pattern that does not match any legitimate business activity."
Elena's eyes came up.
"Someone was using my companies to move money," Gabriel said.
"And they needed the engagement to continue long enough to complete the transfers.
A fiancée has a different kind of access than a business partner.
Different conversations.
Different rooms."
The paper sat between them on the desk.
"Richard Whitaker's holding company," Gabriel said, "is registered under a name I did not recognize when I first saw it.
I recognized it last Tuesday, when he called me and tried to offer me a deal to keep the engagement intact." He tapped the paper once.
"The holding company is called Brooks & Whitaker Capital."
Elena stared at him.
"Your father," Gabriel said quietly, "is Thomas Brooks.
And he has been Richard Whitaker's business partner for the last nine years."
Elena's hand came up to her mouth.
May you like
The lamp threw its warm circle of light across the desk, and outside the study door, somewhere in the long corridor beyond, a heel struck marble once and then went still.
Someone had been listening.
