Chapter 4 - The Five-Year Lie
The private study was soundproofed with double-glazed leaded glass and reinforced acoustic baffling. Through the glass partition, I could see my three sons in the adjacent media room. Marco had set them up with cartoons, fresh strawberries, and two guards stationed at the door like impassive stone statues. Leo sat upright, watching the doorway with a fierce vigilance that made my chest ache. He was five years old, yet he already possessed the protective instincts of a Cross.
Inside the study, Gabriel stood behind a desk carved from a single slab of blackened oak. The overhead lighting cast sharp, brutal angles across his face.
On the desk lay an array of documents, digital tablets, and a shattered phone.
“Begin,” Gabriel commanded.
Marco opened the black briefcase. “Five years ago, three days before you finalized the strike against the Castiglione syndicate, Claire visited your midtown headquarters at approximately 8:45 PM. Security logs were wiped, but we recovered the backup server from the basement archives twenty minutes ago.”
Gabriel turned his gaze toward me, his brow furrowed in agony. “Why were you there, Claire?”
“You had a migraine,” I whispered, gripping the back of a leather armchair to keep my knees from buckling. “You had been working eighty hours straight. You left your prescription at the townhouse. I brought it to your office because I was worried you were going to collapse.”
“And what did you see?” Gabriel asked, his voice barely audible.
“The private elevator opened onto your floor,” I said, every detail burning through my mind with acid clarity. “The lights were dimmed. Serena was sitting on the edge of your desk. You were standing between her thighs. Her hands were in your hair. And you were kissing her.”
Gabriel closed his eyes. A muscle in his throat spasmed violently.
“Marco,” Gabriel choked out. “The office security camera from five years ago. October fourteenth. Pull it up.”
Marco tapped the screen of the tablet and slid it across the oak desk toward me.
The timestamp in the corner read: *October 14, 8:42 PM.*
The video played in high-definition black and white. Gabriel was sitting in his executive chair, his head slumped forward on the blotter, completely unresponsive. A spilled tumbler of scotch lay near his hand.
The elevator doors opened. Serena walked in. She wasn’t wearing business attire; she wore a slinky slip dress. She walked around the desk, picked up the glass, sniffed it, and smiled. Then, she grabbed Gabriel by his shirt collar, dragging his heavy, limp frame upward until he was propped against her. She arranged his hands on her hips, threw her arms around his neck, and positioned herself on the desk.
The timestamp read: *8:45 PM.*
The private elevator doors opened again. On the screen, I saw myself stepping out, holding a brown pharmacy bag. I froze. From the angle of the elevator, it looked exactly as I had remembered it: Gabriel leaning into Serena, their mouths pressed together in a passionate embrace.
On the screen, my younger self dropped the bag, backed into the elevator, and slammed the button.
The second the doors closed, Serena shoved Gabriel’s limp body away. He slumped back onto the chair, unconscious. Serena walked over to the pharmacy bag, picked it up, dropped it into the wastebasket, and pulled out her cell phone.
I stared at the screen, my breath catching in my throat until my lungs burned.
“I was drugged,” Gabriel said. His voice was a terrifying whisper from the bottom of a grave. “Serena’s father, Victor Vale, was deep in debt to the Castigliones. He needed a guarantee that Cross Industries would bail out his shipping lines. Serena knew that if I married her, the Vale family would be untouchable. But I had you. And I refused to let you go.”
“She… she staged it,” I stammered, my fingers trembling against the glass screen. “She knew I was coming.”
“She intercepted your text to my personal phone twenty minutes earlier,” Gabriel said, stepping around the desk toward me. “She slipped Rohypnol into my scotch while I was in the washroom. She knew your pride, Claire. She knew you would never ask for an explanation. She knew you would simply leave.”
“And the divorce papers?” I gasped, looking up into his tortured eyes. “The letter telling me I was an inconvenience?”
Marco cleared his throat, stepping forward with a folder of certified medical files. “Serena didn’t just stage the office, Mrs. Cross. She had a plant inside the legal firm that drafted your protection agreement. The original papers were swapped. But that wasn’t all.”
Marco opened the folder, revealing a stamped medical intake report from St. Jude’s Women’s Clinic in Boston, dated five years ago.
My heart stopped.
“You went to the clinic twelve days after leaving New York,” Marco said gently. “You thought you had an ulcer from stress. The blood panel showed high levels of hCG. The ultrasound confirmed a triplet pregnancy.”
“How do you have this?” I whispered, horror rising in my chest. “I used a pseudonym! I paid in cash!”
“Serena had a private investigator tracking you from the second you stepped out of the townhouse,” Marco revealed. “She intercepted the clinical files. She bribed the attending physician with two hundred thousand dollars to keep the records off the national medical database. She knew that if Gabriel found out you were carrying his child—let alone three sons—there is no force on earth that would have kept him from tearing the world apart to bring you home.”
Gabriel stood motionless. His fists were clenched so tightly that droplets of crimson began to seep from his palms where his fingernails pierced his own skin.
“She knew,” Gabriel whispered. The air in the room dropped ten degrees. The sheer, predatory malice emanating from him was suffocating. “She watched me mourn this woman for five years. She watched me tear through every borough in this city looking for a ghost. She slept in the guest room of my estate, pretending to be a loyal friend, comforting me while I nearly drank myself into an early grave… and all the while, she knew my sons were growing up without a father.”
“Gabriel,” I breathed, seeing the murder in his eyes. “What did you do to her?”
Gabriel turned to Marco. His voice was steady, terrifying, and colder than ice.
“Take Serena Vale to the docks at Red Hook,” Gabriel commanded. “Put her in a shipping container bound for the Black Sea. Notify Victor Vale that his shipping lines are seized as of midnight. If either of them ever sets foot on North American soil again, bury them where they stand.”
“Boss,” Marco nodded, closing the briefcase and turning toward the door.
“Wait,” I said, stepping between Gabriel and Marco.
Gabriel looked down at me, his eyes burning with dark fury. “Claire, do not plead for her. She stole five years of my sons’ lives. She stole five years of *us*.”
“I’m not pleading for her,” I said, my voice ringing with a strength I hadn't known I possessed. “I don't care where she rots. But your sons are in the next room, Gabriel. If you spend tonight covered in blood, you cannot wash it off before you look at them tomorrow morning. Don't let her take their father twice.”
Gabriel flinched. The absolute, unyielding rage in his posture fractured. He stared at me—really stared at me—for the first time in five years.
May you like
He slowly lowered his head, sinking onto the edge of the desk, burying his face in his scarred, trembling hands. And there, in the silence of his fortress, the most feared man in Manhattan began to weep.
***
