Chapter 7 - Shadows of the Past
The heavy silence in the kitchen stretched out so long that I could hear the distant howling of the Atlantic wind crashing against the rocky cliffs outside Falcone Manor. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Why were they looking at me like that? Why did the mention of my mother’s simple Sunday morning cooking make three ruthless mafia bosses look like they had just seen a ghost walk through a solid wall?
“Elena,” I whispered cautiously, keeping my hands resting firmly on the edge of the counter, ready to bolt if the situation turned hostile. “Elena Carter. Why? Do you know her?”
Roman closed his eyes tightly, taking a slow, shuddering breath that sounded like years of accumulated weight finally crashing down his shoulders. When he opened them again, the cold, impenetrable ice that usually defined his gaze was entirely gone, replaced by a raw, devastating vulnerability. He didn't answer my question immediately. Instead, he walked past me with slow, mechanical steps and reached out to touch the edge of the ceramic plate holding the golden, butter-brushed biscuits, as if testing to see if the food—and by extension, I—was real.
“Twenty-five years ago,” Roman spoke softly, his voice barely louder than a whisper, “our mother walked out of a house very much like this one, taking her two youngest boys and disappearing into a freezing November rainstorm just like this. We were children. We were told she died in a car crash on the interstate.”
My breath hitched in my throat. The room seemed to tilt slightly on its axis.
“Our father was a monster,” Declan chimed in from the doorway, his voice uncharacteristically thick with emotion. “He ran this city with a iron fist and a black heart, and when our mother couldn't stomach the blood on his hands any longer, she packed a single suitcase and ran. She took her maiden name back. She took our younger brothers away to keep them safe from the life we were forced to inherit.”
Gabriel stepped closer, his lazy smile completely replaced by an expression of deep, agonizing regret. “We spent a decade searching for any trace of her, Maeve. By the time we finally tracked her down... she had passed away in a small, forgotten town upstate, leaving behind two daughters and a mountain of impossible debt.”
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The pieces of the puzzle slammed together in my mind with the force of a freight train. The agency calling me out of nowhere. The absurdly high triple minimum wage. The background check that Gabriel had pulled up so effortlessly. It wasn't a random job placement. It wasn't a cruel corporate test.
It was a rescue mission disguised as employment.
