Chapter 8
I knew what the message meant.
My body knew before my mind admitted it.
Rosa’s daughter still has one secret left.
Gabriel read the note and looked at me.
“What secret?”
I looked at Noah asleep in the hospital bed.
“Not here.”
Mrs. Morrison stayed with him while Gabriel walked me to the small chapel at the end of the hall.
The room smelled like wax and old prayers.
I stood near the front pew.
“My father wasn’t dead when my mother said he was.”
Gabriel waited.
“He came back when I was nineteen. Drunk. Sick. Mean. He said my mother had ruined him. He said she stole something from men who never stopped looking.”
“The ledgers,” Gabriel said.
I nodded.
“He tried to sell me to them.”
His face went cold.
“What does that mean?”
“He told Derek where I worked. Derek was already tied to Vincent. That’s how Derek found me.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“I thought Derek chose me because I was easy,” I whispered. “But my father handed me over.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. My mother said he disappeared. She made me promise never to look.”
“What’s his name?”
“Caleb Queen.”
Gabriel turned his head slowly.
“What?”
My stomach dropped.
“You know him?”
“Caleb Queen was Vincent’s courier. He vanished after Isabella disappeared.”
I sat down hard.
“My father worked for Vincent?”
“Yes.”
The chapel seemed to tilt.
My father had not only hurt my mother.
He had carried poison through another family too.
Gabriel sat beside me, leaving space.
“You are not your father.”
I laughed bitterly.
“People say that like blood doesn’t follow.”
“Blood follows,” he said. “It does not steer.”
Agent Voss called an hour later.
They had found Caleb Queen.
Alive.
In federal custody in Maine under another name.
He had asked to see me.
I did not want to go.
Then I thought of my mother.
Her pills.
Her letter.
Her broken rosary.
I went.
Gabriel came with me.
The federal facility outside Portland was cold and gray.
Caleb Queen sat behind glass in prison orange.
He looked older than my memories.
Smaller.
But his eyes were the same.
Sharp.
Cowardly.
“Harper,” he said through the phone.
I stared at him.
“You don’t get to say my name like you missed me.”
He flinched.
Then he looked at Gabriel.
“Ashford.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Caleb swallowed.
“I’ll testify.”
“Good for you,” I said.
“I know what happened to Rosa.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“You mean what Derek did.”
“No.”
The room went silent.
“Derek delivered the pills,” Caleb said. “But I gave Vincent her clinic schedule.”
My breath vanished.
“You told him how to reach Mom?”
“I thought he only wanted the ledgers.”
“You knew he might hurt her.”
His silence answered.
I stood.
He panicked.
“Wait. There’s more.”
I stopped.
He looked at Gabriel.
“Vincent didn’t kill your father alone.”
Gabriel went still.
“What?”
“The order came through your mother.”
Gabriel’s face emptied.
“My mother is dead.”
Caleb shook his head.
“No. Evelyn Ashford staged her death after your father was killed. She has been feeding Vincent money from the shadows for years.”
Gabriel did not move.
I had never seen him look truly afraid until that moment.
Caleb continued.
“She knows Vincent failed. She knows about Noah. She’ll come next.”
I whispered, “How many dead people stay dead in your world?”
Gabriel’s voice was hollow.
“Not enough.”
When we returned to Boston, my first sight of Noah’s empty hospital bed nearly killed me.
Then Mrs. Morrison stepped out of the bathroom with him on her hip.
“He had to pee.”
I burst into tears so fast Noah panicked.
“Mom?”
I grabbed him and laughed and cried into his hair.
Gabriel stood in the doorway, pale from the shock of his mother being alive.
Then his phone rang.
Unknown number.
May you like
He answered.
A woman’s voice said softly, “Hello, my son.”
