Chapter 8
Gabriel stood in front of Lena’s photograph like the floor had opened beneath him.
She was younger than me in the picture.
Dark hair.
Small smile.
Maid uniform.
Eyes that looked like they already knew adults lied.
Mrs. Morrison covered her mouth.
“That photo was taken in this house,” she whispered.
Gabriel reached toward it, then stopped before touching.
Rebecca called in the federal evidence team.
No one moved until they arrived.
The wall was not just a threat.
It was a map.
Photos of my Dorchester apartment.
Noah’s school.
Mrs. Morrison leaving a grocery store.
Samuel entering court.
Rebecca outside the federal building.
Gabriel at Lena’s grave.
Derek had not built this alone.
Victor Malden had.
And Malden had been studying Gabriel for years.
The note was meant to hurt him.
It did.
But the photos of my mother hurt me.
One showed her outside St. Aurelia Medical Center, thin and wrapped in a blue scarf, holding Noah’s little hand.
I had never seen that photo.
I remembered that day.
She had tried to smile for us after the receptionist turned her away.
I was seventeen.
Noah was three.
I thought no one noticed us.
Someone had.
I picked up the evidence bag after the tech sealed the photo.
“Why would Malden have this?”
Gabriel’s voice was low.
“Because my father did.”
I turned.
“What?”
He looked sick.
“My father kept files on people who came through his institutions. Patients. Staff. Families. Debtors. Anyone desperate could become useful later.”
The room blurred.
“So my mother was in a file.”
“Yes.”
“A sick woman begging for care was useful to him?”
Gabriel did not look away.
“Yes.”
I wanted to hate him again.
Maybe part of me did.
But Noah’s voice echoed in my mind.
You’re not bad at everything.
That was the problem with truth.
It rarely gave you clean people to love or clean people to blame.
Rebecca found the next clue.
A recent fingerprint on the nursery window.
Not Derek’s.
Not Malden’s.
Mrs. Morrison’s.
She froze when they told her.
“That’s impossible.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“Morrison?”
Her face went gray.
“I haven’t entered this room in eleven years.”
Rebecca asked, “Who else has access to your prints?”
Mrs. Morrison slowly sat down on a dusty chair.
“My daughter.”
The room went silent.
“You said she died,” I whispered.
“I said I had a daughter,” she replied. “I did not say how I lost her.”
Gabriel’s face tightened.
“Morrison.”
She looked at him with tears in her eyes.
“Her name is Elise. Your father sent her away after Lena disappeared because Elise saw men carrying something from the east wing.”
“Where is she?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know. I was told she overdosed in Worcester. No body. Only a report.”
Gabriel cursed softly.
Rebecca’s phone rang.
She stepped away, listened, then looked at Mrs. Morrison.
“We just identified the woman who rented the van used near the clinic. Name on the license was Elise Morrison.”
Mrs. Morrison made a sound like her body had split open.
Noah was safe at the apartment, guarded by agents.
I should have stayed there.
But in that moment, watching Mrs. Morrison learn her dead daughter might be alive and working with our enemy, I understood how grief could be weaponized for years.
Derek called Gabriel’s phone ten minutes later.
Gabriel answered on speaker.
“You found the nursery,” Derek said.
Rebecca signaled for tracing.
Derek laughed.
“Don’t bother. I learned from better criminals than cops.”
I stepped forward.
“Where is Elise?”
Derek paused.
Then he said, “Harper. Still pretending this is your story?”
“It became my story when you put your hands on me.”
His voice sharpened.
“You were my wife.”
“I survived being your wife.”
Silence.
Then Derek said, “Bring Ashford to St. Aurelia tonight. Alone. Or I send Noah a piece of truth about what Harper did to keep him fed.”
My stomach turned.
Gabriel’s eyes moved to mine.
Derek continued, “Ask her about the night she stole pills from her dying mother’s hospice cart.”
I stopped breathing.
I had stolen pain medication.
Once.
Not to sell.
Not to get high.
Because my mother was screaming and the nurse would not come.
I had been a child trying to stop pain.
Derek knew because I had told him when I still believed confession was intimacy.
Now he held it like a blade.
Gabriel said, “You want me, not her.”
“I want all of you,” Derek replied.
Then a woman’s voice came through the line.
Soft.
Flat.
“Mother?”
Mrs. Morrison stood so fast the chair fell.
“Elise?”
The woman breathed once.
May you like
Then whispered, “Don’t come looking for me.”
The call ended.
