Chapter 3 - Gabriel Romano

Thomas Romano lived outside Madison, Wisconsin.

He answered Carlo’s call but refused to discuss Gabriel over the phone. When Carlo mentioned Elena Moretti’s letter, Thomas went silent for so long we thought the connection had dropped.

Then he said, “Come tomorrow.”

Sarah was too sick to travel.

I almost stayed.

She told me not to.

“You’ve already lost thirty years.”

So the next morning, Carlo and I drove north.

I spent nearly three hours staring through the windshield wondering what kind of man my son had become.

Maybe he had a wife.

Children.

Maybe he hated me.

Maybe he had never heard my name.

The last possibility frightened me most.

Thomas lived in a modest farmhouse surrounded by bare winter trees. An old pickup stood near the barn.

The man who opened the door was almost eighty.

He looked at Carlo first.

Then me.

“You look like Salvatore.”

I hated that sentence.

Thomas saw it.

“But your eyes are Elena’s.”

That helped.

We sat in his kitchen.

Thomas told us Enzo brought Gabriel to him thirty years earlier with instructions to protect the child temporarily. Before Enzo could return, he was killed in what police called a highway robbery.

Thomas never believed it.

Neither did my mother.

Salvatore continued searching for the baby.

So Thomas changed Gabriel’s surname and raised him as his own son.

“Why didn’t you contact me after Salvatore died?”

Thomas studied me.

“Because by then you were Nathan Moretti.”

I understood.

My reputation had protected me from enemies while separating me from people who might have trusted the boy I used to be.

“Where is Gabriel?”

Thomas glanced toward the window.

“He knows you’re coming.”

A truck turned into the driveway.

My heart started pounding.

The driver stepped out.

He was tall.

Broad-shouldered.

Dark hair touched with the first hint of gray near his temples.

Then he looked toward the house.

I saw my mother.

Not literally.

Something in the eyes.

The same steady gaze.

The same way she tilted her head when uncertain whether someone deserved trust.

Gabriel entered the kitchen.

Nobody spoke.

Thomas finally stood.

“Gabriel, this is Nathan.”

My son looked directly at me.

“I know who he is.”

His voice contained no warmth.

That hurt.

But he had every right.

We talked for nearly two hours.

Gabriel knew Thomas wasn’t his biological father. At eighteen, Thomas told him part of the truth: his mother was Sarah Bellini and his biological father came from a dangerous Chicago family.

He deliberately withheld my name.

Gabriel eventually discovered it himself.

He searched.

What he found made him stop.

Arrests.

Investigations.

Businesses associated with violence.

Photographs of me surrounded by men who looked exactly like the men Sarah had spent her life running from.

“I figured she had a good reason for keeping me away from you.”

“She didn’t keep you away.”

His expression hardened.

“I know that now.”

I told him about Sarah.

About Lily.

About the apartment.

About the sewing machine.

When I said Sarah was hospitalized, his anger faltered.

“Is she dying?”

“Not if the doctors can help it.”

He looked away.

I took out the photograph Sarah had shown me.

Gabriel stared at it for a long time.

“That’s me?”

“Yes.”

His fingers touched the edge.

Then I handed him my mother’s letter.

He read every word twice.

When he finished, he asked the question I had been dreading.

“If you cared about Sarah so much, why did you become exactly the kind of man she was running from?”

There was no good answer.

So I gave him the true one.

“I thought power would make sure nobody could take my family again.”

I looked at the photograph between us.

“It only made it harder for my family to come back.”

Gabriel’s expression changed slightly.

Not forgiveness.

Recognition, perhaps.

Then Thomas said something from across the kitchen.

“There’s more.”

He opened an old metal box.

Inside were documents Enzo had hidden before his death.

Records.

Names.

Payments.

Orders signed by Salvatore.

One document described the search for Sarah.

Another authorized payment to men assigned to recover “the Bellini child.”

Then I found something that made my blood run cold.

A payment dated seventeen years after Gabriel disappeared.

Salvatore had continued paying someone to monitor him.

The recipient was identified only by initials.

C.R.

Carlo leaned over my shoulder.

His face changed.

“Nathan.”

I looked at him.

He knew those initials.

“Who?”

Carlo hesitated.

Then said the name of the man who had managed my security for twenty-five years.

“Charles Rizzo.”

The person closest to me had known where my son was all along.

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