Chapter 4 - The Alliance of Ashes
Genevieve worked the yellow diamond off her finger. Her knuckle was swollen from the cold rain, but she pulled the gold band free and placed it gently into Gabriel’s open palm.
The moment the ring left her skin, a strange, profound weight lifted from her chest.
Gabriel closed his fingers over the ring, holding it tightly for a brief second before slipping it into a velvet pouch inside his jacket.
“Declan,” Gabriel spoke toward a small intercom box on his desk.
“Yes, boss?” Declan’s voice returned instantly.
“Send my private physician up to the suite, bring clean clothes for Miss Hayes from the boutique downstairs, and tell the legal team to assemble in the conference room in twenty minutes.”
“Right away, sir.”
Gabriel turned back to Genevieve. “You cannot go back to your apartment, Miss Hayes. Preston and his father will have federal warrants issued within three hours claiming you are mentally unstable, missing, or kidnapped. They will use the police force to hunt you down before you can reach a bank or a news station.”
“I have nowhere else to go,” Genevieve admitted, looking down at her stained gown. “Everything I own—my papers, my keys, my father's private journals—is locked inside the Whitmore estate or my father's house in Harbor Heights.”
“Then we take it back,” Gabriel said flatly. “Tonight.”
“How?” she asked, looking at him with wide, shocked eyes. “Harrison Whitmore has private security surrounding his properties. He has political immunity.”
“Harrison Whitmore has political immunity from the law,” Gabriel corrected smoothly, a thin, ruthless smile touching his lips. “He does not have immunity from me.”
He stepped toward a small wall safe behind a painting, punched in a six-digit code, and pulled out a leather-bound journal. He set it on the desk in front of her.
“This is my sister’s diary,” Gabriel said, opening the yellowed pages. “For six months before she died, she wrote about a young corporate lawyer who was pursuing her—a man named Preston Whitmore. He was using her to get access to my father's shipping manifests.”
Genevieve gasped, leaning forward to read the neat, slanted handwriting on the page: Preston brought his father to dinner tonight. They asked so many questions about the docks in Newark...
“Preston didn't just kill my sister,” Gabriel said quietly. “He used her, took her jewelry, and let his father cover up the crime to protect his political career. For nine years, I have been waiting for a single piece of physical evidence connecting the Whitmore family to Clara's ring.”
He patted his breast pocket, where the yellow diamond now rested.
“You just brought me that evidence, Genevieve.”
Genevieve looked up into Gabriel’s eyes, seeing for the first time that behind his terrifying reputation lay a man bound by an uncompromising code of loyalty and vengeance. He was not the monster Preston had painted him to be; he was the predator Preston had been foolish enough to poke.
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“What do you need me to do?” Genevieve asked, her voice steadying into something strong, cold, and iron-hard.
“First, you will rest,” Gabriel said. “You will let the doctor tend to your feet. Then, at midnight, when Preston and his father are sitting in their estate celebrating your disappearance, you and I are going to crash their wedding reception.”
