Chapter 56
"Happy Birthday."
The words hung in the cool night air, suspended like the fairy lights Aleesha had draped over the weeping willows. They echoed in the cavern of my mind, bouncing off walls of reinforced concrete and years of silence.
I stared at the cake resting on my knees.
Dark chocolate ganache. Smooth as obsidian. A single red sugar flower. And the number 39 written in gold.
Birthday.
The concept felt foreign, like a word from a language I had studied but never spoken.
In the Muratori household, birth was not a celebration.
It was merely the commencement of a liability, the start of an investment that required rigorous shaping to yield a return.
My parents did not mark the passage of time with confectionaries and candles.
They marked it with benchmarks. First kill. First negotiation. First takeover.
I do not know when I was born.
There is no sentimental record. No baby book.
I recall, vaguely, breaking into my father's safe when I was four—an early test of dexterity.
I saw a document. A birth certificate, yellowed and crisp.
The date was blurred by a coffee stain, or perhaps blood.
It was somewhere in mid-April. The 14th? The 17th?
It was irrelevant data. I discarded it.
So, months ago, when Aleesha looked up from her coding with those wide, inquisitive doe eyes and asked, "Gabby, when's your birthday?", I did what I always do.
I fabricated a variable to complete the interaction.
"May 6," I had whispered, absentmindedly, my attention focused on the liquidation of a petty syndicate in Macau.
I said it once. A throwaway line. A sequence of random numbers generated to silence a civilian's curiosity.
And yet.
I looked at the gold icing.
May 6.
She remembered.
She took that piece of refuse data, that lie, and she polished it until it shone. She built a shrine around a fabrication.
"Make a wish, Gabby," she whispered, her voice bubbling with that sickeningly pure excitement.
Wish.
I stared at the sugar flower.
The request was absurd.
I am Gabriel Muratori. I am the Capo dei Capi. I sit at the apex of the global underworld.
If I desire something, I do not wish for it. I acquire it.
If I want wealth, I manipulate the stock markets or seize a shipping lane. If I want silence, I remove the tongue that speaks. If I want to rewrite history, I bribe the historians and bury the bodies.
I am Destiny itself. I am the pen that writes the narrative. To wish is to admit a lack of control. To wish is to beg the universe for a favor, and I beg for nothing.
But Aleesha was watching me.
Her face was illuminated by the soft glow of the fairy lights, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. She looked like a devotee waiting for her god to perform a miracle.
I could not disappoint the Asset. It would be... poor management of her morale.
I bit my lip—a human nervous tic I usually suppressed—and closed my eyes.
What does a man who owns the world wish for?
More power? I have more than I can exercise. An heir? The boy will come in due time; biology is inevitable. Peace? Peace is bad for business.
I searched the vast, dark archives of my desires and found... nothing.
There was only a void. A hollow space where normal human aspirations should be.
I gulped.
I opened my eyes.
I had wished for nothing. I simply performed the act of closing my eyes to satiate her.
"Did you wish?" she chirped.
"Yes," I lied. It came naturally.
Aleesha beamed, her smile wide enough to outshine the artificial lights. She grabbed two silver plates and a knife. She cut the cake—messily, destroying the perfect symmetry—and handed me a slice.
We ate in silence. The chocolate was rich, bitter, and sweet. It tasted like deception.
Woof.
Something brushed against my leg.
I stiffened. My fork paused halfway to my mouth.
I looked down.
Primrose. The golden retriever.
The beast was wearing a party hat. A black cone with red polka dots, strapped under her furry chin. She was wagging her tail, the rhythm thumping against the wooden deck.
My jaw tightened.
I despise animals.
It is not a dislike. It is a calculated aversion. Animals are pure instinct. They are fragile. They break easily.
I looked at the dog's neck. So thin. So vulnerable.
I keep my distance because my hands are designed to dismantle things. I fear that if I touch it, the predator in me will surface. I might hurt it simply because I can. Because violence is the only language my hands speak fluently.
"Look!" Aleesha giggled, reaching down to scratch the beast's ears. "Primrose is celebrating too! She wants cake! But chocolate is bad for dogs!"
She pulled the animal closer to me.
"Say Happy Birthday to Papa!" she cooed to the dog.
Papa.
The absurdity nearly made me choke. I am not a father to this creature. I am a monster who tolerates its existence because it pleases my wife.
I stared at the dog. The dog stared at me with wet, trusting eyes. It did not smell the blood on me. It only smelled the cake.
"Aleesha," I warned, my voice low. "Keep it away."
"Oh, hush," she dismissed my command effortlessly. "She loves you."
She babbled on about the decorations, about how she forced the "Unknown Person" to hang the lights, about how she almost fell into the pond twice.
I couldn't speak. I felt paralyzed by the sheer weight of this manufactured reality.
Then, she picked up a box from the side table.
"Here," she said, shoving it into my chest. "Gift time!"
I set the cake down. I opened the box.
Inside, nestled in black tissue paper, was a plushie.
It was crocheted. A chaotic, lopsided creature made of red and black yarn. It looked like a bear that had survived a nuclear fallout. It had one button eye and a crooked smile.
Next to it, a box of expensive dark chocolates.
And a letter.
I picked up the envelope. To Gabby.
I didn't open it. I couldn't. Not now. If I read her naive, loving words while sitting on a throne of lies, the cognitive dissonance might actually shatter me.
I looked at the plushie.
"It is... a bear?" I asked.
"It's a Devil Bear!" she corrected proudly. "Because you are devilishly handsome! And scary! But soft inside!"
Soft.
If she knew the truth—if she knew about Elias, about Sydney, about the bodies in the foundations of this city—she would know there is nothing soft inside me. There is only steel and rot.
But I smiled.
It was a small, practiced curvature of the lips.
"Thank you, Aleesha."
I leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
It was meant to be a dismissal. A signal that the event was concluding.
But Aleesha, ever the variable I cannot predict, leaned in and kissed my forehead.
Her lips were warm. Soft. They lingered on my skin, right over the center of my mind.
I froze.
No one kisses me there. It is a gesture of protection. Of blessing.
I chuckled. A dry, rusty sound.
"You are bold," I murmured.
"I am the boss tonight!" she declared.
She reached over and tapped her phone. Music began to play from a hidden speaker. A slow, instrumental track.
She stood up and grabbed my hand.
"Dance with me," she commanded.
"Aleesha, I do not dance."
"You do now! Up!"
She dragged me. And because I am weak to her force, I stood.
She pulled me to the center of the rose petal heart.
I placed my hands on her waist. She wrapped her arms around my neck.
We began to sway.
My heart rate spiked. Thump. Thump.
It was a physiological response to proximity. To the threat of vulnerability.
She rested her cheek against my chest, right over the lapel of my jacket. I could feel her breathing.
I looked around the garden.
The red ribbons. The black balloons. The petals crushed beneath my expensive shoes.
She did all of this for a date that isn't real. For a man who isn't real.
She loves a construct. She loves "Gabby," the grumpy logistician. She does not know Gabriel, the executioner.
And yet... as we swayed, I inhaled the scent of her hair.
She squeezed my hand, intertwining our fingers.
"I love you, Gabby," she whispered into the night.
The words struck me like a physical blow.
I did not answer. I never answer that statement. To answer would be to seal the contract in blood.
I looked up at the sky. It was pitch black. No stars. Just the infinite void.
And then... I felt it.
A sensation on my cheek.
Wetness.
A single, cold trail sliding down my skin.
My brows furrowed.
I looked up again. Is it raining?
No. The sky is clear.
Am I sweating?
No. The night is cool.
I gulped. The realization hit me with the force of a bullet train.
I lifted my hand from her waist. I touched my cheek.
My finger came away wet.
A tear.
I stared at the moisture on my fingertip.
I haven't cried since I was 10 years old. Since the day my father locked me in the cellar to "harden" me. I learned then that tears are a waste of hydration. They are a signal of defeat.
And yet, here I was. The most powerful man alive. The Architect of Destiny.
Standing in a garden of lies, holding the woman I am actively deceiving.
And I was weeping.
For the first time in twenty-nine years, the machine was leaking.
I quickly wiped it away before she could look up.
But the wetness on my finger remained. A undeniable proof that somewhere, deep beneath the layers of kevlar and ice...
I was terrified.
Terrified that this lie is the only truth I ever want to live in.