Chapter 12 #3
Roman looked at her for a long time. I saw the moment he recognized that she would not lower her eyes for him. Perhaps he had expected a woman who would tolerate a family arrangement because she had been raised to understand the cost of social embarrassment.
He had mistaken polish for submission.
“You think you understand what happened?” he asked.
“No,” Elena said. “I think you spent a lifetime making sure nobody did.”
Nico exhaled quietly behind us. Adrian hid a smile.
Roman’s gaze returned to me. “This is what you have brought into the house?”
The old version of me would have heard the insult and responded with something cold enough to end the room. Instead, I looked at Elena.
“This is who she already was,” I said. “I did not bring her anywhere.”
For the first time, Roman looked uncertain.
Adrian placed the tablet on the table. “Sofia’s office has agreed to a limited meeting.
They will not give us immunity. They should not.
But they will take the archive, the financial trail, and Benedict’s connection to the D’Angelos.
In exchange, they will consider cooperation from the businesses that were used without the knowledge of their current executives. ”
“Cooperation,” Roman repeated as though it were a disease.
“It is better than indictment,” Adrian said.
“You would hand over family records?”
“I would hand over criminal records.”
Roman pushed back from the table. The sound of the chair against the floor was sharp.
“Everything I did was for this family.”
Celia looked at him. “No, Roman. Everything you did was to avoid being the man who lost control.”
The room went still.
She had rarely contradicted him in front of us. That was how I knew she had been waiting years to say it.
Roman’s face hardened. “You do not know what it took.”
“I know exactly what it took. It took Elena’s mother. It took Matteo’s peace. It took our sons learning that silence was loyalty.”
His eyes came to me then. I felt the old instinct to look away. I did not.
“There was a time when I would have done the same,” I said. “Not because it was right. Because I thought fear was the only thing that kept people close.”
Roman’s expression changed slightly. “And now?”
“Now I know it only keeps them quiet.”
Elena’s fingers brushed mine under the edge of the table. I turned my hand, and she let our fingers link.
No one else in the room missed it.
Roman looked at our hands. Something in his face broke and repaired itself before anyone could name it.
“You will lose the board,” he said to me. “The investors. The name.”
“Maybe.”
“And for what? A woman you met because of a debt?”
Elena’s hand tightened once.
I looked at my father.
“For the person I should have met honestly,” I said.
The words did not make me noble. They did not erase the way I had first approached her. But they were true.
A security alert sounded from Adrian’s phone. He glanced down, then swore.
“Benedict has moved,” he said. “He is headed toward Quarry Road.”
Nico stepped away from the wall. “With whom?”
“Malachi. Cameras caught them together twenty minutes ago.”
The room’s fragile peace vanished.
Malachi was Roman’s nephew, my cousin, and the person we had all learned to underestimate because he smiled more easily than the rest of us. If he was with Benedict, the betrayal had been inside the house longer than we knew.
Roman’s face went white.
“He would not,” he said.
Celia looked at him with terrible calm. “He learned from us that family can be used.”
I released Elena’s hand only long enough to reach for my jacket.
She caught my sleeve.
“Where are you going?”
“To Quarry Road.”
“You promised to ask.”
I looked at her. The old rule would have been simple: not this time. Not when danger was moving. Not when I could not bear the thought of her anywhere near it.
But promises were not things you kept when convenient.
“I am going to find Malachi,” I said. “I want you somewhere secure with Adrian and Marcus. I want you alive. I also want you to tell me no if you think I am asking too much.”
Her eyes held mine.
“You are asking too much,” she said.
“I know.”
“But I am not saying no.”
The answer frightened me more than refusal would have.
Outside, the first siren began in the distance.
For a second, I wanted to say no because fear was easier than trust.
Then I looked at her hand around mine.
"Together," I said.
We moved low along the pews. I covered her. She reached the notebook first. Her fingers closed around the oilcloth just as another shot hit the marble column behind us.
I pushed her behind the altar. Marcus's team answered fire. Benedict disappeared through the sacristy door, but not before he shouted, "Midnight, Damian. Your father for the archive. Bring anyone else and D'Angelo gets every file."
The chapel fell silent after that.
Elena looked at me from beneath the altar rail, dust in her hair and the notebook clutched to her chest.
"He has Roman?" she asked.
My phone vibrated.
A photograph.
Roman Voss bound to a chair in a warehouse office. Malachi stood behind him with one hand on his shoulder and a phone in the other.
Midnight. Quarry Road.
The message had been sent from Malachi's number.
He had not been running from us.
He had been setting the next move.