Chapter 26 - Gabriel
The car turns the corner and disappears into New York traffic, taking Sera with it.
I grip the rail hard enough to leave marks while her taillights vanish, and all I can think about is the pattern. How I always stand still while the people I'm supposed to protect disappear beyond my reach.
Around me, the Rosetti machine activates.
Milo already has his laptop open, fingers flying across keys.
He's on his phone seconds later, voice low and urgent, mobilizing assets I can't see but know exist. Gunner stands by the Audi he drove us here in, watching the street where they disappeared, those pale eyes tracking every vehicle that passes. Everyone moves with purpose except me.
I'm still gripping the rail.
My father, dying by degrees while I played priest in Homestead. Elena, gasping for breath that wouldn't come while I froze, too late to save her. My sister, drowning in champagne and parties while I told myself she was better off without me.
And now Sera, her face in that rear window, looking back at me with an expression I couldn't read before the car turned and she was gone.
"We'll handle it." Milo's beside me now, his voice carrying that Rosetti certainty. "This is our city. We have assets in every borough. Give us an hour and we'll have her location, another hour and she's back."
I watch the empty street. My chest tightens with something worse than panic. The muscle memory of standing still while everything that matters slips away.
"No." The word comes out flat. Not argued, not explained. Just stated. "This one is mine."
Milo studies me. I can feel him reading the situation, understanding what this is without needing details. Some things a man has to do himself. A Rosetti understands that better than most.
"All right," he says simply. "But we provide support. Non-negotiable."
I finally let go of the rail. My palm throbs where the metal left its impression.
Twenty minutes later, Milo's laptop screen lights up with data in the Audi's backseat beside me while Gunner navigates Manhattan traffic. Data streams, camera feeds, connections I don't fully understand but recognize as mastery.
"Traffic cameras show them heading north on FDR," he says, fingers never stopping. "Black town car, diplomatic plates. That's interesting."
"Why interesting?"
"Because the Markovics don't have diplomatic protection in New York. They're borrowing someone else's cover." He pulls up another screen. "Three hotels in the Upper East Side use that service for their VIP guests. All three have Markovic-adjacent bookings in the last forty-eight hours."
He makes a call, speaking rapid Italian to someone on the other end. Then another call in English, to a contact at a private security firm. Each conversation is brief, professional, extracting exactly what he needs without revealing why.
"Got her." He turns the laptop toward me. Security footage from a hotel lobby, timestamp from twelve minutes ago. Cristian Markovic walking through the frame with Sera beside him. She's not restrained, but his hand on her elbow says everything about the dynamics. "The Carlisle. Presidential suite."
"What does he want?"
Milo switches screens, showing me intercepted communications. "The vault contents, complete transfer. And her testimony to Markovic leadership that all the material Julian gathered is neutralized. He needs the leverage gone and a living witness to confirm it."
"So he needs her alive."
"For now. Until he has what he wants." Milo's expression is carefully neutral. "The drive requires her thumbprint. She's necessary until the vault's open."
The drive. The thing she risked everything to retrieve, now in Cristian's hands but useless without her.
"I go alone," I say.
Milo and Gunner exchange a look.
"Define alone," Milo says carefully.
"I enter the suite alone. You can have the building, the street, whatever perimeter you want. But the room is mine."
Neither of them argues. They recognize the tone. Not negotiation but notification.
"Three minutes out," Gunner says.
Three minutes to figure out how to get Sera back from a man who thinks he owns everything he touches.
The Carlisle's doorman doesn't question men who walk like they own the building.
The presidential suite occupies half the top floor, space that smells like leather and old cigars, old New York money preserved in amber.
Cristian answers the door himself, which tells me he's confident.
Men like him only answer their own doors when they think they've already won.
"Gabriel Delgado." He says my name like he's been expecting me. "The priest."
He's younger than I expected. Twenty-three, maybe twenty-four, wearing his authority like a suit that's still being tailored.
Linen shirt, no tie, the studied casualness of new money trying to look established.
Dark blond hair slicked back, eyes the blue of a frozen lake, and the gym-sharp body of a man who boxes for sport not survival.
He has young money energy, all polish with no depth.
Behind him, my eyes track the exits first: main door, adjoining room, floor-to-ceiling windows that don't open. Cristian's cologne is too sharp for the space, marking him as the interloper here.
Sera sits in an armchair in the living area. Alive. Unharmed. Watching.
"Markovic." I don't use his first name. Let him think I'm according him respect. "We need to discuss terms."
He steps back, gesturing me in with the expansiveness of a man playing host. Two guards flank the adjoining door. The one on the left has scarred knuckles. A fighter. The right one's stance says ex-military. Both expensive, both problems if this goes wrong.
Cristian waves them off. "Give us the room."
They disappear through the adjoining door, closing it behind them. A show of confidence or stupidity. Maybe both.
The drive sits on the coffee table between two leather chairs. Just sitting there, like it's not thirty million dollars and evidence that could topple empires. Cristian takes one chair, I take the other. Sera hasn't moved, hasn't looked directly at me since I entered. She's reading us both.
"You've come to negotiate for your woman," Cristian says, settling back with the comfort of someone who thinks he's already won.
"I've come to negotiate for Delgado interests."
He smiles at that. "Of course. The family interests. Though I have to say, sending the priest to handle this seems…" he gestures vaguely, "desperate?"
I let him think that. Let him see what he expects. The son who fled to seminary, the man who chose God over money, playing at being a prince because there's no one else to send. He's already relaxing, body language opening up. He thinks I'm manageable.
"The vault contains transaction records that implicate my family," I say, keeping my voice formal, controlled. Playing the role he's cast me in. "Those records have value to you, but they're a liability to us. I'm here to discuss how we resolve that conflict."
"Simple." He leans forward, elbows on knees. "She opens the vault, transfers everything, then provides testimony to my uncle that Julian's insurance policy is dead. You get your family's exposure contained. I get what was stolen from us. Everyone wins."
His eyes slide to Sera when he says it, possessive, like she's part of the assets being discussed.
"And her?" I ask.
"The widow inherits everything, doesn't she? The assets, the obligations…" He lets the implication hang, smiling like we're sharing a secret. "Julian understood that. I'm sure you do too, Father."
He's still smiling, still relaxed, still completely misreading what's happening in this room.
"Though I have to say," he continues, eyes still on Sera, "Julian had excellent taste. Even in her current state, you can see what he saw. She’s stunning."
The words land exactly wrong. Not tactically wrong. Personally wrong. He's talking about her the way Julian talked about her. As inventory.
Something inside me goes very quiet.
The quiet isn't empty. It's full. Eight years of suppressed violence condensing into clarity.
I stand. Cross the room. My movements are deliberate, unhurried. This isn't passion overflowing. I know what that feels like. That's what happened with Elena, control gone, hands moving without thought. This is different. This is choice.
My hands find Cristian's throat.
He's still smiling when I reach him, still thinking this is negotiation theater, right until my thumbs find his windpipe. Then his eyes change. Surprise first, then understanding, then the beginning of real fear.
I don't squeeze immediately. I position my hands properly, the way training taught me years ago, before the priesthood, when I was being groomed for a different kind of service. Thumbs on the windpipe, fingers wrapped around toward the spine. Maximum control, minimum effort.
"You made an error," I tell him, voice calm.
He tries to speak. Can't. His hands come up, grabbing at my wrists, but I have leverage and position. He's already lost and doesn't know it yet.
I apply pressure. Slow. Deliberate. Watching his face change as oxygen becomes currency and he realizes his account is overdrawn.
This is what I was afraid of. Not the violence.
The choice. The moment when I could stop but don't. When the decision is mine, fully conscious, integrated.
The priest who swore to protect life. The prince who was taught to take it.
The man who failed Elena. All three in the same hands, making the same choice.
Cristian's struggling now, body bucking against the chair, feet kicking. The sound he makes is ugly. Not quite a wheeze, not quite a gurgle. His face is changing color, red deepening toward purple, those blue eyes turning rheumy. I watch it happen. Present. Aware. Choosing.
With Elena, everything shattered at once. Control, thought, choice. This is nothing like that. I could stop. The thought comes with every heartbeat, clear as a bell. I don't stop.
His struggles are weakening. His hands still grip my wrists but the strength is leaving them.
Another thirty seconds, maybe less. The guards are a door away but they won't come.
Cristian sent them out to show his confidence, and now he doesn't have the air to scream for help. His pride will kill him.
I lean closer. "You don't get to touch her. You don't get to own her. You don't get to shape her."
His eyes are bulging now, vessels bursting in the whites.
Sera shifts in her chair and my hands tighten involuntarily. My awareness of her makes the choice sharper, more deliberate.
Then I look up from what my hands are doing.
Sera is watching.
She hasn't moved from the chair. Hasn't run for the door or looked away. She's watching me kill Cristian Markovic with the same steady attention she brings to everything. Reading the room, reading me, reading what this means.
My hands are still on his throat. He's still alive under them, barely, maybe ten seconds left. But I'm looking up at her face now, trying to understand what I'm seeing there.
It's not horror. I expected horror, the natural human response to watching one person deliberately end another. It's not fear either. She's not afraid of me, even with my hands currently taking a life.
It's not approval. She's not enjoying this, not taking satisfaction in Cristian's suffering.
It's something else. Something foreign to my vocabulary.
Her eyes are steady on mine, dark and unreadable in the lamp light.
Her lips are slightly parted, like she's about to say something but hasn't found the words.
There's color in her cheeks that wasn't there before.
Not a blush, something else. Her hands rest on the arms of her chair, fingers still, not gripping.