Chapter 15 — You Knew From the Beginning #2
We stepped into the empty elevator. The doors closed, sealing us in.
The moment the elevator started down, I pulled my hand free.
“What was that?” I asked, my voice trembling—but not from fear. From shock.
“That was a victory,” Gabriel replied, eyes on the number panel. “They’ll accept. They have no choice.”
“I’m not talking about the deal. I’m talking about the dossier.”
Gabriel went still.
“The dossier proved the blackmail.”
“You said Richard made payments to the clinic months before Thomas did.” I stepped toward him, backing him against the metal wall. “Thomas never told me that. Thomas said he was broke. If Richard was paying, why did Thomas need my money?”
Gabriel finally looked at me. And for the first time, I saw a crack in the mask.
“Thomas needed your money to pay off his gambling debts, Elena. The money for your mother… Richard covered part of it. Thomas covered the rest with the scheme.”
“How do you know that?” My voice rose an octave. “How did you get Richard’s bank records in twelve hours? You spent the night with me. You were asleep when the messenger arrived this morning.”
“I have resources. I have people who work fast.”
“Don’t lie to me!” I shoved his chest. “That dossier… the pages weren’t fresh printouts. The paper had weight to it. It had been handled.”
The image of the dossier on the table flashed through my mind. One page had a folded corner. There was a coffee stain on the cover.
“That dossier wasn’t put together last night,” I whispered, cold horror pooling in my stomach. “That dossier is old.”
Gabriel didn’t respond. He just watched me, his black eyes unfathomable.
“You knew,” I said. The realization hit like a physical blow. “You knew about my mother. You knew about the clinic. You knew about the blackmail.”
“Elena…”
“How long?” I demanded. “How long have you known my mother is an institutionalized killer?”
He sighed—the exhausted sound of someone giving up on holding back a flood.
“Since the day I hired Thomas.”
The elevator floor seemed to drop out from under me.
“Six months ago?”
“I don’t hire analysts for the Vanguard portfolio without a deep background check.
” His voice went clinical again, the lawyer explaining facts.
“Your mother’s name came up. The fake death certificate was amateur work.
It was easy to trace the hospitalization in Switzerland.
I knew everything, Elena. I knew what Thomas was hiding before he even started his first day. ”
I backed up until my shoulders hit the opposite wall.
“You knew.” Tears began to burn my eyes, hot and furious. “When I told you last night… when I cried in your bed and confessed the most terrible secret of my life… you already knew.”
“Yes.”
“You let me suffer. You let me believe I was handing you a weapon, when you’d had the entire arsenal in your drawer for months!”
“I needed you to trust me,” he said, stepping forward. “I needed you to tell me voluntarily.”
“Why? To test my loyalty? To see if the ‘doll’ was obedient?”
“To know if you were trustworthy!” he shouted back, losing his composure. “I was putting my firm in your brother’s hands. I needed to know where the pressure points were. I kept that dossier as insurance. If Thomas stepped out of line, I’d use your mother.”
“And me?” I asked, my voice breaking. “What was I? Another pressure point?”
Gabriel stopped. He looked at me with an expression I’d never seen before. It was pain. It was guilt. And it was hunger.
“In the beginning... yes,” he admitted. “You were the desperate sister who paid the bills. You were the emotional leverage. I planned to use you to control Thomas if necessary.”
“You planned to use me.”
“I planned everything, Elena! That’s what I do!” He ran his hand through his hair, messing up the perfect styling. “But then I met you. I saw you in that conference room, translating lies with that saintly face and those eyes that see everything... and the plan went to hell.”
He tried to touch me, but I slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“You think I enjoyed keeping this?” he continued, ignoring my rejection. “You think it was easy to hear you cry yesterday and pretend to be surprised? I did it to protect you. If you’d known that I knew... you would have run. You would have panicked.”
“I’m panicking now!”
“But now you’re safe!” He pointed at the elevator doors. “That dossier just bought your freedom. Richard is destroyed. Thomas will get a deal. You’re free.”
“Free?” I laughed, a hysterical laugh that echoed in the small space. “I’m not free, Gabriel. I’m just a piece you moved on the board. You manipulated everything. The deal. The trip. The sex.”
“The sex wasn’t manipulation,” he growled, pinning me against the wall with his body. “What happened in the office... what happened in the shower... that was the only real thing in this whole damn mess.”
“How can I know?” I looked into his eyes, searching for the truth and finding only dark reflections. “How can I know what’s real with you? You lie like you breathe. You withheld the truth about my own life for months.”
“I did what was necessary.”
“You did what you wanted.” I pushed his chest, but he didn’t move. “And now? What happens now? I go home and pretend I don’t know you have a file on my crazy mother in your drawer?”
“You go home with me,” he corrected. “Because it’s still dangerous out there. And because, even though you hate me right now... we both know you can’t leave.”
The elevator stopped on the ground floor. The doors opened.
The lobby was full of reporters. Flashes burst like lightning. Microphones were shoved in our direction.
Gabriel instantly changed. The protective lawyer mask fell over his face like a steel visor. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his side, hiding my face in his chest.
“No comment!” he thundered, forcing his way through the crowd with his body, using his own physical strength as a shield.
I let myself be led.
I curled against him, breathing in the familiar scent of sandalwood and betrayal. The warmth of his body was the only thing keeping me from shaking.
He was right. I hated him. I hated that he knew my secrets before I did. I hated his arrogance, the manipulation, the coldness.
But as we walked to the armored car waiting for us, surrounded by shouts and lights, I realized the most terrible truth of all.
He knew about my mother. He knew her blood—murderous blood—ran through my veins. He knew I came from a lineage of madness and violence.
And he didn’t run. He didn’t pull away.
He stayed. He planned. He protected me.
Maybe because he recognized the same madness in himself.
We got into the car. The door slammed shut, cutting off the noise of the world.
Gabriel released my shoulders and pulled away, sitting on the other side of the leather seat. He didn’t look at me. He stared straight ahead, jaw clenched, his bandaged hand balled into a fist on his knee.
He knew he’d broken something irreparable between us.
But he also knew he’d won.
I looked at him, at the profile of the monster who had devoured my life and regurgitated it in a form I no longer recognized.
“You knew from the beginning,” I whispered against the window.
“Yes,” he answered, without looking.
“And you didn’t care? That my mother killed my father?”
He turned his head slowly. His eyes met mine, and the intensity in them made me stop breathing.
“Elena... I’m the son of a man who sold his soul and a woman who died of neglect. You think a little matricidal blood scares me?”
He reached out and touched my fingertips where they gripped the seat.
“It only makes me sure of one thing.”
“What?”
“That you were made for me.”
I pulled my hand away, but his touch lingered on my skin like a burn.
The car pulled away, taking us away from justice, back to the glass tower where truth didn’t matter—only power.
I was saved from prison. But I was condemned to him.
And the most terrifying part… the part I couldn’t admit even to myself as I watched the rain begin to fall again… was that I didn’t want to be saved from him.