The heavy oak door of the Tribeca penthouse clicked shut behind the guards, leaving a suffocating silence in its wake.

The penthouse was a fortress disguised as a luxury apartment. Over the next forty-eight hours, I learned the intricate rhythms of the Varrick household. Armed guards rotated shifts every four hours, moving through the halls with silent, military precision. Yet, despite the presence of private armies and hidden surveillance cameras, the place felt haunted.

Lily slept in fragmented, terror-filled bursts. Every time a car horn blared on the street below or the wind rattled the reinforced glass, she woke up screaming, thrashing against the sheets until I managed to soothe her back down with the same old Astoria lullaby my mother used to sing.

By the third night, Lily had managed to keep down half a bowl of chicken broth and a few spoonfuls of plain rice.

Gabriel spent hours sitting in the corner of the room, working from a secure laptop or reviewing thick dossiers brought by Dante, refusing to leave his post even when his men urged him to rest.

Around 2:00 AM, I slipped out of Lily’s room to grab a fresh glass of water from the kitchen. The penthouse was pitch black, save for the ambient glow of the city lights reflecting off the wet pavement below.

As I crossed the expansive marble living room, a low voice from the shadows made me freeze.

"She's sleeping?"

Gabriel was sitting in a leather armchair near the unlit fireplace, a glass of amber liquor sitting untouched on the table beside him.

"Yes," I said, catching my breath. "She finally managed four consecutive hours. It's an improvement."

"You don't sleep much, Claire," he observed, his dark eyes tracking my movements across the room.

"Insomnia is a useful trait when you're working two jobs and trying to keep your mother alive," I replied bluntly, leaning against the marble counter.

Gabriel stood up, walking toward me with a slow, heavy stride. Up close, his sheer physical presence was overwhelming. He looked exhausted; the sharp angles of his face were etched with the weight of a man carrying an empire on his shoulders while his world burned from the inside out.

"Vivian ran a background check on you after you took the job," Gabriel said quietly. "Claire Donnelly. Twenty-six. Single mother—no, excuse me. You don't have children. You’re raising your younger sister? No—your mother."

"My mother," I corrected, my voice hardening. "Stage four kidney failure. The hospital bills are astronomical, and insurance stopped covering her specialized treatments six months ago. That’s why I took your money, Mr. Varrick. Let's not pretend this is anything other than a business transaction."

Gabriel didn't look offended. In fact, a faint, humorless smirk touched the corner of his mouth.

"Honesty," he murmured. "A rare commodity in my world. Everyone around me usually wants something they pretend they don't. You want cash to keep your mother alive. At least I understand the terms."

"And Celeste?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. "What did she want? She was family, wasn't she?"

Gabriel’s expression darkened instantly, the temperature in the room dropping.

"Celeste is my late wife’s younger sister," Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a dangerous register. "When Sarah died in that ambush... Celeste stayed behind to help care for Lily. Or so I thought. She was managing the foundation accounts, handling the household logistics. I trusted her."

"Trust is a luxury you couldn't afford," I said.

"Clearly," Gabriel snapped softly. He stepped closer, towering over me by nearly a foot. "Dante’s men traced the burner phone Lily mentioned. It pinged from a private airstrip in Teterboro forty minutes after the hit. She’s gone. But she didn't leave the country alone."

"Who was with her?"

"Moretti," Gabriel said, the name dropping like an anvil.

The blood drained from my face. Even in Astoria, far away from the high-stakes boardrooms of organized crime, everyone knew the name Moretti. They were Gabriel’s oldest, bloodiest rivals—a syndicate that had tried to carve up the New York waterfront for over two decades.

"If Moretti has Celeste," I whispered, "and Celeste has inside information on your security routes, your properties, your finances..."