Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Gabriel
Rafael froze in the middle of the ransacked living room, his sharp eyes narrowing as the woman’s words hung heavily in the air.
She did not address him as Mr. De Santos, the customary title enforced by fear throughout the underworld.
She did not address him as Boss, like the trembling thug currently wetting himself against the kitchen counter.
She called him Rafael.
She spoke his first name with an intimate, searing hatred that could only be forged by deep personal betrayal.
Before Rafael could process the cadence of her voice, little Nate broke free from Marco’s grip at the doorway.
“Mom!” the boy cried out, his voice cracking with sheer, unfiltered terror and relief.
Nate vaulted over the groaning thug on the floor and threw his small arms around Elena’s battered shoulders, burying his face into her neck.
Elena’s defiant facade shattered instantly upon feeling her son’s warm, trembling frame against her chest.
“Nate... oh God, Nate,” she wept, trying desperately to wrap her bound arms around him, the plastic zip-ties cutting brutally into her swollen wrists.
“Why did you come back? I told you to run... I told you to keep running...”
“I brought help, Mom,” Nate sobbed against her collarbone.
“I found the big boss at the fancy restaurant, just like you said.”
Elena’s head snapped upward, her eyes locking onto Rafael with renewed fury that burned hotter than her pain.
“Help?” she spat, her voice trembling with disgust.
“You didn't bring help, Nate. You brought the man who murdered your father.”
The entire room seemed to drop ten degrees into sub-zero silence.
Marco’s hand hovered above his sidearm, his eyes widening in shock as he stared at the woman.
The two operatives standing guard at the threshold exchanged rapid, bewildered glances before snapping their eyes back to the corridor.
Rafael did not move a single muscle.
His mind, capable of running complex financial networks and political assassinations simultaneously, ground to a dead halt.
Murdered your father.
Rafael had taken dozens of lives during the brutal turf wars that consolidated his empire seven years ago.
He had executed rival bosses, traitorous capos, and corrupt federal prosecutors who broke their blood agreements.
But he had never killed a civilian, and he had certainly never killed a family member.
Unless...
Rafael’s eyes drifted away from Elena’s bruised face and began scanning the shattered debris of the tiny apartment with predatory intensity.
He looked at the broken picture frames scattered across the floor, their glass pulverized beneath heavy work boots.
Near the overturned bookshelf, a small silver object caught the harsh glare of the fluorescent ceiling light.
Rafael stepped forward, his leather shoes crunching over the glass shards with deliberate, steady steps.
He crouched down, his gloved fingers reaching into the wreckage to retrieve the object.
It was an antique silver pocket watch, battered and dented, its casing scratched from years of hard use.
Rafael turned the watch over in his palm.
Engraved on the polished backplate was the intricate crest of the De Santos family: a crowned serpent coiled around a broadsword.
Beneath the crest were three engraved initials: G. D. S.
Gabriel David De Santos.
Rafael’s younger brother.
The brother who had renounced the family syndicate ten years ago to study literature and work as an ordinary high school teacher.
The brother who had vanished into the night eight years ago after a fiery car crash on the interstate bridge that left only dental records behind.
Rafael stared at the initials, his fingers trembling almost imperceptibly against the cold silver casing.
For eight years, Rafael had believed Gabriel’s death was a tragic civilian accident, an unfortunate consequence of faulty brakes on a rainy highway.
He had mourned Gabriel in private, carrying the guilt of driving his gentle brother away with the violence of their bloodline.
Rafael slowly rose to his feet, holding the silver watch out in front of him like an accusation.
He walked over to where Elena sat bound to the chair, his eyes boring into hers with an intensity that made the oxygen leave the room.
“Where did you get this watch?” Rafael demanded, his voice dropping into a register so dark and dangerous that even Nate shrank back against his mother.
Elena lifted her chin, refusing to lower her gaze despite the blood dripping from her lip onto her scrub top.
“You know damn well where I got it,” she rasped, her eyes blazing with righteous hatred.
“Gabriel gave it to me the night Nate was born in the charity ward of St. Jude’s.”
“He told me it was the only piece of his family he kept, because it belonged to his grandfather.”
“He told me if anything ever happened to him, I was to sell it to buy bus tickets out of the state.”
Rafael felt the floor beneath his feet tilt.
He looked down at Nate, who was clinging to Elena’s side like a frightened limpet.
Rafael looked at the boy’s dark, wavy hair, identical to the curls Gabriel had possessed as a boy.
He looked at the stubborn, squared jawline, the deep-set dark eyes that burned with unyielding resolve.
The boy wasn't just a brave kid from the slums who had breached a mafia dinner to save his mother.
Nate was Gabriel’s son.
Nate was Rafael’s blood nephew.
The rightful heir to the De Santos lineage, living in a squalid, leaking tenement, wearing shoes with holes in the soles, being hunted by the very syndicate his ancestors built.
Rafael felt a volcanic rage ignite deep within his chest, hotter and more terrifying than anything he had experienced in his entire life.
He turned slowly toward the surviving brute who was still cowering against the kitchen cabinets.
The man was shaking so violently that his teeth were audibly chattering against each other.
“Marco,” Rafael said, his tone deathly quiet, almost conversational.
“Cut her loose.”
Marco stepped forward immediately, drawing a serrated combat blade from his tactical vest and slicing through the heavy zip-ties with a single swift motion.
Elena slumped forward, rubbing her raw, bleeding wrists as she pulled Nate completely into her lap, burying her face into her son’s wet hair.
Rafael walked across the small linoleum kitchen until he was standing twelve inches from the trembling lead thug.
Rafael reached out, grabbed the collar of the man’s tactical windbreaker, and hauled him off his feet with one arm, slamming him against the grease-stained wall.
The drywall cracked behind the man’s skull.
“Who sent you here?” Rafael whispered, his dark eyes void of all human mercy.
“M-Mr. De Santos... please...” the thug choked out, clawing at Rafael’s gloved hand.
“We were just following orders... we thought you knew...”
“Who. Sent. You.” Rafael repeated, each word spaced with lethal deliberation.
“Victor!” the man screamed, tears of panic streaming down his unshaven cheeks.
“Victor Corrado! He gave us the badges! He gave us the address!”
“He said the nurse had something that belonged to him!”
“He told us to make it look like a standard neighborhood collection so nobody would ask questions!”
Rafael tightened his grip, lifting the two-hundred-pound man another two inches off the floor.
“What does she have that belongs to Victor?” Rafael asked.
“A drive!” the man gasped, his face turning dark purple from lack of oxygen.
“A hard drive from the hospital! A dying guy from the docks gave it to her two nights ago!”
“Victor said if that drive reached the authorities, or if it reached you, we were all dead!”
Rafael stared at the man for three long, agonizing seconds.
Then, with effortless brutality, Rafael shifted his weight and drove his fist straight into the man’s solar plexus.
The brute collapsed to the floor in a wheezing, breathless heap, completely incapacitated.
Rafael let go of the collar, wiped his leather glove against the man’s jacket, and turned back toward Elena.
Elena was watching him with wide, shocked eyes, her hands trembling as she held Nate tightly against her chest.
She had expected Rafael to applaud the thugs.
She had spent eight years believing that Rafael had orchestrated Gabriel’s death to eliminate any rival claims to the family’s criminal empire.
Now, seeing the pure, unadulterated fury on Rafael’s face, a terrible, disorienting doubt began to creep into her mind.
“You didn't send them,” Elena whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the broken refrigerator.
Rafael walked over to where she sat, kneeling down on one knee in the shattered glass so that his eyes were level with hers.
He held out his palm, resting the silver pocket watch on the open leather of his glove.
“Gabriel was my brother, Elena,” Rafael said, his voice carrying the solemn weight of a sacred oath.
“He walked away from the family, and it broke my heart, but I swore to our mother on her deathbed that I would never touch a hair on his head.”
“I spent eight years believing he died in an accident.”
Rafael looked up from the watch, his eyes locking onto Elena’s bruised, battered face.
“If Victor Corrado had a hand in Gabriel’s death, and if he sent these animals to lay their hands on Gabriel’s wife and son...”
May you like
Rafael reached out and gently touched Nate’s shoulder, his fingers steady and reassuring.
“...then the entire city does not hold enough dirt to bury what I am going to do to him.”
