Chapter 5 - The Sister Left Behind
The photograph slipped slightly in Gabriel's grip. The world around him seemed to tilt on its axis.
Twin sister.
He stared at the woman standing in front of him, really looking past the oversized cardigan, past the soft, unassuming demeanor, straight into the structure of her face. The jawline, the shape of the eyes, the slight curve of the nose—it was all there, buried beneath a different style, a different name, and a carefully constructed wall of anonymity.
"Isabella never spoke of a sister," Gabriel said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper as he tried to process the shock. "She told me she was an only child. She said her parents died in a fire when she was young, leaving her with nothing."
"She lied to you," Emma said softly, sinking back down into the armchair as her legs finally gave out. "Or rather, she reinvented herself. When we were twenty, our father lost everything to bad investments and ruthless creditors—creditors very much like the men you used to deal with when you were climbing your way to the top, Gabriel. Our parents didn't die in a fire. They fled the country to escape debt collectors, leaving us behind to fend for ourselves."
Emma looked up, her eyes swimming with unshed tears as she pointed to the leather notebook on the table.
"Isabella chose a different path. She changed her name, dyed her hair, and buried her past so deep that she could walk into high society and marry a billionaire who would protect her from the ugly side of the world. She became Mrs. Moretti. And I... I stayed behind in the wreckage. I worked three jobs to pay off our parents' debts. I tried to reach out to her a hundred times after she married you, but your security team blocked every letter, every phone call, every visit. To your world, Isabella was an orphan princess. A sister with a messy, debt-ridden past didn't fit the fairy tale."
Gabriel stood in silence, the weight of her words crushing down on him.
He remembered the ironclad security protocols he had personally instituted around Isabella when they first married. He had ordered his men to screen everyone, to cut off any loose ends, to ensure no one from her past could ever exploit her or infiltrate his empire through her.
He had engineered his own wife's isolation.
"When she died," Emma continued, her voice trembling with a mixture of grief and long-held resentment, "I didn't care about your money. I didn't care about your empire. I cared about my nephews. I watched from a distance as this house turned into a cold, dead tomb. I saw three little boys crying for a mother who was gone, while their father locked himself in a study and drowned his grief in balance sheets."
"So you snaked your way in," Gabriel said, his voice devoid of anger now, replaced by a hollow, crushing guilt. "You used a fake identity to get past my guards."
"I used the only way I knew how to get inside," Emma corrected fiercely. "Because if I had walked up to your front gate and said, 'I'm Isabella's twin sister,' your guards would have thrown me off the property in five seconds. I had to see my nephews. I had to make sure they didn't turn into unfeeling, broken machines like you."
May you like
Gabriel looked over at the three sleeping boys. Then he looked back at Emma.
The cold, untouchable Mafia boss—the man who controlled half the shipping ports on the East Coast—felt entirely powerless for the first time in his life.
