Chapter 2 – THE WATCH THAT STOPPED TIME
“Where did you get that?” Gabriel asked, stepping closer to me.
His eyes were locked on the silver dial.
“My mother gave it to me,” I whispered, my voice barely audible in the dead-silent dining room. “She said a kind man left it with her the night I was born.”
Daniel scoffed, a desperate, ugly sound. “A kind man? Gabriel, Dad gave it to her because she’s a gold-digger. She was extorting him!”
Margaret slammed her hand on the table.
For a frail, seventy-nine-year-old woman, the sound echoed like a gunshot.
“Stop lying, Daniel!” Margaret’s voice was surprisingly strong, fueled by decades of suppressed grief. “Your father never had an affair!”
The room gasped.
Isabella looked panicked. “Margaret, please. Your medicine—”
“Shut up, Isabella,” Gabriel snapped, not even looking at her. He knelt beside his mother. “Mom, what do you mean? If Dad didn’t have an affair, who is Claire to him?”
Margaret reached out, her arthritis-swollen fingers gently tracing the face of the silver watch on my wrist.
“Do you remember the night your father died, Gabriel? The car accident in the rain?”
Gabriel nodded slowly. “I was thirteen. He was driving back from the city.”
“He wasn’t in the city,” Margaret cried, tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. “He was at the hospital. He was visiting Sarah. Because Sarah wasn’t his mistress.”
Margaret looked right at Daniel.
“Sarah was his daughter from his first marriage. The marriage before me. The one his ruthless family forced him to annul.”
The silence in the room was absolute.
Gabriel slowly stood up. He looked at me, his eyes wide with a realization that shattered everything he knew.
“If Sarah is my father’s daughter…” Gabriel whispered.
“Yes,” Margaret sobbed. “Claire is your niece.”
My knees gave out. I grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling.
Gabriel Moretti, the feared mafia boss, the man whose floors I had been scrubbing for fourteen months… was my uncle.
Daniel took a step back toward the door. “It doesn’t matter! Dad left that money for us! I wasn’t going to let a bastard child take half of our inheritance!”
“So you stole it,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “And you let my niece work as a servant. You let her mother—our sister—suffer in a cancer ward.”
Isabella grabbed Gabriel’s arm. “Darling, be reasonable. We needed that money for the new casino project. Daniel was just protecting our business interests!”
Gabriel looked at Isabella’s hand on his arm.
Then he looked at her left hand.
“Where did you get the diamond on your necklace, Isabella?” Gabriel asked.
Isabella touched her throat nervously. “I… I bought it. From a private dealer.”
Margaret closed her eyes in shame.
“She didn’t buy it, Gabriel,” Margaret whispered.
Gabriel turned. “Mom?”
Margaret opened her hands, showing her bare ring finger.
“That’s the center stone from my wedding ring,” Margaret cried. “Isabella forced me to give it to her yesterday. She said if I didn’t, she’d make sure I was sent to the worst nursing home in the state.”
Gabriel’s jaw locked. He turned back to Isabella, and what I saw in his eyes made my blood run cold.
But before Gabriel could speak, the dining room doors burst open.
Two men in dark suits walked in, carrying a small, terrified six-year-old boy.
It was my son, Leo.
“Mommy!” Leo cried out, struggling in the men’s grip.
Daniel smiled, a cruel, desperate sneer.
“Let’s see how much family means to you now, Gabriel,” Daniel said. “Because if anyone tries to stop me from leaving this room, the boy doesn’t make it home.”
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