Chapter 5 - The Silent House
Chloe pulled a low wooden stool next to Beatrice’s chair, her eyes locked on the old woman’s frail hands. Outside, the rain had begun to lash against the heavy bulletproof panes, a muffled drumming that Beatrice couldn't hear.
What happened to Matteo? Chloe signed, keeping her movements slow, rhythmic, soothing.
Beatrice wiped a stray tear from her cheek with the corner of her nightgown. Matteo was soft. Like you. Like your brother must have been. He wanted to paint, not run numbers. Gabriel was already his father’s right hand, cold and calculated. But Matteo... Matteo was sick. A fever when he was seven took his hearing, just like an infection took mine when I was forty.
Chloe felt a chill creep up her spine. Matteo was deaf?
Beatrice nodded, her eyes distant, staring through the wisteria in the old photograph. Gabriel never learned to sign. His father, Carmine, forbade it. Carmine said: 'In our world, weakness gets you killed. If you wave your hands like a mute, the other families will smell blood. Matteo must learn to read lips, or he stays locked inside.'
The cruelty of it made Chloe’s stomach churn. She remembered the special education meetings she had fought through for Leo, the teachers who told her Leo was "disruptive" just because he tapped his desk to feel the vibration.
And Matteo? Chloe asked.
He couldn't read lips well, Beatrice replied, her fingers moving in sharp, angry jerks. He missed things. Six years ago, there was a dispute at the warehouse in Newark. Carmine sent Gabriel to negotiate. Matteo wanted to prove he wasn't useless. He followed them. When the shooting started, Matteo didn't hear the warning shouts. Gabriel yelled at him to get down, but Matteo was looking at the birds on the roof. A stray bullet took him in the neck.
Beatrice’s hands dropped into her lap, limp as dead leaves.
Gabriel held him while he choked on his own blood, Beatrice signed, her chin trembling. Matteo tried to sign something to Gabriel with his dying fingers. But Gabriel didn't know what it meant. He just held him, screaming for an ambulance that was twenty minutes away.
Chloe swallowed around a lump the size of a fist.
Gabriel never forgave himself, Beatrice continued softly. He locked Matteo’s room. He buried Carmine two years later when cancer took him. And then he moved me into this palace of glass and stone, surrounded me with guards, and stopped looking at me. Every time he sees my hands move, he sees Matteo choking to death in that dirty warehouse.
The silence in the room was heavy, suffocating.
The door to the corridor clicked open.
Gabriel stood in the doorway, his jacket discarded, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled to the elbows, revealing thick forearms corded with dark veins and faded scars. He held a glass of scotch in one hand.
His eyes flicked between Chloe and his mother, landing on Beatrice’s tear-stained cheeks.
"What are you two talking about?" his voice was rough, defensive.
Chloe stood up, stepping between the boss and his mother, her protective instincts flaring hot. "We were talking about family. Something you clearly don't know the first thing about."
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed into slits. He took two slow steps into the room, setting the glass of scotch down on a dresser with deliberate, menacing care. "Be careful, Miss Bennett. You're a guest here, but you aren't immune."
"You lock her away because you can't stand looking at your own guilt," Chloe snapped, the words tumbling out before she could check herself. "She's not an ornament, Mr. Costello. She's a human being who lost a son, and you treat her like an embarrassment because you were too arrogant to learn five letters of the alphabet!"
Gabriel crossed the space between them in half a second.
He didn't grab her, but he leaned in close enough that Chloe could smell the peat of the scotch and the cold rain on his skin. His breath was hot against her cheek. "You don't know a damn thing about what happened in Newark."
"I know Matteo tried to tell you something before he died," Chloe whispered, holding his lethal gaze without backing down an inch. "And I know it haunts you every time your mother lifts her fingers."
Gabriel flinched. It was barely a millimeter of movement, but to Chloe, it was an earthquake. The terrifying Don of North Jersey looked suddenly like a battered, cornered boy.
May you like
Before he could speak, the high-pitched chirp of an emergency radio clipped to his belt broke the tension.
Sal’s panicked voice crackled through the static: "Boss! We got a situation at the gate! The perimeter cameras just went black!"
