The Mafia Boss Watched His Dead Fiancée Walk Into Her Own Funeral... Until the Woman With Her Face Revealed Who Had Really Put Her in the Casket

Ten minutes later, the private security detail had secured the mansion's perimeter, clearing the remaining sectors and locking down the estate. Two dead bodies lay draped across the hallway outside the study, their faces hidden behind black tactical balaclavas.

Franco stood over one of the bodies, unzipping the tactical vest to inspect the insignia stitched inside the lining.

"Outfit enforcers," Franco muttered, looking up at Gabriel as he walked out of the study. "Moretti’s private clean-up crew. The same tattoo on the inner forearm: a coiled viper around a dagger."

Gabriel’s face turned the color of gravestone granite. He didn't speak; he simply walked over to the desk where I sat, my hands wrapped around a cup of black coffee Franco had forced me to take. The steam curled upward, but I couldn't feel the heat.

"They knew where you were within hours of your arrival in Chicago," Gabriel said quietly, his hand resting on the back of my chair. "Which means there is a leak at the highest level of my organization—or someone very close to you told them you were coming."

I frowned, running through the short list of people who knew I was flying in for the funeral. My landlord in Seattle? No. The airline reservation desk? Unlikely.

Then, a name flashed through my mind like a strobe light.

Rachel Bell.

"The email," I whispered, looking up at Gabriel. "The woman who notified me about Natalie’s death. She said she worked with her at the photography gallery on Michigan Avenue."

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. "Do you have her contact information?"

"It’s on my phone," I said, standing up and reaching into the pocket of my blazer. I pulled out my smartphone, tapping the screen to unlock it. The battery was at four percent. I quickly navigated to my email inbox and pulled up the message from Rachel Bell.

I handed the phone to Gabriel. He scanned the address, then handed it to Franco.

"Run a trace on the IP address and the phone number attached to this email," Gabriel ordered. "Find out who Rachel Bell actually is—and whether she’s currently breathing."

Franco took the phone, nodded once, and vanished down the corridor toward the high-tech security suite in the basement.

Gabriel turned back to me, his expression softening just enough to reveal the haunted man beneath the syndicate boss. "You realize what this means, Lauren? Natalie didn't trust just anyone with her secrets. If Rachel Bell was her coworker, she might have been the one who helped Natalie hide the digital ledger before the crash."

"Or she was the one who sold her out," I replied bitterly. "People don't get killed over art galleries, Gabriel. They get killed over leverage. And my sister was playing a game she didn't fully understand."

Gabriel stepped closer, his dark eyes searching my face with an intensity that made my breath catch. "You talk about her in the past tense. But you’re angry at her."

"I’m angry that she kept me in the dark," I corrected, my voice tight. "She called me six months ago. Left a voicemail saying she had something important to tell me. I deleted it. I ignored her because I was too proud to pick up the damn phone."

Gabriel reached out, his warm fingers gently brushing a stray lock of wheat-blonde hair away from my forehead. The gesture was so tender, so utterly intimate, that it sent a shiver straight down my spine.

"None of us knew how little time we had," Gabriel murmured, his thumb lightly tracing my cheekbone. "If we had known... everything would have been different."

Before I could answer, the heavy double doors at the end of the corridor banged open, and Franco hurried back into the room, holding a printed dossier and a tablet.

"Boss," Franco said, breathing heavily. "We ran the trace on Rachel Bell. The email address doesn't trace back to a photography gallery in Michigan Avenue. It traces back to a secure terminal inside a commercial warehouse on the South Side."

He flipped open the dossier and slammed a single 8x10 glossy photograph onto the mahogany desk.

I looked down at the photo. My blood ran ice-cold.