Chapter 8 - The Clearing of the House
By the following Monday, the DeLuca estate had undergone a transformation so radical that the neighborhood association on the Gold Coast barely recognized the property.
The wrought-iron gates were still staffed by security, but the private guards were now vetted through an independent corporate compliance firm managed by Daniel Vance. The dark, forbidding drapes that had kept the ground-floor drawing rooms in perpetual shadow had been ripped down, replaced by sheer linen that let the pale autumn sunlight flood the parquet floors.
In the grand ballroom, where forty-eight guests had stood in terrified silence eight days earlier, four carpenters were installing low-profile oak shelving and soft cork flooring.
The room was being converted into a private educational and sensory therapy center for Sophie and six other hearing-impaired children from the South Side, whose families had been awarded full scholarships through the newly established Clara Bellandi Foundation.
I stood on the second-floor gallery, holding a clipboard with the inventory sheets for the north wing.
The door to Clara’s old suite was open.
A crew of three restoration experts was carefully repairing the splintered cherrywood desk, using authentic nineteenth-century shellac to preserve the carvings. The heavy padlocks on the door had been removed entirely; the threshold was now open to the rest of the house, letting the scent of fresh white lilies and beeswax drift into the corridor.
"Hannah," a small voice called out from behind me.
I turned to see Sophie standing in the hallway, wearing a yellow knitted cardigan and denim overalls. Her dark curls were pulled back into two neat ribbons, and her butterfly hearing aids were humming softly behind her ears.
Beside her walked Gabriel.
He wore a soft charcoal wool henley, his sleeves pushed up to his forearms, no tie, no gun holster visible beneath his clothes. In his hand, he held a small wooden box lined with green velvet.
Sophie signed: Look what Daddy found.
Gabriel crouched beside her, opening the box.
Inside lay Clara’s personal sign language dictionary—a hand-drawn notebook filled with delicate watercolor sketches of hand shapes, gestures, and facial expressions that Clara had created when she was first learning ASL as a young girl.
"Clara wanted to give this to Sophie on her tenth birthday," Gabriel said, looking up at me through his lashes. "Isabella had hidden it in the ventilation shaft behind the guest parlor. Daniel’s sweep found it this morning."
Sophie gently lifted the book, her fingers tracing the watercolor drawing of a butterfly on the cover.
Mommy made this for me? she signed, her eyes wide.
Gabriel nodded, his hands signing with a smoothness and grace that had improved dramatically over the past week: Mommy loved you first. And she left her words so you would never be alone.
Sophie pressed the small book against her chest, closed her eyes, and let out a long, contented breath that seemed to banish the last four years of terror from her small frame.
Then, she looked up at me, a mischievous sparkle entering her brown eyes.
She signed three words: Hannah. Stay. Forever?
I felt a sudden, sharp heat in my cheeks. I looked from Sophie to Gabriel, who remained kneeling on the carpet, his hazel eyes fixed on my face with an unvarnished, terrifying honesty.
"Sophie," I signed gently, "I’m your teacher. And I help your daddy take care of the house."
Sophie shook her head vigorously. She reached out, caught my left hand with hers, and then reached with her other hand to catch Gabriel’s wrist, pulling us together until our knuckles touched over the velvet box.
She signed: Not teacher. Family.
Gabriel stood up slowly, not breaking the contact between our hands. His palm was warm, the scars on his knuckles smooth against my skin.
"She’s very direct, Hannah," Gabriel murmured, his voice low and vibrating. "She takes after her mother in that regard."
"Mr. DeLuca..." I started, my voice wavering.
"Gabriel," he corrected me, his thumb lightly stroking the side of my wrist. "We’ve had three sit-downs, two federal grand jury filings, and an airfield raid together, Hannah. If you call me Mr. DeLuca one more time, I’m going to have Daniel reassign you to the scullery."
A faint laugh escaped my lips despite the pounding of my heart. "You can't reassign me. I’m the executive trustee of the Bellandi Foundation. Your corporate lawyers told me this morning that I outrank you on seven different boards."
Gabriel smiled—a slow, devastating grin that transformed his severe, aristocratic features into something breathtakingly human.
"Then fire me, Miss Brooks," he whispered, stepping closer until the hem of his trousers brushed against my skirt. "Or tell me that you’ll stay."
I looked down at Sophie, who was watching our hands with intense, silent concentration, then back up at the man who had torn down two syndicates to ensure his daughter had the right to speak with her hands.
"I’m staying," I said. "On one condition."
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "Name it."
"You take three hours of sign language instruction every afternoon from 2:00 to 5:00. No business calls. No security interruptions."
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Gabriel took my hand fully into his, his fingers interlacing with mine with a strength that felt like an unbreakable contract.
"Deal," he said.
