Chapter 142

Chapter 142

Third-person POV
Gabriel’s office in the Moretti tower overlooked the East River and was usually the most orderly place on the twenty-fourth floor.
At 11:40 a.m., it looked like a war zone.
The wall monitor lay shattered on the floor. Papers from the desk were scattered in a two-meter radius. The executive chair was overturned on its side. A whiskey glass had exploded against the back wall, leaving a stain an assistant would later have to explain to the cleaning crew.
And Gabriel stood in the center, phone in his left hand, the knuckles of his right bleeding because he had just punched the wall three times in a row with enough force that something in his pinky was probably broken.
—Gabriel.
Alejandro stood in the doorway. He had arrived thirty seconds earlier, running from the elevator after Mateo messaged him that something had happened on Gabriel’s floor and he needed to get up there immediately.
—Gabriel, look at me.
Gabriel didn’t. His eyes were locked on the phone screen, where the image of Lucía tied to a chair remained open, as if staring at it longer might somehow change what it showed.
—He has her, Alejandro.
—I know. I just saw Mateo’s message.
—He has her. He’s had her for eleven hours. Eleven hours while I was giving a press conference and signing merger documents and posing for photos with your father-in-law. Eleven hours in which she could have done anything to her.
—Gabriel.
—What if she’s already dead? What if this photo is from eight hours ago and she’s already dead?
—She’s not dead.
—How do you know?
—Because if she were, Victoria wouldn’t have sent you a message asking you to pay for her brother’s death. Threats are made with live hostages. The dead aren’t useful for blackmail.
Gabriel took a deep breath. Once. Twice. Three times. The technique Dr. Estrada had taught his sister, and that Gabriela had passed on to him at some point in the past months when she saw him nearing collapse.
It didn’t work.
He lifted the phone again and read the message out loud, as if hearing it in his own voice would make it real.
—I have what you’ve been looking for. This is going to cost you dearly, Gabriel. You’re going to pay for my brother’s death.
—She’s playing.
—She’s not playing. This isn’t a game. This is Victoria with a woman tied up somewhere only she knows, and we have no idea where to even start looking.
—We’ll look.
—Where, Alejandro? Where do we start? My people have been combing through Canadian databases for twelve hours. Yours have been going through flight records and financial movements just as long. The Valmonts activated contacts all the way up to Interpol. And no one has a single lead. Because Victoria is exactly the kind of person who spends a year making sure she leaves no trace.
Mateo appeared in the doorway behind Alejandro. His jacket was wrinkled, his tie loosened, as if he had run straight out of the post-merger conference without telling anyone.
—Gabriel.
—Mateo.
—Gabriel, look at me. I have an idea.
For the first time since Alejandro entered, Gabriel looked up.
—What idea?
—We hit Victoria’s parents.
—What?
—If she has Lucía, we give her exactly the same. We take her parents. Arrest them. Expose them. Pressure them until she shows up to defend them.
Alejandro turned to Mateo.
—Do you have a way to do that?
—My father has contacts in federal courts who’ve been waiting two years for an excuse to investigate William Harrington. There are three open cases—tax fraud, money laundering, and influence peddling—that he managed to freeze by paying judges and bribing officials. If those cases are reopened tomorrow morning, William Harrington is in handcuffs before noon. And his wife with him—she co-signed five of the transactions.
Gabriel dropped the phone onto the desk.
—How long?
—My father needs two hours to activate his contacts. Arrest warrants could be signed by one. Detention executed by two.
—Do it.
—Are you sure? Once we start this, there’s no going back. The Harringtons are powerful. If we touch them, they’ll hit back with everything they have.
—Do it, Mateo.
—And your father?
—My father will agree. Call him. Coordinate with him. I’m not in a position to think legally right now.
Mateo nodded and left, already dialing a number.
Alejandro stayed.
He walked slowly toward Gabriel and grabbed his bleeding hand with the firmness of a brother who had done this before with his twin in worse moments.
—We’re going to the infirmary on this floor. You need to get that bandaged before it gets infected.
—No.
—Yes. Come on. You won’t be able to write, call, or sign anything with your hand wrecked like that. Let’s go.
Gabriel let him. He followed Alejandro to the infirmary like a sleepwalker. And for the first time in years, he allowed someone to guide him without arguing, because the alternative was staring at Lucía’s photo until he completely lost his mind.

The Harrington mansion received its first official visit at 1:45 p.m.
Four FBI vehicles lined up in front of the stone façade. Twelve uniformed agents stepped out in formation. The lead agent, a man in his fifties with a face carved from granite, climbed the six porch steps and rang the bell with a bureaucratic authority that didn’t need to raise its voice to be obeyed.
The same butler who had dismissed Gabriel twelve hours earlier opened the door.
—Yes?
—FBI. We have arrest warrants for William Harrington and Catherine Harrington. Are they on the property?
The butler glanced past the agent and saw the twelve uniforms in the driveway. He calculated for three seconds. Decided this was not a battle worth fighting from his position.
—Please, come in.
The Harringtons were found in different parts of the house.
William in his second-floor study, on the phone with his personal lawyer about a matter that was no longer going to matter.
Catherine in the first-floor solarium, watering orchids with a routine she had maintained for forty years, regardless of what happened outside.
Both were read their rights where they stood. Both were handcuffed with professional efficiency that allowed no protest. And both were escorted down the main staircase to the vehicles, where the press—alerted by a strategically timed leak fifteen minutes earlier from Andrés Valmont’s team—was already waiting with cameras rolling to capture every second.
William tried to maintain dignity, walking straight-backed, chin high.
Catherine, wearing a silk floral dress and flats, lost one shoe on the front steps and no one stopped to help her pick it up. She reached the vehicle with one shoe on and the other stocking soaked by the damp grass.
The footage aired live on CNN, Bloomberg, Fox, and four local channels before 2:15 p.m.

Victoria was in the living room of the Greenwich house when she received the first call.
Her father’s number appeared on the screen, and she knew before answering that something was wrong—he never called at that hour.
—Dad.
—Victoria, listen carefully. I have four minutes before they put me in the vehicle.
—What happened?
—The FBI is here. They’re arresting us. Your mother and me. Charges of tax fraud, money laundering, and influence peddling. The three cases we’ve kept frozen for years were reactivated this morning with federal warrants signed three hours ago.
Victoria sat down on the wine-stained sofa without even noticing the stain.
—That’s not possible, Dad. We had that locked down for years.
—It was the Valmonts. Andrés Valmont activated contacts in federal courts we hadn’t been able to anticipate for decades. This wasn’t random, Victoria. This was a direct response to something you did.
—Dad, I didn’t—
—Don’t lie to me. I don’t have time. I know you’re behind the hack on Moretti Enterprises—no one else had motive. And I know you’re behind something else, because the Morettis don’t mobilize the FBI over a hack. They do it over something personal. So tell me. What did you do?
—Dad…
—What did you do, Victoria?
Victoria breathed. Looked at the broken glass on the table. At the TV replaying images of her father in handcuffs and her mother descending the steps with one shoe.
—I have the nurse, Dad. Gabriel’s.
—You have Lucía Sandoval?
—Yes.
—For how long?
—I brought her yesterday morning from Quebec. In the Petrov plane.
—Victoria.
—Dad, I was going to—
—Shut up. Listen to me. Right now they’re putting me in the vehicle. They’re taking me to a federal office—probably Manhattan. And the Morettis will be there waiting, because this is coordinated. This isn’t police. This is a family operation disguised as legal procedure. And you have two hours to decide whether you release that woman—or whether your mother and I rot in a federal prison for the rest of our lives.
—Dad, I can’t show up. If I show up, they’ll arrest me too.
—You will show up.
—Dad—
—You will show up, Victoria. Because you created this problem. And problems get solved—they’re not avoided. I taught you that when you were five. If your mother and I end up in prison because of your stupidity, I will personally make sure you don’t see a single dollar of the Harrington inheritance when I die. Is that clear?
—Dad…
—Is that clear, Victoria?
—It’s clear.
—Fix this. I don’t care how. But fix it. Because if we fall, you fall with us. And this name disappears from New York society in less than a week.
He hung up.
Victoria remained seated, staring at the dead screen for a full minute, unable to process what had just happened.
Her parents arrested.
The entire plan collapsing in under three hours.
The Valmonts pulling federal strings she had always believed untouchable.
And Gabriel responding—not with money or desperation as she had expected—but with the one move she had never considered: making her family feel exactly what she had inflicted on Lucía.
She picked up her glass and took a long sip.
Stood.
Walked to the window and stared at the Greenwich woods, her mind completely blank for thirty seconds.
Then she went back to the sofa, grabbed her phone, and started calculating.
Two hours, her father had said.
Two hours to fix everything.
Or everything would burn.

At 3:05 p.m., William and Catherine Harrington were brought into the federal offices at Foley Square in lower Manhattan.
They weren’t processed through the standard intake.
They were escorted directly to the twelfth floor, to a conference room reserved for high-sensitivity cases, where two federal agents waited with neutral expressions and clear instructions to leave the moment the requested parties entered.
At 3:10, the door opened.
Gael Moretti and Gabriel Moretti walked in.
Gael first. Navy suit. The posture of a CEO who had spent forty years negotiating crises. A brown leather folder in his left hand, a closed notebook in the right.
Gabriel behind him. Dark gray suit. His hand bandaged to the wrist, clumsy with fresh stitches. The face of a man who hadn’t slept in nineteen hours and was now running purely on adrenaline and distilled rage.
The agents stood.
—Gentlemen, you have twenty minutes. After that, the detainees return to standard procedure.
—That’s enough, —Gael replied.
They left, closing the door behind them.
William Harrington, handcuffed to the aluminum table, lifted his head with the practiced dignity of a man who had spent sixty years pretending to be untouchable.
—Gael.
—William.
—This is a procedural violation.
—This is a conversation between two old acquaintances with a shared problem. My lawyer handles procedure. We’re here to talk.
Catherine Harrington, cuffed to the chair beside him, looked at her husband with the expression of a magnate’s wife who doesn’t understand what’s happening—but knows it’s not the moment to ask.
Gael sat across from William. Gabriel remained standing behind his father, fists clenched, eyes fixed on Catherine because he still wasn’t sure he could look at William without grabbing him by the throat.
—William. The charges are real. The cases you froze for twelve years were reactivated this morning with federal signatures that cannot be undone. If this proceeds normally, you go to prison for twenty-five years, and your wife for fifteen. You’ll both be released in your nineties—if you survive.
—Gael—
—Wait. I’m not done. Your daughter Victoria is holding a woman hostage somewhere only she knows. She transported that woman by private plane from Quebec to the United States thirty-six hours ago. She’s responsible for last night’s cyberattack on Moretti Enterprises. She blackmailed my son for one hundred million dollars three days ago in federal court. And she sent this message four hours and seventeen minutes ago.
Gael opened the folder. Pulled out a color print of the photo.
Lucía tied to the chair. The injection mark on her neck. Red eyes.
He slid it across the table.
William looked at it. Three seconds. No more.
Then he looked up.
—Gael.
—Your daughter is sick, William. You know that. What you may not have known is how far it goes. Now you do. And you have two options.
—What are they?
—First: you stay silent. My people continue the federal process. You both spend the next twenty-five years in prison. Your daughter remains free with a woman she will likely kill within forty-eight hours—because it’s all she has left now that her plan failed. Your name collapses. Your fortune is seized. And your daughter ends up a fugitive somewhere in the Caribbean until we find her. Which we will.
—And the second?
—You call Victoria. Now. You convince her to release Lucía Sandoval alive within the next six hours. In exchange, I personally withdraw the federal charges against you. The cases go back to being frozen. You walk out of here tonight in the same car you arrived in. And this never gets spoken of again.
—And Victoria?
Gael held his gaze.
—Victoria is Victoria’s problem.
William looked down.
At the photo.
At his wife.
At the handcuffs.
At reality.
Gabriel spoke for the first time.
—I love that woman. More than my own life. If your daughter hurts her—anything—a mark, a bruise, something she never recovers from—I swear on my grandfather’s memory I will destroy your family until the name Harrington exists only in history books as a warning.
William met his eyes.
—Gabriel.
—Call her.
—I’m not sure she’ll listen.
—She will. Because the alternative is your wife spending fifteen years in a maximum-security cell surrounded by women who’ve been waiting decades for someone like her. Call her.
William looked at Catherine.
She didn’t look back.
He nodded.
—Alright. Give me my phone.
Gael knocked twice.
An agent entered with William’s phone in an evidence bag.
Gael handed it to him.
William unlocked it with fingers temporarily freed from the cuffs. Found his daughter’s contact.
Dialed.
The phone rang.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Gabriel leaned against the wall, eyes closed.
Four. Five.
—Please, —he whispered. —Please pick up. Please.
The phone kept ringing.