“No,” he said.
His face had gone gray from blood loss.
“Natalie must have added it after she realized Augustine was compromised.”
Marco was handcuffed and pulled upright.
He looked around the room as though betrayal had been committed against him rather than by him.
“You think this ends with me?” he said to Gabriel.
“Half the men in this city know what you signed.
You buried your own name the moment you agreed to testify.”
Gabriel held his gaze.
“Then I’ll testify before they bury me.”
Ruiz ordered an agent to treat Gabriel’s arm.
Another recovered Marco’s pistol and sealed it in an evidence bag.
Natalie’s video had not ended.
Ruiz placed the phone back on the table and turned up the volume.
My sister appeared in the small pool of light, sitting inside what looked like an empty warehouse office.
Her hair was pulled back carelessly.
A bruise darkened one wrist.
Fear moved through her eyes, but her voice remained steady.
“Lauren, I need you to understand why I stayed away.”
My chest tightened.
The room, the agents, and Gabriel faded around me.
“Three years ago, I discovered Marco was using private investigators to map the families of everyone close to Gabriel.
Parents.
Children.
Former partners.
Anyone who could become leverage.
You were living in Prague under your own name.
I thought the safest thing I could do was make everyone believe you hated me.”
I covered my mouth.
The last conversation in our parents’ kitchen came back with brutal clarity.
Natalie telling me to leave.
Natalie saying I had never understood her.
Natalie refusing to answer when I asked whether Gabriel had threatened her.
I had carried those words for three years as proof that she had chosen him over me.
She had been trying to make the separation convincing.
“I wanted to call you every day,” Natalie continued.
“Sometimes I did.
I just never let the calls connect.”
The six missed calls from six months earlier flashed through my mind.
I had seen her name on my screen and watched it ring until silence returned.
Pride is a poison that works slowly.
Regret arrives all at once.
Natalie looked away from the camera.
“Tonight, I found the account that proves Marco ordered two unauthorized weapons shipments through Halcyon Medical Logistics.
One of the drivers was an undercover agent.
Marco had him killed when he discovered the wire.
Gabriel did not authorize it.
Gabriel has done terrible things, Lauren, and he will answer for them.
But he did not order that murder.
He agreed to cooperate because he finally understood the organization could not be reformed.
It had to be dismantled.”
Gabriel stood beside me, silent.
He did not ask Natalie’s recording to excuse him.
He did not interrupt to defend himself.
That mattered.
