Chapter 4 - Gabriel's Perfect World Crumbles
4 weeks earlier, Gabriel Thornton’s life had still been perfect. Or at least that’s what he believed. Gabriel Thornton, 36 years old, the most powerful mafia boss in Chicago, the kind of man whose name alone could make the entire underworld bow its head. But Gabriel wasn’t like the other bosses. He didn’t build his empire on the blood and tears of the innocent. He built it on fairness, on loyalty, on one unbreakable rule he’d learned from Nana Teresa: Never harm people who don’t deserve to be harmed. In Chicago’s underworld, Gabriel was known as a man of honor. He protected poor neighborhoods from drug dealers. He helped struggling families when they had nowhere left to turn. He punished those who prayed on the weak, and he never allowed anyone in his organization to lay a hand on women or children. That was why people respected him, not out of fear, but because he’d earned that respect.
And beside that powerful man stood Camille Ashford, the woman he’d chosen to walk with for the rest of his life. Gabriel met Camille 3 years ago at a charity fundraiser. She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She knew how to talk, how to laugh, how to make him feel like the luckiest man in the world. Camille told him about her past: An orphaned girl, independent from a young age, rising from nothing to become a successful businesswoman. Gabriel admired that. He admired her resilience. He believed she was the perfect woman for him. But he was wrong. He was completely wrong because Camille had two faces. When Gabriel was near, she was the living image of gentleness. She smiled at the staff. She asked after their health. She even remembered the names of each person’s children. But when Gabriel was away, Camille became someone else entirely. She shouted at employees over the smallest mistakes. She humiliated them in front of their co-workers. She threatened to fire them over a glance she didn’t like. And she did it all with a cold smile on her lips, as if hurting other people gave her some strange private pleasure.
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The staff in the Thornon estate lived in fear. They didn’t dare tell Gabriel because they knew Camille would find a way to punish them. They didn’t dare quit because they needed money to feed their families. All they could do was grit their teeth, endure it, and pray each day would pass without disaster. But now, standing in the grand hall of Thornton Manor, watching the way Camille treated Henry, Gabriel began to remember everything. He remembered the maid who’d quit abruptly two months ago without explaining why. He remembered the old chef who’d served his family for 15 years, suddenly asking to transfer somewhere else. He remembered the fear in the staff’s eyes whenever Camille entered a room. Eyes he’d once mistaken for respect. But no, it wasn’t respect. It was terror. Pure terror.
Gabriel felt his chest tighten as if it were being crushed. He’d been deceived. For 3 years, he’d lived beside a woman he didn’t truly know. He’d loved a mask. He’d been preparing to marry a ghost. His gaze swept across the hall and stopped on his most trusted bodyguard, Marco. The man who’d followed him for 10 years, loyal as a shadow. Gabriel gave the slightest nod, signaling Marco to come closer. He spoke quietly, his voice cold as steel. “Investigate her. Everything—her past, her present, whatever she’s hiding, I want to know it all.” Marco nodded without a word. He understood. Gabriel turned back to Camille, who was trying to regain her composure after Nana Teresa’s words. She was still beautiful, still alluring, still flawless down to every detail. But Gabriel couldn’t see that beauty anymore. All he saw was deception. All he saw were lies wrapped in elegant disguises. All he saw was a stranger wearing his fiance’s dress.
