Chapter 2 - THE WILL THAT MADE ME A TARGET

Z

I had expected Vincent to insist that I leave the hotel immediately.

Instead, he stood in silence for several seconds, staring at his phone as though the dead had just reached through it.

“Another will?” I repeated.

Vincent called the attorney back.

He put the phone on speaker.

“Mr. Moretti,” an older voice answered. “I strongly recommend you bring Mrs. Moretti to my office.”

“Miss Bennett,” I corrected automatically.

There was a pause.

“My apologies.”

Vincent looked at me.

The attorney continued.

“Mrs. Emilia Moretti deposited a sealed document with my firm eleven months ago. Her instructions were explicit. It was to be disclosed only if three conditions occurred.”

“What conditions?” Vincent asked.

“Her death. A legal dissolution of your marriage. And evidence that Claire’s safety had been compromised.”

My skin prickled.

Vincent’s face became unreadable.

“How would you know about her safety?”

“Mrs. Moretti established procedures.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning your grandmother anticipated this possibility.”

Nobody spoke.

That frightened me more than the attack.

Emilia Moretti had been eighty-two when she died.

She had been tiny, elegant, terrifyingly observant, and probably the only human being Vincent had ever obeyed without argument.

She had also been the person who introduced us.

Everyone assumed she had arranged our marriage because she wanted grandchildren before she died.

Apparently, everyone had been wrong.

Including me.

“We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Vincent said.

“No,” I answered.

His head turned.

“I have a flight tomorrow.”

“Two men just tried to enter your room.”

“And your solution is to drag me deeper into Moretti family business?”

“My solution is to keep you breathing.”

“That worked wonderfully during our marriage.”

Pain flashed across his face.

Good.

I wanted him to feel one percent of what I had felt when he pushed divorce papers across our dining-room table.

Still, forty minutes later, I was sitting beside him in the back of an armored SUV.

Chicago moved past the dark windows.

I kept one hand over my handbag.

Inside it were my passport, my plane ticket, three granola bars, and the prenatal vitamins I prayed Vincent wouldn’t see.

I was eight weeks pregnant.

Eight weeks.

The baby had existed inside me while Vincent slept in a hotel.

While Sophia returned.

While our marriage disintegrated.

While I signed the papers.

I had learned about the pregnancy one day after Vincent asked for the divorce.

I had almost told him.

Then I had imagined the look on his face.

Duty.

Responsibility.

Maybe even regret.

Anything except love.

So I had remained silent.

Vincent broke the quiet.

“When were you going to tell me about the transfers?”

“I wasn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because by then you’d already decided Sophia belonged in your life more than I did.”

“That isn’t what happened.”

“It’s exactly what happened from where I was standing.”

He looked away.

“That’s the problem.”

“What?”

“You were standing outside a door I should have opened.”

I stared at him.

Before I could answer, the SUV stopped beneath the private garage of Hawthorne & Pierce.

The attorney waiting upstairs was Samuel Hawthorne, white-haired and thin, with the exhausted expression of a man who had spent forty years keeping rich families from destroying themselves.

He placed a black leather folder on the conference table.

“Mrs. Moretti left this.”

Vincent reached for it.

Samuel covered the folder with his hand.

“For Claire.”

Vincent withdrew.

I opened it.

The first page was a letter.

My dear Claire,

If you are reading this, then my grandson has done something spectacularly stupid.

Despite everything, I smiled.

Vincent did not.

I kept reading.

I chose you for Vincent because you were the first person I ever saw tell him no without wanting something afterward.

You never feared his name, and you never worshiped his money.

More importantly, you made him remember that power and strength are not the same thing.

I swallowed.

The letter became more serious.

There are people inside this family who believe Vincent’s marriage weakened him. They are wrong. It made him harder to control.

Those people will try to separate you.

If they succeed, they will attempt to remove you permanently.

My fingers tightened.

Then came the sentence that changed everything.

Because whether Vincent understands it or not, you are the legal key to the Moretti succession.

I looked up.

“What does that mean?”

Samuel turned another document toward us.

Emilia had transferred controlling voting rights in Moretti Strategic Holdings into a trust.

Vincent owned forty percent.

Angelo Moretti owned twenty-seven.

Several cousins divided the rest.

But Emilia’s final thirteen percent?

It belonged to me.

Not as cash.

Not as something I could sell.

As voting control.

As long as Vincent and I remained married, my shares automatically supported his position.

If we divorced, they became independent.

Meaning Angelo needed my vote.

Or needed me gone.

I looked at Vincent.

“You didn’t know?”

“No.”

That was worse somehow.

Samuel nodded.

“Mrs. Moretti knew Mr. Vincent would refuse the arrangement if informed.”

“Smart woman,” I muttered.

A faint smile touched Samuel’s mouth.

Then he slid another envelope toward me.

“This was also included.”

My name appeared on the front.

Claire.

Inside was a photograph.

Vincent and me.

It had been taken two years earlier in Lake Geneva.

I was laughing.

Vincent was looking at me.

Not at the camera.

At me.

There was something in his expression I had never noticed.

Something soft.

Almost vulnerable.

On the back, Emilia had written one sentence.

He does not know what love looks like when it is happening to him.

My throat tightened.

I put the photograph down.

Vincent had seen the words.

Neither of us spoke.

Samuel cleared his throat.

“There’s one final matter.”

Of course there was.

“When Mrs. Moretti revised this trust, she commissioned a private investigation into Angelo.”

Vincent leaned forward.

“Where is it?”

“Missing.”

His eyes sharpened.

“Missing?”

“My office copy disappeared four days after Emilia’s death.”

The room turned cold.

Samuel looked at me.

“She anticipated that possibility too.”

He reached beneath the table and produced a brass key.

“She gave the original to someone else.”

“Who?”

Samuel hesitated.

“Your father, Claire.”

My breath stopped.

“My father died twelve years ago.”

“I know.”

Samuel placed the key in front of me.

“But according to Emilia, before Thomas Bennett died, he hid something that could destroy Angelo Moretti.”

Vincent stared at the key.

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I stared at Vincent.

And suddenly my flight tomorrow seemed very far away.