Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO WANTED MY CHILD BEFORE HE KNEW IT EXISTED
Z
The fire alarm was fake.
Vincent knew it before the second siren sounded.
“Stay behind me.”
“I’m not one of your employees.”
“Today, pretend.”
He pushed the vault door closed and turned the lock from inside.
Then he called his head of security.
“Marco.”
Static.
Nothing.
Vincent tried again.
No answer.
That frightened him.
Marco Bellini had worked for Vincent for fifteen years.
If Marco wasn’t answering, something had gone very wrong.
I stared at the cassette in my hand.
“What do we do?”
Vincent looked toward the ceiling.
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“My men to remember they enjoy being employed.”
Despite myself, I almost laughed.
Then a gunshot echoed outside the vault.
I didn’t laugh.
Vincent moved me behind a row of steel boxes.
Another shot.
Then shouting.
Then silence.
My heart pounded so violently I became suddenly terrified for the tiny life inside me.
I placed both hands over my stomach.
Please.
Please stay safe.
Vincent turned.
His eyes dropped again.
This time he didn’t immediately look away.
“You keep doing that.”
My blood froze.
“Doing what?”
“Touching your stomach.”
“I’m stressed.”
His stare lasted one second too long.
Then someone pounded on the vault door.
“Boss!”
Marco.
Vincent opened it.
Marco stood outside with blood on his collar.
“Not mine,” he said immediately.
Three attackers had entered through the employee garage wearing Chicago Fire Department jackets.
Two were unconscious.
One had escaped.
The missing manager had been found locked in a janitor’s closet.
“They knew exactly where we were,” Marco said.
Vincent glanced toward the black notebook and tape.
“They knew why.”
We left through the underground garage.
The evidence went into an armored case.
I went into Vincent’s SUV.
I didn’t argue.
For the first time, I understood the scale of the problem.
Someone had known about my father’s evidence.
Someone had waited decades.
And now they knew I had it.
Vincent brought me to a Moretti safe house in Winnetka overlooking Lake Michigan.
Calling it a safe house was ridiculous.
It had eight bedrooms, bullet-resistant windows, a private dock, and a kitchen larger than my first apartment.
“I’m not staying here permanently,” I said.
“No.”
“Don’t agree with me just to stop an argument.”
“I’m not.”
“You always do that.”
“I remember.”
That hurt more than it should have.
Marco took the cassette and arranged for it to be digitized.
I sat alone in the kitchen trying to drink water.
My nausea had been terrible all morning.
Stress made it worse.
A housekeeper placed crackers beside me.
“Mr. Moretti said these might help.”
I stared at them.
“How would he know?”
“He asked.”
Of course he did.
Vincent investigated everything.
Two hours later, I found him in the study.
The old tape recorder sat on a desk connected to modern equipment.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No.”
He pressed play anyway.
My father’s voice filled the room.
You understand this conversation is being recorded?
A younger male voice answered.
Yes.
Angelo.
My skin prickled.
The recording was almost thirty-three years old.
Yet Angelo’s voice was unmistakable.
Arrogant even then.
My father asked about offshore accounts.
Payments.
Threats against witnesses.
Angelo answered reluctantly.
Then came the important part.
Thomas Bennett: Who authorized the Cicero warehouse fire?
Angelo Moretti: Nobody authorized it. I did it.
Thomas: Four people died.
Angelo: Four people who were talking.
Silence.
Thomas: And your brother?
Angelo laughed.
That sound chilled me.
Angelo: My brother was always weak. Emilia protected him. Someday she’ll protect his son too.
Thomas: Vincent is a child.
Angelo: Children grow up.
The tape ended several minutes later.
Vincent sat perfectly still.
His father had died when Vincent was fourteen.
The official story was a car accident.
Suddenly, I wondered whether it had been an accident at all.
Marco entered.
“We checked Aster Holdings.”
Vincent looked up.
“And?”
“Angelo moved $7.4 million through it over the last eighteen months.”
“To Sophia?”
“Some.”
Marco put photographs on the desk.
The rest had gone to contractors.
Private investigators.
And a fertility clinic.
My breathing stopped.
Vincent noticed.
“What clinic?”
Marco read the name.
“North Shore Reproductive Medicine.”
That was my clinic.
The room tilted.
Vincent looked at me.
I looked away too quickly.
“Claire.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Marco frowned.
“Mrs. Moretti?”
“Leave us,” Vincent said.
Marco left.
Vincent waited until the door shut.
Then he walked toward me.
“Why did that name scare you?”
“It didn’t.”
“Claire.”
“Don’t.”
His expression changed.
The room suddenly held every lie we had told each other.
His.
Mine.
“You’re going there for treatment?”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Then why?”
My eyes filled.
This wasn’t how I wanted him to know.
Not in a study with Angelo’s money on the table.
Not because one of Vincent’s investigations had cornered me.
But there was no gentle version left.
I whispered, “I went there four days ago.”
His face went blank.
“Why?”
I placed my hand over my stomach.
And this time, I did not hide it.
Vincent looked down.
Then back at me.
His lips parted.
“Claire…”
“I’m pregnant.”
Nothing moved.
Not him.
Not me.
Even the lake outside seemed frozen.
“How far?”
“Eight weeks.”
He calculated instantly.
His eyes closed.
The baby had been conceived while we were married.
Before he moved out.
Before the divorce.
When he opened his eyes again, the most feared man in Chicago looked shattered.
“It’s mine?”
I slapped him.
Hard.
The sound cracked through the room.
Vincent didn’t move.
“I deserved that,” he said.
“Yes.”
His cheek reddened.
I was crying now.
“I found out the day after you handed me divorce papers.”
He stared at my stomach.
“You were carrying my child when you signed them.”
“Yes.”
His voice broke on the next question.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wanted you to choose me.”
I wiped my face.
“Not because I was pregnant. Not because of your name. Not because of your grandmother. Me.”
He looked like I had shot him.
Then Marco suddenly opened the door.
“Boss.”
Vincent turned sharply.
Marco was holding a phone.
“We reached the fertility clinic.”
He looked at me.
“Someone accessed Mrs. Moretti’s medical file yesterday.”
My blood ran cold.
“Who?”
Marco’s expression hardened.
“Angelo’s people.”
Vincent became very still.
The kind of stillness that usually came before someone regretted entering a room.
I grabbed his arm.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“No what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking.”
“He knows about our child.”
“Yes.”
“And now he knows exactly why you matter.”
His eyes were colder than I had ever seen them.
But underneath the cold was something worse.
Fear.
May you like
For the first time, our baby had entered Vincent Moretti’s world.
And someone wanted to use that baby to destroy him.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(1048x378:1050x380)/Jenna-Bush-Hager-100223-c94955eb572d47ea815a340c18c6e771.jpg)
