Chapter 6 - I RAN WITH THE MAN I HAD JUST DIVORCED
Z
There are moments when your body understands danger before your mind does.
The gunshot did that to me.
One second I was standing beside Vincent.
The next, he had his arm around my waist and was pulling me down a narrow staircase hidden behind a paneled library wall.
“Keep moving.”
“Where does this go?”
“Garage.”
“Of course your safe house has a secret garage.”
“This doesn’t seem like the time to criticize the architecture.”
Another explosion shook dust from the ceiling.
“You’re right. I’ll save it for the review.”
Behind us, Marco and two security men followed.
We reached a reinforced steel door.
Vincent entered a code.
Nothing happened.
Marco swore.
“Power’s cut.”
Vincent pulled a manual release.
The door opened.
A black SUV waited beyond it.
We piled inside.
Marco drove.
Vincent sat beside me.
Two guards took the rear.
The SUV shot through a hidden exit behind the boathouse.
We reached Sheridan Road while smoke rose behind the trees.
I twisted around.
“Is anyone still inside?”
“Three men,” Marco said. “They’ll evacuate.”
“Who attacked us?”
Vincent answered.
“Angelo.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
His phone began ringing.
Angelo.
The name appeared on the screen.
Nobody spoke.
Vincent answered.
“Uncle.”
A warm voice came through the speakers.
“Vincent. I heard there was trouble.”
“You sound devastated.”
“I worry about family.”
Vincent looked at me.
“So do I.”
Angelo sighed.
“You always were emotional underneath all that ice. Your father was the same.”
Vincent’s expression changed.
“Be careful.”
“Why? Because Claire found an old tape?”
My heart stopped.
Marco looked into the mirror.
Angelo continued.
“You think your wife’s father was clever enough to hide something from me for thirty years?”
“Ex-wife,” I said loudly.
Vincent turned toward me.
Angelo laughed.
“There she is.”
My skin crawled.
“Claire, sweetheart, you have caused an extraordinary amount of trouble.”
“Put it on my résumé.”
“That Bennett mouth.”
His voice hardened.
“It got your father into trouble too.”
Vincent’s hand curled into a fist.
I answered before he could.
“My father died of cancer.”
“Yes.”
Something in Angelo’s tone changed the air inside the SUV.
I became very still.
“What are you saying?”
“Oh, nothing dramatic. I’m simply saying that men who spend their lives digging through poisonous things should be careful about what eventually poisons them.”
The call ended.
I stared at the phone.
“My father had pancreatic cancer.”
Nobody spoke.
“Vincent.”
“We don’t know what he meant.”
“He meant something.”
“I know.”
I looked out the window because suddenly I couldn’t let anyone see my face.
My father had died in six months.
He had been fifty-seven.
He had never smoked.
Never drank much.
My mother had called it cruel luck.
Maybe it had been.
Or maybe Angelo wanted me to believe otherwise.
That was almost as monstrous.
We drove to another property.
Not a Moretti mansion.
A small brick house in Evanston belonging to Marco’s widowed sister, Teresa.
“I thought nobody was supposed to know where we are,” I said.
“Nobody does,” Marco replied.
“Except your sister.”
“She’s in Arizona.”
“Convenient.”
Marco shrugged.
“She hates Chicago winters.”
For the first time, Vincent wasn’t surrounded by luxury.
The house had floral curtains.
Family photographs.
A refrigerator covered with magnets.
Vincent looked bizarre sitting at a round kitchen table beneath a sign that said LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE.
I nearly smiled.
Then nausea hit me.
I barely reached the bathroom.
When I came out, Vincent was waiting with water.
“I’m fine.”
“You threw up.”
“I’m pregnant.”
“I noticed.”
I stared at him.
He immediately looked uncomfortable.
Good.
I took the glass.
“Thank you.”
Two words.
Simple.
Yet something shifted.
At three in the morning, Marco received confirmation.
Angelo had left Chicago.
His private jet filed a flight plan for Montreal, then changed course mid-flight.
Nobody knew where he was.
Worse, one of the attackers captured at the safe house carried a photograph.
It was me.
Leaving Dr. Park’s office.
My stomach was circled in red ink.
On the back someone had written:
THE HEIR CHANGES EVERYTHING.
Vincent read it once.
Then he walked outside.
I followed.
He stood in Teresa’s little backyard beneath a dead maple tree.
“Vincent.”
“Go inside.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“No.”
His shoulders were rigid.
“You’re angry.”
“I’m beyond angry.”
“At Angelo?”
“At myself.”
I stopped beside him.
“For what?”
“For putting you in the middle of this.”
“You didn’t put me here alone.”
He looked at me.
“Your grandmother did some of it. My father did some of it. Angelo did a lot of it.”
“And I divorced you.”
“Yes.”
The words hurt him.
I let them.
But then I added, “You’re also standing here instead of chasing him with a gun.”
He looked surprised.
“That counts for something.”
“Not enough.”
“No.”
I touched my stomach.
“But maybe enough to start.”
His eyes moved to my hand.
“Can I ask something?”
“What?”
“If the baby is a girl…”
I waited.
“Would you still let her have my last name?”
I almost cried.
Instead, I said, “Ask me again when you’ve earned the answer.”
Vincent nodded.
“Fair.”
The next morning, Samuel Hawthorne called.
He had arranged a meeting with Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Sloan.
She was willing to review the evidence.
But there was a condition.
Vincent Moretti would have to testify.
Against Angelo.
Against Moretti operations.
Against men who had known him since childhood.
Vincent listened without interruption.
Then Samuel asked, “Will you do it?”
Vincent looked at me.
At my stomach.
At the life he had nearly lost before knowing it existed.
May you like
“Yes,” he said.
And somewhere in Chicago, a war began ending.
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