Chapter 4
The week Claire had influenza and Elena had sent flowers.
Her birthday.
The charity gala when three women became strangely silent as Claire approached.
Eleven months of rooms knowing before she did.
Claire stood.
Vincent moved instinctively toward her.
She lifted one hand.
He stopped immediately.
“Did you love her?”
“No.”
“That’s worse.”
His eyes narrowed with pain.
“Claire—”
“If you had loved her, I might at least understand what you destroyed us for.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?”
His silence answered.
Convenience.
Ego.
Desire.
Power.
The weaknesses of a man who had always believed consequences happened to other people.
Claire picked up her handbag.
“Where are you going?”
“Upstairs.”
“We need to talk.”
“We did.”
“You asked three questions.”
“And every answer was enough.”
He stepped closer.
“I can fix this.”
She looked at him for several seconds.
Vincent Moretti had solved problems with money, fear, loyalty, contracts and force for most of his adult life.
He genuinely believed every disaster contained a transaction if a man was powerful enough to find it.
“You can’t repair betrayal like a broken warehouse window,” Claire said. “You can’t pay someone to replace the glass.”
“I know that.”
“No. You know it now.”
She walked toward the stairs.
“Claire.”
She paused.
He looked suddenly less like the man feared throughout the harbor and more like a husband who had finally understood that the door closing in front of him might never open again.
“Please don’t leave tonight.”
Claire touched the banister.
“I already left, Vincent. I’m just still in the house.”
May you like
She went upstairs.
Behind the locked bedroom door, she took the ultrasound from her bag and placed it in the drawer beside Margaret Bennett’s handkerchief.
