Chapter 3 - The Flight I Never Took
I did not leave the hotel because Vincent ordered me to.
I left because someone had attacked Sophia less than an hour after she confessed.
There was a difference.
At least, that was what I told myself while two of Vincent’s men carried my luggage through the service elevator and another checked the underground garage before we were allowed to move.
Vincent stayed beside me.
He did not touch me.
I noticed because for three years he had always placed one hand at the small of my back when guiding me through crowded spaces. It had been such a quiet habit that I had never thought about it until it disappeared.
Now the absence felt louder than contact.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“A safe house.”
“I’m not spending the night in some basement with armed guards.”
“It has windows.”
“That was not the point.”
“I know.”
His answer irritated me more than an argument would have.
We reached the garage.
A black SUV waited with the engine running.
Vincent opened the rear door.
I stopped.
“I want to see Sophia.”
“No.”
“Then I’m not getting in.”
His expression became dangerously calm.
“She was shot at outside a private clinic. The shooter missed her chest by inches. You are not walking into that building tonight.”
“She might know who is doing this.”
“She might also be the reason you’re in danger.”
I stared at him.
“You still don’t trust her.”
“She spent eight years lying about the night I was shot.”
“That does not mean she wants me dead.”
“No. It means I don’t make assumptions anymore.”
The statement landed between us.
I thought of our marriage.
Apparently he only stopped making assumptions after destroying it.
I got into the SUV.
The safe house turned out to be a penthouse above an old Moretti-owned office building near the river. It had three bedrooms, floor-to-ceiling windows, and enough security cameras to make it feel less like a home than a very expensive cage.
Madison was already there.
The moment I walked in, she crossed the room and wrapped both arms around me.
“What happened?” she demanded. “One of his men called me and said your flight was canceled because of a security emergency. That sentence contains at least six things I hate.”
I looked over her shoulder at Vincent.
“I didn’t cancel anything.”
Vincent removed his jacket.
“The airline did.”
I frowned.
“What?”
He looked at one of the men near the door.
“Show her.”
The man handed me a tablet.
My flight reservation was on the screen.
Canceled twelve minutes earlier.
Not by the airline.
By someone using my account.
Madison leaned closer.
“Did you do that?”
“No.”
Vincent’s voice was quiet.
“Neither did I.”
A small cold space opened in my chest.
“Someone has my login.”
“Someone has more than that,” Vincent said.
He took the tablet and changed the screen.
There were records of three attempts to access my email from an address connected to a public network downtown.
Then another file.
A scanned copy of my passport.
And another.
My medical insurance card.
My stomach tightened.
I looked away too quickly.
Vincent noticed.
Of course he did.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
His eyes stayed on me for another second.
I prayed he could not read the truth on my face.
Madison rescued me by asking, “Who has access to this kind of information?”
“Family office,” Vincent said. “Foundation administration. Household security. My mother’s staff.”
I turned back.
“Your mother?”
His expression did not change.
But the silence did.
Vincent and his mother, Eleanor Moretti, had spent years perfecting the kind of relationship rich families liked to call complicated because the real word—hostile—was considered impolite.
She had never liked me.
That was not a secret.
The first time we met, she looked at my dress, my shoes, and the small apartment building my father owned before he died.
Then she asked whether I understood how exhausting it could be to marry above one’s station.
I told her I would try not to tire myself.
Vincent had nearly smiled.
Eleanor had not.
“You think she is involved?” I asked.
“I think she knows more than she says.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
One of Vincent’s men entered the room.
“Boss.”
Vincent turned.
The man handed him a plastic evidence bag.
Inside was a small silver bracelet with blue stones.
My knees nearly gave out.
The clasp was broken.
Vincent looked at me.
“This was found in Sophia’s apartment tonight.”
I could not speak.
Madison whispered, “Claire?”
I stepped closer.
There was a tiny dent on one of the stones where I had once dropped the bracelet on the school gym floor.
I remembered crying because I thought my grandmother would be angry.
She had laughed instead.
Things that are loved get marks, she told me.
That is how you know they were lived with.
“It’s mine,” I said.
Vincent’s hand tightened around the bag.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How did Sophia get it?”
“I lost it the night I found you.”
No one spoke.
Then Vincent’s phone rang.
This time he answered immediately.
“Yes.”
His eyes went distant as he listened.
“When did she wake up?”
A pause.
“Ask her who gave her the bracelet.”
Another pause.
Then his face hardened.
“What name?”
I stared at him.
He ended the call slowly.
“Who?” I asked.
Vincent did not answer right away.
Instead, he looked toward the windows, where Chicago glowed beneath us like a city pretending nothing ugly ever happened in the dark.
Finally he said, “Sophia says my mother gave it to her.”
Madison swore under her breath.
I felt strangely calm.
“What else did she say?”
“That Eleanor told her the bracelet belonged to the woman who saved me. She gave Sophia details about the theater, the shooting, the words you said.”
I stared at the bracelet.
“Why?”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“She wanted me attached to someone she could control.”
“And Sophia agreed?”
“Yes.”
“Why would Sophia come back now?”
His eyes shifted to mine.
“That is what she was trying to tell me before she was shot.”
Madison folded her arms.
“And what exactly did she tell you?”
Vincent placed the evidence bag on the table.
“She came back because my mother paid her to.”
My chest tightened.
There it was.
The answer I had wanted for months.
Except it created ten worse questions.
“How much?” I asked.
“Half a million dollars.”
Madison made a sound of disbelief.
I barely heard her.
“What did your mother want?”
“To end my marriage.”
The words should have hurt.
Instead, they made something inside me go cold.
“Then your mother got what she wanted.”
Vincent looked at me.
“No.”
“You signed the papers.”
“Yes.”
“I left the mansion.”
“Yes.”
“You believed Sophia’s return mattered enough to let everyone think—”
“It mattered because I thought it was connected to the threats.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I laughed softly.
“You always know.”
“Not this time.”
For once, he did not sound powerful.
He sounded furious about his own blindness.
A guard entered carrying a folder.
“Mr. Moretti, we pulled the security archive you requested.”
Vincent opened it.
Inside were printed photographs from the mansion cameras.
The first showed Eleanor entering Vincent’s study four months ago.
The second showed her leaving twenty minutes later.
The third made my blood turn cold.
It showed Eleanor standing outside my bedroom.
Holding my passport.
I looked at the date.
It was six days before the first threat against me.
Madison leaned over my shoulder.
“Oh my God.”
Vincent did not move.
I turned the page.
There was another image.
Eleanor meeting a man in the side garden.
His face was partly turned away, but I recognized him anyway.
Dominic Moretti.
Vincent’s cousin.
The man who managed half the family’s shipping operations.
The man who had toasted us at our wedding and called me the best thing that ever happened to Vincent.
Vincent took the photograph from my hand.
His face changed.
“That deal,” I said. “The one someone threatened you over.”
His voice became flat.
“Dominic was against it.”
“What kind of deal?”
“One that would move the shipping companies out of certain businesses permanently.”
I understood without needing details.
Vincent had been trying to make part of the Moretti empire legitimate.
Someone inside the family wanted the old money to keep flowing.
My stomach suddenly twisted.
Hard.
I pressed a hand against the table.
Madison noticed first.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
Another wave of nausea rose.
I turned and walked quickly toward the bathroom.
I barely reached the sink before I was sick.
Madison followed me.
She closed the door behind us.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she looked at me through the mirror.
“How far along?”
I froze.
She lowered her voice.
“I know you, Claire.”
I gripped the edge of the sink.
“Five weeks. Maybe six.”
Her eyes widened.
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
I looked toward the closed bathroom door.
On the other side stood the man I had loved for three years.
The man who had married me while believing another woman had saved his life.
The man who had divorced me to protect me without trusting me enough to tell me why.
Before I could answer, a loud crack split the air.
The bathroom window exploded.
Madison screamed.
I dropped to the floor as glass rained across the tile.
May you like
Outside the door, Vincent shouted my name.
Then another gunshot struck the wall exactly where my head had been seconds earlier.
