Chapter 4 - The Anatomy of a Blind Sovereign
The penthouse in the Gold Coast was filled with the sickening scent of white lilies and expensive French lavender oil.
Dominic Moretti sat on the edge of the velvet sectional sofa with his head resting in his hands, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his dark hair.
It was four in the morning, and the panoramic windows displayed the sprawling grid of Chicago lights stretching out toward the ink-black expanse of Lake Michigan.
Across the room, Vanessa lay nestled beneath a goose-down duvet in the guest bedroom, asleep after three hours of tearful hysterics and mild abdominal cramps that the private physician had diagnosed as simple digestive distress.
Margaret had finally fallen asleep in the master suite after demanding two sedative injections and an endless supply of iced chamomile tea.
The penthouse was quiet, but for the first time in three years, the quiet did not bring Dominic the smug sense of control he so desperately craved.
It felt like a noose tightening around his throat.
His cell phone buzzed violently against the glass coffee table, shattering the stillness with a harsh, urgent vibration.
He snatched it up instantly, his voice low and ragged as he answered. "Did you find her?"
On the other end of the line, Gabriel Vance sounded exhausted, his voice stripped of the smug arrogance he had displayed in the study the previous afternoon.
"She’s not at her design office, Dominic. Her business partner says Emma resigned her equity partnership six weeks ago and completed her final consulting projects on Monday."
"Her apartment in Lincoln Park? Her friends from the architecture guild?" Dominic demanded, rising to his feet and pacing toward the floor-to-ceiling glass.
"The Lincoln Park apartment belongs to a private trust that Arthur Sterling locked down yesterday afternoon," Gabriel said, the sound of flipping papers coming through the speaker.
"Dominic, she didn't just walk out of the house. She executed an extraction plan that must have taken military precision."
"That’s impossible!" Dominic hissed, slamming his fist against the mahogany window frame.
"Emma doesn't operate like that! She is patient, she is gentle, she listens to me! She doesn't have the stomach for a war!"
"She isn't waging a war, Dominic. That’s what you don't understand," Gabriel said, his tone turning grim.
"A person who wages war wants demands, wants concessions, wants revenge."
"Your wife left the divorce petition on your desk in Lake Forest with every financial claim crossed out."
"She waived spousal support. She waived the family properties. She waived every cent of the Moretti maritime dividends."
"She walked away from forty million dollars like it was radioactive waste."
Dominic froze, his breath catching in his throat as Gabriel’s words sank into his consciousness.
"She... she waived everything?" he whispered, his hazel eyes staring unseeingly at the city lights below.
"Every single dime," Gabriel confirmed. "Arthur Sterling served the formal court filing at eight o'clock this morning."
"He informed the probate judge that Mrs. Moretti requires no financial discovery, no depositions, and no mediation."
"She wants the final decree issued under the thirty-day summary dissolution statute for irreconcilable differences."
Dominic felt a sudden, violent coldness spread through his chest, radiating downward into his gut like a bucket of ice water.
"And her hearing aids?" Dominic muttered, his mind grasping at straws, desperate to find a single anchor of normalcy.
"Did she take the hearing aids from the foyer?"
Gabriel hesitated on the other end of the line, a long, uncomfortable silence stretching between them.
"Dominic... your head housekeeper called me two hours ago from Lake Forest."
"When she went to clean the formal drawing room after the morning shift, she found the remains of your Zurich custom hearing aids in the fireplace."
"They were melted down to the circuit boards in the ash grate."
The phone slipped an inch in Dominic’s fingers before his reflexes clamped down on the metal casing.
She knew.
She had known before she ever walked into Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
She had stood outside his library door in Lake Forest, listened to him mock her quiet demeanor to Gabriel, and listened to him declare his obsession with Vanessa.
The memory of Emma standing in the hospital corridor flashed before his eyes with unbearable clarity.
Her pale, composed face.
Her dark eyes, completely devoid of the warm, liquid devotion that had sustained him for five years.
Her voice—so smooth, so steady, so entirely unbothered by his panic—whispering, Explain what, Dominic? Explain that you can hear my voice without your devices?
He dropped onto the sofa, the phone falling against the velvet cushions as a wave of nausea washed over him.
For three years, he had played God in his own home.
He had convinced himself that feigning deafness was a brilliant tactical maneuver, a way to insulate himself from the emotional labor of a domestic partnership.
He had told himself that women were inherently needy, that they demanded explanations, compliments, and endless reassurances that drained a man’s executive energy.
By pretending to be deaf, he had trained Emma to be the perfect companion—demanding nothing, speaking only when spoken to, and anticipating his every physical need with silent reverence.
He had enjoyed watching her mouth words with that earnest, beautiful concentration.
He had secretly listened to her soft, rhythmic breathing in the dark, secretly heard every tender confession of love she whispered into his shoulder while he pretended to sleep.
He had thought he possessed the ultimate prize: a devoted, flawless wife running his household, while his heart remained free to chase the elusive phantom of Vanessa Reed.
He had believed he was the master of the board.
And in less than twenty-four hours, Emma had flipped the board over, burned the pieces, and walked out into the world without demanding a single penny of ransom.
The door to the guest bedroom clicked open, and Vanessa emerged into the soft ambient light of the living room.
She was wearing a silk robe that dragged along the hardwood floor, her face pale, her golden hair mussed from sleep.
"Dominic?" she whimpered, leaning against the archway with one hand pressed against her side.
"My back aches dreadfully, darling. Could you please ask the night nurse to prepare another hot compress?"
Dominic looked at her.
For eight years, Vanessa Reed had been the shining beacon of his unfulfilled desires—the wild, glamorous, unattainable songbird who had left him to conquer the opera houses of Europe.
He had spent millions backing her productions, sending private planes to fetch her from Milan, and dreaming of the day she would finally return to Chicago to be his queen.
Now, standing in the cold morning light of his penthouse, she looked small, petulant, and exhausting.
"The nurse went home at three, Vanessa," Dominic said, his voice carrying a harsh, grating edge that made her flinch.
"There are heating pads in the linen closet down the hall."
Vanessa blinked in astonishment, her blue eyes flashing with wounded indignation.
"Dominic! How can you speak to me like that when I am carrying your child?"
"The doctor told you three hours ago that the baby is completely fine," Dominic snapped, rising to his feet and grabbing his car keys from the console.
"You had a stomach ache from eating three servings of lobster bisque at the Drake Hotel."
"Where are you going?" Vanessa demanded, her voice rising into that piercing, dramatic register that used to fascinate him, but now felt like a drill grinding against his skull.
"It's four o'clock in the morning! Your mother is sleeping in the next room!"
Dominic didn't answer her.
He walked out the front door of the penthouse, slammed it shut behind him, and took the private elevator straight down to the parking garage.
He climbed into his town car, ignited the engine with a violent roar, and tore out onto Lake Shore Drive, heading north toward the Lake Forest estate at breakneck speed.
He had to see the house.
He had to see his desk.
He had to convince himself that Emma Rossi was still somewhere within his reach, that this was merely an elaborate punishment designed to bring him to his knees before she returned to her velvet cage.
Because in the dark, silent corners of his arrogant heart, Dominic Moretti was beginning to realize the terrifying truth.
He hadn't bought Emma’s silence with his fortune.
May you like
Emma had gifted him her grace for five years.
And now that she had taken it back, the silence in his world was going to be completely deafening.
