Chapter 9
Forty-eight hours after the gala, the penthouse was completely silent.
The morning sun crept over the horizon, casting long, sharp shadows across the vaulted ceilings and the minimalist furniture of the Gold Coast apartment.
The front door opened with a violent crash.
Vincent stumbled into the grand foyer, disheveled, exhausted, and smelling heavily of stale bourbon and sweat.
His tuxedo jacket was gone, his white dress shirt torn at the collar, dark stubble covering his hollow cheeks.
In two days, his world had collapsed into absolute ruin.
The board of directors had voted unanimously to terminate him as Chief Executive Officer before the markets opened on Monday morning.
The federal prosecutor’s office had issued a formal subpoena regarding the Montgomery Trust embezzlement.
Every major bank had frozen his corporate credit lines, and his private phone had not stopped ringing with calls from frantic creditors, furious investors, and reporters camping outside his office building.
"Claire?!" he screamed into the empty apartment, his voice hoarse and raw.
"Claire, answer me!"
He stumbled down the marble hallway, kicking open the doors to the guest rooms, the library, and the dining room.
"I know you're here!" he shouted, tears of rage and humiliation burning in his bloodshot eyes.
"You can't do this to me! You can't just destroy my life and walk away!"
He reached the master bedroom and shoved the double doors open.
The room was pristine.
The bed was made with military precision.
The closets were stripped bare—all of my clothes, my jewelry, my family heirlooms, gone.
On the mahogany dresser in the center of the room sat two items.
A thick manila envelope stamped with the logo of Sterling Law.
And beside it, the small black velvet box.
Vincent walked slowly toward the dresser, his hands trembling as he stared at the velvet box.
He recognized the box.
He remembered seeing it on the morning of my birthday, before he boarded the private jet to fly to Miami.
With trembling fingers, he reached out and lifted the lid.
Sitting inside on the white silk was a single ultrasound photograph and a handwritten note.
Vincent picked up the ultrasound image.
He stared at the tiny, delicate outline of the developing fetus, his thumb brushing against the glossy paper.
The date stamped at the top of the scan was November 14th—the night he had spent drinking champagne with Sophia in the marble bathtub while my father fought for his life in the hospital.
He opened the handwritten note.
My handwriting was neat, elegant, and uncompromising.
*You told Sophia that with me, you were exhausted.*
*You told her that painting took inspiration.*
*Now, you can spend the rest of your life looking at the canvas you painted for yourself.*
*You will never hold this baby.*
*You will never hear their first laugh, bandage their scraped knees, or watch them take their first steps.*
*You traded your child for a house in Tennessee and a woman who abandoned you the second the screens went live.*
*Goodbye, Vincent.*
A strangled, gut-wrenching sob tore from Vincent’s chest.
He fell to his knees on the hardwood floor, clutching the ultrasound picture against his chest, weeping uncontrollably in the empty silence of the bedroom.
The man who had commanded boardrooms and terrified politicians was reduced to a broken shell on the floor of a hollow house.
He reached for the thick legal envelope and tore it open with shaking hands.
Inside were emergency divorce papers granted under an expedited protective order, accompanied by a court mandate granting full, sole temporary custody of the unborn child to Claire Montgomery.
At the bottom of the petition, signed by a federal judge, was a lifetime restraining order prohibiting Vincent Moretti from coming within one thousand yards of his wife or child.
His phone buzzed violently on the floor beside his knee.
It was Sophia.
He stared at her name flashing on the screen.
When he finally answered, his voice was deathly cold.
"What do you want?"
"Vincent! Thank God you picked up!" Sophia sobbed hysterically into the phone.
"The FBI is at my office! They're seizing my computers, freezing my personal accounts! They're saying I'm facing federal conspiracy charges!"
"You have to call your lawyers! You have to fix this! Vincent, please!"
Vincent listened to the woman he had risked everything for, the woman who had helped him tear his marriage apart.
"Vincent, are you there?!" she screamed.
"I don't know who you are," Vincent whispered into the phone.
"Don't ever call this number again."
May you like
He ended the call, tossed the phone against the wall, where the screen shattered into a web of fractured glass, and buried his face in his hands.
Outside the high-rise windows, the Chicago wind howled against the glass, cold, indifferent, and completely alone.
