Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Manhattan
At 12:51 AM, the elevator doors opened on the forty-third floor.
Vincent Moretti stepped into the foyer, tossing his leather gloves onto the marble console. Victoria Hale walked in behind him, wearing a sharp camel-hair coat, her tablet computer tucked under her arm.
"The proxy signature cleared," Victoria said, her voice smooth and devoid of warmth. "The Zurich bankers confirmed the Whitmore accounts are primed for transfer the moment the birth certificate is generated next month."
"Good," Vincent said, unbuttoning his waistcoat. He felt a rare sense of satisfaction. Everything he had worked for over three years—every lie, every dinner, every gentle touch—was finally yielding its ultimate harvest. "Where is she? Is she asleep?"
He walked into the dining room. The table remained set. The candles had burned down to pools of melted wax.
He looked into the kitchen. The fruit bowl sat on the counter. His phone rested beside it, its green charging light blinking softly.
"Evelyn?" Vincent called out.
Silence answered him.
He walked down the long corridor toward the master bedroom. The door was half-open. The bed was made, pristine and untouched.
Vincent’s brow furrowed. He turned back toward the living room, opening the master closet. He noticed a slight gap on the lower shoe rack where her practical walking boots usually sat.
Victoria walked into the kitchen, picking up his phone. "Vincent... she saw the messages."
Vincent froze in the middle of the hallway. He turned slowly, his face suddenly devoid of all emotion. "What did you say?"
"Your phone," Victoria said, her voice betraying a sudden tremble as she handed it to him. "The notification bar. I sent the message about the Singapore trusts at 11:32. The notification log shows it was read at 11:47."
Vincent stared at the screen. The color didn't leave his face; instead, his eyes hardened into twin chips of black ice.
He rushed to the service entrance near the pantry. The heavy steel door was unlatched by a fraction of an inch.
"She knows," Victoria whispered, panic creeping into her voice for the first time. "Vincent... if she goes to the federal prosecutors with her father's files—"
"Shut up," Vincent barked softly, his voice dropping into a deadly register that made Victoria flinch.
He pulled out his secondary burner phone and dialed his chief of security, Dominic Vance.
"Boss?" Dominic answered on the first ring.
"My wife left the building within the last thirty minutes," Vincent said, his tone icy and flat. "Block every airport, train station, and charter terminal in the tri-state area. Review the perimeter camera footage from the service alleys immediately."
"Right away, boss. Should I involve the local precinct?"
"No cops," Vincent ordered sharply. "If anyone asks, my pregnant wife went to visit her aunt in Upstate New York. Find her quietly. And Dominic..."
"Yes, boss?"
"Bring her back alive. But if she tries to access her father's legal counsel..." Vincent paused, his fingers digging into the doorframe. "...do whatever is necessary to secure the child."
Vincent hung up the phone and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan.
May you like
The city spread out before him—a vast labyrinth of concrete and steel. Somewhere down there in the dark, his quiet, gentle, submissive wife was running.
And for the first time in his life, Vincent Moretti realized he had vastly underestimated the woman carrying his heir.
