Chapter 13 - The Fake Hospital Call
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At five o'clock that evening, the rain had turned to a freezing sleet blowing off Lake Michigan, and Adrian had still not moved an inch from the sidewalk outside the hotel canopy. His lips were nearly blue, his dark hair plastered to his forehead as my hotel security guards stood awkwardly under the dry portico watching their former boss freeze on the pavement.
Knowing Lorenzo would have a heart attack if his son caught pneumonia on Michigan Avenue while photographers filmed it from across the street, I told Dante to bring Adrian up to the fortieth-floor conference vestibule for five minutes.
When the glass doors parted, Adrian stepped into my outer office dripping rainwater onto the slate floor. He was shivering slightly beneath his soaked wool coat, yet his dark eyes lit up with fierce, desperate hope the moment he saw me standing behind my desk.
"Claire," he rasped, taking two steps forward before stopping politely at the edge of the rug when Dante raised a warning hand. "Thank you for seeing me. Please—five minutes is all I’m asking."
I didn't offer him a towel or a chair. I picked up the velvet jeweler’s tray holding the altered Cartier bracelet and set it on the edge of my desk beside the magnifying loupe.
"Look through that glass, Adrian," I said calmly.
Adrian stepped up to the desk, picked up the brass loupe with cold, wet fingers, and held it over the center stone of his grandmother’s bracelet. As someone who had grown up around high-stakes casino collateral, it took him less than four seconds to spot the microscopic gas bubbles inside the synthetic hydrothermal crystal and the fresh tool scratches along the inside of the platinum prongs.
A dark, terrifying flush crept up Adrian’s neck as he lowered the bracelet back onto the velvet tray.
"She pried my grandmother’s stone out of the setting," Adrian whispered, his voice vibrating with a lethal quiet that used to make men across Chicago cross the street. "When I went to her brownstone two hours ago to confront her, the locks were jammed and her maid said she was having a breakdown."
"She sold that stone in May to pay off a gambling shark in Monte Carlo," I said, resting my hands on the edge of the black leather dossier without opening it yet. "For six months, while you accused me of being jealous and insecure every time I asked why she was hanging on your arm, she was picking your pockets and laughing behind your back."
Adrian dropped onto one knee right there on the wet slate floor beside my desk, bowing his head until his forehead rested against the edge of the wood near my hand.
"I will spend the rest of my life making this right to you, Claire," Adrian swore, his voice breaking completely for the first time since I had known him. "I swear to God, I am done with her forever. She is dead to me. If she ever calls my phone again—"
Right on cue, inside the pocket of his soaked black overcoat, Adrian’s cell phone began to ring with the custom piano ringtone he had assigned exclusively to Sophia Reynolds six months ago.
Neither of us moved. The bright, tinny piano melody echoed through the silent fortieth-floor office like a mockery.
Slowly, Adrian stood up, pulled the phone from his coat to block the number—and paused when he saw the caller ID flashing beneath a red emergency banner: NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL ER — ON BEHALF OF REYNOLDS, S.
He tapped the speaker button without lifting it to his ear.
"Mr. Moretti?!" a frantic male voice in a noisy hallway shouted over the line. "This is Dr. Miller at Northwestern Triage! You’re listed as the emergency contact for Sophia Reynolds! She was just brought in by ambulance after collapsing on the stairs—she’s asking for you before we take her into emergency surgery for a ruptured spleen!"
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Adrian froze, looking down at the screaming phone in his palm, then up into my calm emerald eyes.
"Go ahead, Adrian," I said softly, stepping back behind my desk. "Run to her hospital bed like you always do. Just know that if you walk through that glass door tonight for her, you will never speak to me without a lawyer present for the rest of your life."
