Chapter 4 - Ninety-Eight Missed Calls
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The atmosphere at the head table never recovered.
Within twenty minutes of Judge Robert Walker walking away in cold disgust, the whispers had spread from the bridal pavilion all the way to the valet stand. The narrative that Sophia had spent four hours carefully curating—the glamorous childhood soulmate reclaiming her rightful place beside Chicago’s king—curdled instantly into something ugly and scandalous: a homewrecker parading around in a sick wife’s stolen deathbed heirloom.
At ten-thirty, before the wedding cake was even cut, Adrian stood up abruptly from the table and told Sophia they were leaving.
During the forty-minute drive back into the city in the back of his Maybach, Sophia tried twice to rest her head against his shoulder the way she had for the cameras that afternoon. Both times, Adrian shifted away toward the tinted window, staring down at the dark screen of his cell phone.
Something was bothering him—something he couldn't quite name.
Every other time Sophia had crossed a boundary over the past six months, I had called or texted by ten o'clock to ask when he would be home. Tonight, my name hadn't lit up his screen once. Not when he hung up on me at four o'clock. Not when Sophia posted the photograph at four-twenty.
When the Maybach pulled up outside Sophia’s Lincoln Park brownstone at eleven-fifteen, Adrian didn't walk her to the door as he usually did.
"Take the bracelet off, Sophia," Adrian said quietly from the leather seat.
Sophia blinked at him in disbelief, tears immediately springing to her wide blue eyes.
"Adrian, you promised I could keep it until the charity opera next Friday!" she protested, clutching her wrist to her chest. "Just because that senile old judge made a rude comment—"
"Give me the bracelet," Adrian repeated, holding out his open palm without raising his voice.
Trembling with anger, Sophia unclasped the emerald band, dropped it into his hand, and slammed the car door without saying goodnight.
As soon as the car pulled away toward the Gold Coast, Adrian dialed my number.
The call didn't even ring. It went straight to automated voicemail.
Frowning, Adrian dialed again. And again. Then he called the penthouse landline—only to hear the dead, hollow tone of a disconnected line.
Before he could tell his driver to speed up, his phone vibrated in his hand with an incoming call from Manhattan.
It was his mother, Victoria Moretti.
"Adrian," Victoria’s voice came through the speaker like a blade drawn from ice. "Margaret Walker just sent me a photograph from her son’s wedding reception. Explain to me right now why Sophia Reynolds is leaning on your shoulder wearing Claire’s family bracelet while my daughter-in-law is supposedly sick at home."
"Mom, calm down, it’s a misunderstanding," Adrian said, rubbing his temples as a sudden, cold dread began pooling in his stomach. "Claire’s dress was green and Sophia needed jewelry for the bridal photos—"
"That bracelet belongs to your wife!" Victoria’s voice cracked like a whip. "Your grandmother gave it to Claire on her deathbed because Claire was the only one holding her hand at three in the morning while Sophia was sunning herself on yachts in Positano!"
A rustle sounded on the line as Adrian’s father, Lorenzo Moretti—the sixty-two-year-old patriarch who had handed Adrian the keys to the Chicago syndicate two years ago—snatched the phone from his wife’s hand.
"Where is Claire right now?" Lorenzo barked.
"She’s at home in the penthouse, Dad," Adrian said, his throat tightening as his Maybach hit a red light on Lake Shore Drive.
"Then walk into the bedroom and put her on the phone so I can hear from her own mouth that she’s alright," Lorenzo demanded.
"She’s asleep," Adrian lied, his heart hammering against his ribs as he tried my cell for the twelfth time on his secondary line. "Her phone is turned off."
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A long, lethal silence stretched across the connection from New York.
"Your mother and I are boarding the corporate jet at Teterboro in twenty minutes," Lorenzo said coldly. "We will be in Chicago at sunrise. For your sake, Adrian, your wife had better be standing in that penthouse when we walk through the door."
