Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Walked Away|
Alessia's voice sounded different over the phone.
Usually, she spoke with the confidence of a woman who believed the world had been arranged for her convenience. Now she sounded frightened.
“What did you just say?” Damian demanded.
“Not over the phone.”
“Alessia.”
“Come to the hotel. Alone.”
Damian looked at the empty hospital bed.
His hands tightened around the phone.
“My son is dead. My wife has disappeared. If you have information, you have ten seconds to tell me.”
A silence followed.
Then Alessia whispered, “The woman who brought your wife the medical records wasn't a nurse.”
The line went dead.
Damian immediately called Dante Russo, his security chief and oldest friend.
“Find Alessia. Bring her to the estate.”
“And Claire?”
“Find her too.”
Dante hesitated.
“Boss, the protection agreement—”
“I remember what I signed.”
“Then you understand why I can't send men after her.”
Damian's anger rose, but he forced it down.
He had spent years demanding absolute obedience. Now the people who served him were finally obeying the one order he had written to protect his wife.
“Find out whether she's safe. No contact unless she asks for help.”
“Understood.”
Damian returned to the estate shortly before midnight.
The house had never felt so large.
Claire's slippers remained beside the bedroom door. Her favorite mug sat in the kitchen. A half-finished book lay on the sofa, its pages marked with the small paper bookmarks she used to make from grocery receipts.
He entered the nursery.
The room was painted pale blue, with white curtains and a wooden crib Damian had insisted on having imported from Italy.
Gabriel had never slept in it.
Damian sat on the floor beside the crib.
He remembered the night Claire had asked him to attend their final prenatal appointment.
He had promised to go.
Then a meeting ran late, and he sent flowers instead.
She had smiled when the delivery arrived, but he remembered the way she held the bouquet without looking at it.
“You don't have to keep apologizing with roses,” she had told him.
“What would you prefer?”
“You. Here. Paying attention.”
He had kissed her forehead and promised to do better.
The memory made him sick.
At 1:00 A.M., Dante entered the nursery.
“We found the car that took Claire from the hospital.”
“Where?”
“A private parking garage near Union Station. She transferred to another vehicle, paid cash for a train ticket, and disappeared from the station cameras.”
“Which direction?”
“Milwaukee, possibly. But we can't confirm it.”
Damian stood.
“Put a team on every exit.”
Dante's expression hardened.
“You just told me not to pursue her.”
“I'm trying to find my wife.”
“You're trying to make yourself feel less helpless.”
The words struck harder than any insult.
Damian stepped toward him.
“Watch yourself.”
“I have watched you for twelve years, boss. I've watched you turn a good woman into someone who flinches when your phone rings.”
Dante's voice shook with anger.
“I watched her sit alone at Christmas while you took calls from your mistress. I watched her make excuses for you. And tonight, I watched her leave a hospital carrying her dead son's ashes because she knew you wouldn't arrive in time to hold him.”
Damian said nothing.
Dante lowered his voice.
“You gave her permission to leave. Honor it.”
After a long silence, Damian dismissed the search teams.
But he did not sleep.
At dawn, he returned to the hospital to collect Gabriel's belongings. A nurse named Evelyn Carter recognized him immediately.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him with a mixture of sympathy and anger.
“Your wife asked me to give you something if you came back.”
She handed him a small envelope.
Inside was a photograph of Gabriel's tiny hand curled around Claire's fingertip.
On the back, Claire had written:
He knew my touch. He knew my voice. I wish he'd known yours.
Damian closed his eyes.
“I wanted to be there.”
Evelyn studied him.
“Wanting something and making it happen aren't the same thing.”
He accepted the rebuke without protest.
“Did Claire say where she was going?”
“No. But she asked me something before she left.”
“What?”
Evelyn hesitated.
“She asked whether the hospital had received any calls about her pregnancy from someone named Alessia Romano.”
Damian looked up sharply.
“What did you tell her?”
“That a woman using that name had called twice during the previous month, asking about Claire's medical appointments.”
The room seemed to contract around him.
“Did you give her any information?”
“Absolutely not. But the caller knew Claire's date of birth and the name of her obstetrician.”
Damian's stomach turned.
Alessia had been close enough to learn things she should never have known.
He left the hospital and drove directly to the hotel where she had stayed in Capri.
The room had already been cleared.
But a housekeeper had found a phone beneath the bed and handed it to the hotel manager.
The device contained one unsent message.
The baby wasn't supposed to arrive until February. If Claire delivers early, the plan changes.
Damian read the sentence twice.
Then he noticed the timestamp.
The message had been written two days before Claire went into labor.
And it had been addressed to someone saved in Alessia's contacts as D. Moretti.
Damian looked at the screen.
He had never sent the message.
May you like
Someone had been using his name.
And whoever it was had known his son would arrive prematurely before Claire herself had understood how dangerous her pregnancy had become.
