Chapter 4 - The House Without Her|
For three days, Damian lived in the nursery.
He slept on the floor beside the empty crib and woke whenever the house made a sound. At meals, he sat at the kitchen table and stared at the chair Claire had occupied. He stopped answering calls from his associates unless they concerned the investigation.
His empire began to notice.
A shipment was delayed. A meeting went unattended. Two senior lieutenants argued over a territory agreement that Damian would normally have settled in five minutes.
Dante finally confronted him.
“You can't run an organization like this.”
Damian looked up.
“Then take over.”
“I'm not asking for your position. I'm asking you to stop destroying yourself.”
“Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Then don't tell me what this feels like.”
Dante's expression hardened.
“I don't have a child. But I know what it looks like when a man uses pain as an excuse to keep hurting the people around him.”
Damian stood, but he did not threaten his friend.
Instead, he returned to the crib.
On the mattress lay a knitted blanket Claire had made herself. She had spent weeks choosing the colors, unpicking stitches she didn't like, and laughing when Damian insisted that the blanket was already perfect.
He had been on a business call when she finished it.
He had promised to look at it later.
Later had never come.
Damian picked up the blanket and pressed it to his face.
That afternoon, his mother arrived without warning.
Isabella wore a cream suit and carried a bouquet of white roses.
She placed the flowers on the nursery table.
“I thought you might want these.”
“Take them away.”
“Damian.”
“Take them away.”
She looked at the empty crib.
“Your father would have understood what you're going through.”
“My father never left his wife alone while she was losing their child.”
Isabella's face tightened.
“Your father had responsibilities.”
“So did I.”
“Claire knew who you were when she married you.”
“She knew who I pretended to be.”
Isabella moved toward him.
“You cannot blame yourself for a premature birth. These things happen.”
“I don't blame myself for the birth. I blame myself for the fact that she had to face it alone.”
His mother looked away.
For the first time, Damian noticed fear behind her composure.
“What aren't you telling me?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you afraid?”
She reached for her handbag.
“I'm leaving.”
He blocked the doorway without touching her.
“Tell me about Northbridge.”
Isabella's eyes hardened.
“You are making a terrible mistake.”
“Perhaps. But it's my mistake to make.”
She finally admitted that the foundation had hired Northbridge to provide private medical coordination for several members of the Moretti family. She claimed the service was routine and that she had no knowledge of the anonymous messages.
“Did you know Alessia was in Capri with me?”
“Of course.”
“Did you know she was contacting people about Claire's pregnancy?”
“No.”
“Did you know someone was using my name to send messages about my unborn child?”
Isabella stared at him.
“No.”
He believed that she might be telling the truth about some of it.
He no longer believed that made her innocent.
“Don't come back until you can give me the complete records.”
She left without taking the roses.
That evening, Damian received a message from an unknown number.
It contained a photograph of Claire standing outside a small apartment building in Milwaukee. She wore a gray coat, carried a canvas bag, and looked thinner than he remembered.
Beneath the photograph were five words.
She doesn't want you there.
Damian stared at the image.
He could have sent men to the address. He could have blocked every road and demanded that she speak to him.
He could have done exactly what the old Damian would have done.
Instead, he called his attorney.
“I need you to confirm that Claire has independent access to her accounts and that no one is interfering with her legal rights.”
“Of course.”
“And arrange for the remaining money in her personal trust to be transferred directly to her. No conditions.”
“Damian, the transfer is substantial.”
“Do it.”
He hung up and wrote Claire a letter.
He didn't ask her to come home.
He didn't tell her he couldn't live without her.
He wrote about Gabriel, the nursery, the video, and the things he should have said before it was too late.
Then he placed the letter in an envelope and gave it to Nora Ellis through his lawyer.
Nora agreed to deliver it only if Claire consented.
Two days later, a reply arrived.
It contained no greeting.
No signature.
Only one sentence.
I don't need you to suffer, Damian. I need you to understand why I had to stop waiting.
He read it until midnight.
Then Dante entered the room holding a new report.
“We found the source of the message that sent you to the wrong hotel.”
Damian looked up.
“Who sent it?”
Dante placed a photograph on the table.
The woman in the picture was Alessia.
May you like
But the man standing beside her was Damian's own chief financial officer, Victor Salerno.
And the date on the photograph was three days before the Capri trip.
