Chapter 6 - The Woman With One Month Left
I delayed surgery forty-eight hours.
Dr. Chen hated that.
Vincent hated it more.
But Sofia had finally been found.
I needed answers.
Not because I believed truth could save me.
Because I wanted Noah’s story complete.
Sofia and Luca were taken to an abandoned Moretti warehouse under armed guard.
I refused to go.
Vincent went.
Finn arranged a secure video feed from my hospital room.
I sat in bed watching the screen.
Luca looked older than I remembered.
He had been handsome once.
Now his hair was threaded with gray and one side of his face carried a pale scar.
Sofia sat several feet away.
No makeup.
No expensive coat.
For the first time, she looked frightened.
Vincent entered.
No one spoke.
He stood before Luca.
“You used my son.”
Luca smiled faintly.
“I used an opportunity.”
Vincent hit him.
Once.
Hard enough to send the chair backward.
I flinched.
Vincent lifted it again.
Then he remembered me.
Perhaps my warning.
Truth before blood.
He stepped away.
“Why Noah?”
Luca spat blood.
“Because nobody searches a six-year-old.”
“You could have hidden the card anywhere.”
“I wanted Evelyn to understand I could reach the heir.”
My stomach turned.
Noah had been a message.
Nothing more.
Sofia whispered, “Luca.”
He looked at her.
Even through the screen, I saw something between them.
Real attachment.
Twisted, selfish, but real.
Vincent saw too.
His face changed.
“So this is what Iceland was.”
Sofia looked down.
“I wanted to see him.”
“You told me you were afraid to travel alone.”
“I was.”
“You used me as security.”
“You would never have let me go if I told you.”
“No.”
Vincent laughed coldly.
“Because he stole from us.”
“He stole from you.”
“We were family.”
Sofia looked toward him.
“Were we?”
Vincent went still.
She continued.
“You always treated me like something between a sister and a responsibility.”
“You told me you loved me.”
“I did.”
“Did?”
She hesitated.
My chest tightened.
How many years had I spent jealous of something that may never have existed the way I thought?
Sofia said quietly, “I loved being important to you.”
Vincent’s face changed.
There it was.
Not love.
Importance.
Power.
Attention.
Dependency.
Sofia continued.
“When Elena came, I lost part of you.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
She had not necessarily wanted Vincent romantically.
She wanted to remain first.
“I didn’t hate Elena,” Sofia said.
“She just changed everything.”
Vincent’s voice was cold.
“So you punished her.”
“I called you.”
“You called constantly.”
“Yes.”
“You created crises.”
“Sometimes.”
I stared at the screen.
Sometimes.
How many dinners?
Birthdays?
Anniversaries?
How many moments with Noah?
“How much of it was real?” Vincent asked.
Sofia began crying.
“I don’t know.”
That might have been the first honest sentence she ever gave him.
Luca laughed.
“Pathetic.”
Vincent looked at him.
“Careful.”
Luca leaned forward.
“You want the truth? Your precious family was already rotten.”
He looked directly toward the camera.
He knew I was watching.
“Elena’s parents didn’t die accidentally.”
My body went cold.
Vincent froze.
“What?”
Luca smiled.
“Ask your mother.”
The warehouse became silent.
My parents.
The roadside attack.
The Moretti relatives they saved.
Everything.
Vincent looked at Finn.
“Get her.”
Evelyn arrived an hour later.
She looked exhausted.
Vincent did not offer her a chair.
“Were Elena’s parents targeted?”
Evelyn stared at Luca.
He smiled.
She closed her eyes.
My heart stopped.
“Answer him,” I whispered at the screen.
As if she heard.
“Yes.”
The word destroyed twenty years of my life.
Vincent stepped backward.
I could not breathe.
Evelyn spoke.
“Salvatore had enemies. Elena’s father worked for one of our transportation companies. He discovered a shipment that did not match the manifest.”
History repeating.
My father.
Then Adam? No, different story universe. Here my father.
“He reported it.”
“To who?” Vincent asked.
“Your father.”
“What happened?”
“Salvatore promised protection.”
Evelyn’s mouth trembled.
“But the information leaked.”
The roadside attack that killed my parents had been retaliation.
They died saving Evelyn and Sofia because they were in the car with them when gunmen attacked.
The Morettis did not merely owe my family a vague debt.
Their business had caused my parents’ deaths.
Vincent whispered, “That’s why you wanted me to marry Elena.”
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
Compensation.
Marriage as restitution.
A Moretti solution.
Vincent looked toward the camera.
At me.
His face broke.
Everything I believed was worse than I thought.
He had not courted me simply because his mother felt gratitude.
He had been sent.
I removed the monitoring earpiece.
I could not listen anymore.
Twenty minutes later, Vincent called.
I rejected it.
Again.
Again.
Then stopped answering entirely.
Dr. Chen entered around midnight.
“You’re out of time.”
I looked at her.
“Can you operate tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
She studied me.
“What changed?”
“I’m angry.”
“That is not usually a surgical indication.”
“It’s all I have.”
She smiled slightly.
“Sometimes it’s enough.”
I signed consent.
No Vincent.
No Evelyn.
No Moretti representative.
Elena Russo.
My own name.
The morning of surgery, someone knocked.
Finn.
He carried Noah’s stuffed lion.
I stared.
“Vincent sent this?”
Finn shook his head.
“No.”
“Then?”
“I stole it from the townhouse.”
I laughed.
It hurt.
He placed it beside me.
“Boss is downstairs.”
“I don’t want him here.”
“He knows.”
“Then why?”
Finn looked toward the window.
“Because you might die.”
I swallowed.
“I might.”
“He says he won’t come up.”
“Good.”
“He also said something else.”
“What?”
“If you wake up and still want the divorce, he will never contest it.”
My throat tightened.
“And if I don’t wake up?”
Finn hesitated.
“He asked whether you want to be buried beside Noah.”
I looked at the stuffed lion.
“No.”
Finn waited.
“I don’t want to be buried.”
“What?”
“Cremate me.”
My voice shook.
“Mix my ashes with Noah’s.”
Finn’s eyes reddened.
“And put us somewhere with trees and water.”
“Maine?”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“I’ll make sure.”
“No Moretti cemetery.”
“No.”
“No Moretti name.”
“I understand.”
I reached for his hand.
“Thank you for trying to find the truth.”
Finn squeezed my fingers.
Then left.
At 7:12 a.m., nurses rolled me toward surgery.
As we passed the private waiting area, I saw Vincent through the glass.
He stood alone.
No guards inside.
No phone.
No Sofia.
No mother.
He looked at me.
I looked away.
The operating-room doors closed.
May you like
For the next fourteen hours, Vincent Moretti waited.
And for the first time in his life, there was absolutely nothing money, fear, power, or violence could do to control the outcome.
