Chapter 8 - The Lie That Started Four Years Ago
By sunrise, Chicago knew the Moretti family had exploded.
News helicopters hovered over the St. Clair Hotel. Every network ran footage of Enzo Moretti leaving federal custody. Reporters camped outside Moretti Tower. Online headlines used words like dynasty, corruption, trafficking, assassination, and civil war.
Harper sat at the safe house kitchen table wearing Lucian’s black sweatshirt over the red gala dress.
The combination looked ridiculous.
She did not care.
Sloane sat across from her wrapped in a hotel blanket, a paper cup trembling between both hands.
For almost ten minutes, neither woman spoke.
Then Sloane whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Harper closed her eyes.
Not because she wanted to forgive her.
Because she did not know what forgiveness was supposed to look like after someone helped detonate your life.
Sloane continued. “Kyle told me you had been cheating for months. He said the wedding was only still happening because your father had put down deposits and you were afraid of embarrassing the family.”
“My father is dead.”
Sloane’s face crumpled. “I know. That should have been the moment I realized he was lying.”
Harper looked at her.
“Yes.”
Sloane flinched.
Harper did not soften it.
“You knew my father had been dead for nine years. You knew I loved Kyle. You knew I was planning a wedding. Whatever he told you, you made a choice.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not ready to make you feel better about it.”
Sloane nodded through tears.
“I don’t expect you to.”
Harper pushed a box of tissues across the table anyway.
Sloane stared at the box.
“Does this mean you forgive me?”
“No. It means your mascara is terrifying.”
A broken laugh escaped Sloane.
Harper almost smiled.
Almost.
Gideon entered with two phones and a folder.
“Sorry to interrupt the family reconciliation.”
“We are not reconciling,” Harper said.
“Understood.”
He placed the folder in front of her.
“Kyle asked to speak to you.”
Harper’s stomach tightened.
“No.”
“He says he will cooperate with the federal case if you hear him out.”
Lucian’s voice came from the doorway.
“Then he can cooperate without her.”
His left arm was in a sling beneath a fresh white shirt.
Harper looked at him.
“You were supposed to sleep.”
“So were you.”
“I was kidnapped-adjacent.”
“I was shot.”
“Your injury is annoyingly more impressive.”
Gideon looked between them. “Should I come back?”
“No,” they said together.
Sloane stared into her coffee.
Harper opened the folder.
Inside was a typed statement from Kyle’s attorney.
He claimed he had evidence linking Enzo to the compromised federal supervisor, three judges, two customs officials, and a private security company used to intimidate witnesses.
In exchange, he wanted a reduced sentence.
At the bottom was a handwritten line.
Harper deserves to know how we met.
Her skin prickled.
Lucian saw it.
“No.”
Harper looked up.
“You don’t get to decide.”
“I know.”
“Then stop saying no like you do.”
His jaw tightened.
“I strongly believe hearing anything else from that man will hurt you for no useful reason.”
Harper looked at the note again.
“That’s better.”
“It is still no.”
“Your opinion has been logged.”
Lucian exhaled through his nose.
Gideon appeared fascinated by the ceiling.
Two hours later, Harper sat on one side of a glass partition at the federal detention center.
Kyle sat on the other.
His right shoulder was bandaged. His face looked gray. Without the expensive coat, the wedding-planning smile, and the confidence she had mistaken for stability, he looked smaller.
Harper picked up the phone.
Kyle did the same.
“You came.”
“Talk.”
He swallowed.
“I met you on purpose.”
For a moment, Harper heard nothing.
Not the hum of fluorescent lights.
Not the guard shifting behind her.
Nothing.
Kyle continued.
“Four years ago, Vittorio needed access to Voss & Hart. Your firm was bidding on a Moretti renovation. You were the junior designer assigned to file management.”
Harper remembered the coffee shop.
A crowded Saturday morning.
Kyle bumping her table.
Coffee spilling across her sketchbook.
His ridiculous apology.
The replacement latte.
The conversation that lasted three hours.
The story she had told at every anniversary dinner.
Their meet-cute.
A lie.
“You spilled the coffee on purpose.”
Kyle looked down.
“Yes.”
Her fingers went numb around the phone.
“You asked me out because of my job.”
“At first.”
“Do not say you fell in love with me.”
“I did.”
Harper laughed once.
The sound scared even her.
Kyle pressed closer to the glass.
“I did, Harper. That was the problem.”
“No. The problem was that you were a criminal who treated a human being like a password.”
“I tried to get out.”
“When?”
“After I proposed.”
“With Matteo’s stolen watch on your wrist?”
He flinched.
“I didn’t know what it was when I first got it.”
“Where did you get it?”
Kyle looked toward his attorney.
Then back at Harper.
“Enzo.”
Her pulse jumped.
“Enzo gave it to you?”
“He ordered me to destroy it. I realized anything he wanted destroyed was probably worth more than money.”
“So you kept it.”
“Yes.”
“You lied to Enzo and Vittorio.”
“Yes.”
“And then you hid it in my umbrella.”
“Yes.”
“You bugged my wedding dress.”
Kyle’s face changed.
“No.”
Harper studied him.
“Who did?”
“I thought Mara did.”
“She says she didn’t.”
“Then it was Enzo’s security people. They had access to our apartment twice when I was traveling.”
Our apartment.
The words made Harper feel sick.
Kyle lowered his voice.
“I knew they were watching you. That’s why I needed you out.”
“You could have told me.”
“They would have killed you.”
“They almost did anyway.”
“I know.”
Harper looked at him through the glass.
“Did you sleep with Sloane because Vittorio told you to?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Kyle’s eyes filled with shame.
“Because I knew it would work.”
There it was.
The ugliest truth was often the simplest.
He had known exactly where to hurt her because she had trusted him enough to show him.
Harper stood.
“Wait.”
“No.”
“I have something Lucian needs.”
“Give it to the prosecutor.”
“Enzo has a second archive.”
Harper stopped.
Kyle leaned closer.
“Physical records. Originals. The kind he never trusted to computers.”
“Where?”
“Lake Forest. His house.”
“Where in the house?”
Kyle shook his head.
“I never saw it. He called it the chapel.”
Harper frowned.
“The house doesn’t have a chapel.”
Kyle’s face tightened.
“Then find out what he meant.”
Harper left without saying goodbye.
Lucian was waiting in the corridor.
She stopped.
“You came here?”
“I sat in the car.”
“That is almost respecting a boundary.”
“I’m improving.”
She tried to smile.
Could not.
Lucian saw immediately.
“What did he say?”
Harper leaned against the wall.
“He met me on purpose.”
Lucian said nothing.
“He spilled coffee on my drawings because Vittorio wanted access to Voss & Hart.”
Still Lucian said nothing.
Harper’s throat burned.
“Four years.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
His eyes met hers.
“You’re right.”
The tears came then.
Harper hated them.
She covered her face.
Lucian did not touch her.
He stood one step away.
Close enough if she wanted him.
Far enough if she did not.
That choice broke something open inside her.
Harper lowered her hands and stepped into him.
Lucian wrapped his uninjured arm around her.
Nothing romantic happened.
No kiss.
No dramatic confession.
He simply held her while she cried over four years that had been real to her even if they had begun as a lie to him.
When she finally pulled back, Lucian handed her a handkerchief.
She stared at it.
“You carry an actual handkerchief?”
“My mother insists.”
“Of course she does.”
Harper wiped her face.
Then she remembered Kyle’s last words.
“The chapel.”
Lucian frowned.
“What?”
“Enzo has a second archive at the Lake Forest house. Kyle says he calls it the chapel.”
Lucian went still.
“There is no chapel.”
“I know.”
Lucian’s eyes sharpened.
Then he said, “There was.”
Harper waited.
“My grandfather bought the estate from a Catholic school in 1978. The property had a small chapel attached to the original west wing.”
“What happened to it?”
“Father renovated in the nineties. He said it was demolished.”
Harper’s designer brain woke up.
“Do you have old floor plans?”
Lucian’s expression changed.
“Probably.”
Three hours later, they stood over yellowed architectural drawings at Moretti Tower.
The current plans showed a library, wine room, and mechanical corridor in the west wing.
The 1978 plans showed something else.
A chapel occupied the exact same footprint.
Harper overlaid the sheets against a window.
The exterior walls had not moved.
Neither had two columns.
“That room still exists,” she said.
Lucian studied the plans.
“It would be behind the library.”
Gideon entered at a run.
“We have a problem.”
Lucian looked up.
“What?”
“Enzo just called a press conference at the Lake Forest estate.”
Harper frowned. “Why?”
Gideon handed Lucian a phone.
A live announcement filled the screen.
ENZO MORETTI TO ADDRESS FALSE ALLEGATIONS AND ANNOUNCE LEADERSHIP CHANGES AT MORETTI MARITIME.
Lucian’s face went hard.
“He’s going to take the company back.”
Gideon nodded.
“And if the board supports him, he’ll have access to every corporate archive, every employee, every security system.”
Harper looked at the old chapel on the plan.
“No.”
Lucian turned.
Harper pointed at the west wing.
“He’s not calling the press there because he wants cameras.”
“Then why?”
“He wants everyone watching the front of the house.”
Lucian followed her finger.
Understanding hit.
“The archive.”
May you like
Harper nodded.
“He’s going to burn it.”
