Chapter 4 - The Call I Never Wanted to Make
Alexander answered on the first ring again.
This time, I did not give him a chance to say my name.
“A man came into the house tonight.”
Silence.
Then his voice changed.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“The baby?”
“Fine.”
My answer came too fast.
I put my hand over my stomach as if I could make the word true by touching the place where my child rested.
Alexander breathed out.
“Tell me what happened.”
I did.
The power.
The failed generator.
The broken window.
The attacker saying Alexander had sent him.
The name Daniel.
By the time I finished, Alexander’s voice had become frighteningly calm.
“Where is he now?”
“Police custody.”
“Which police?”
“Alexander.”
“Claire, which police?”
I looked at my father.
He shook his head sharply.
“I’m not giving you a station so your men can make him disappear.”
“I’m not going to make him disappear.”
“That is exactly the kind of sentence you say before someone disappears.”
For the first time, I heard something strange on the other end.
Almost a laugh.
It vanished instantly.
“He needs to talk,” Alexander said. “So no, I don’t want him dead.”
“You expect me to trust that?”
“No.”
The answer disarmed me.
He did not say you should.
He did not say after four years you know me.
He did not invoke marriage as a weapon.
He simply said no.
I looked down at the photograph Olivia had sent.
“You met Matteo a week before the fire.”
Alexander went silent.
There.
That silence was different.
“What were you planning?”
“Who sent you the photograph?”
“Answer me.”
“Olivia.”
I stood.
“You knew?”
“I knew she contacted you.”
“You’re monitoring my phone?”
“No. We’re monitoring hers.”
I hated that every explanation seemed to open another door.
“What were you planning with Matteo?”
Alexander sighed.
“An audit.”
“What?”
“Three weeks before the fire, one of our accountants flagged missing money. I asked Matteo to review the construction companies because I trusted him.”
I closed my eyes.
“You put the thief in charge of investigating the theft.”
“Yes.”
The admission came without defense.
“What was the folder in the photograph?”
“Internal account lists and security credentials.”
My stomach dropped.
“You gave him security credentials.”
“I gave him authority to audit access.”
“Which let him study the mansion systems.”
“Yes.”
The anger that rose in me was hot enough to erase fear.
“So Olivia was right. You were involved.”
“No.”
“You handed Matteo the keys.”
“I trusted my cousin. That was my failure. I did not order the fire.”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“You aren’t.”
Again.
No demand for belief.
No insult.
No command.
“I will send you the complete meeting recording,” he said. “The garage has audio. So does my office. You can give it to your attorney, your father, the police, anyone.”
“You recorded your own meeting?”
“I record every financial review.”
“Of course you do.”
A pause.
“I deserve that.”
I almost told him he deserved worse.
Instead, I sat back down.
“What does Matteo want with my baby?”
Alexander explained the trust.
I listened without interrupting.
His father had structured the controlling shares of Moretti Holdings so they could not pass sideways through cousins if Alexander had a child.
If our baby was born, Alexander would control the trust until the child became an adult.
If Alexander died without an heir, voting power would shift to a family board.
Matteo had spent years quietly buying loyalty on that board.
“So this isn’t just about you,” I said.
“No.”
“It’s about money.”
“Power.”
“That is money with better tailoring.”
This time he did laugh once.
A short, exhausted sound.
I hated that I remembered loving that laugh.
I hated that I had not heard it in months.
“Claire,” he said, “I need to ask something.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“If it involves moving, armed men, or obeying you, the answer is no.”
“It involves security.”
“No.”
“Your father’s people are good.”
“They stopped the man tonight.”
“They did.”
“Then?”
“The generator was disabled from inside the property.”
My skin went cold.
“What?”
“The attacker had help.”
I looked toward the hallway.
My father was speaking to one of the guards.
“You’re sure?”
“Rafe got a photograph of the control panel from the police liaison. The cutoff was manual.”
“How did you get police photographs already?”
“Claire.”
“Right. Mafia boss.”
“Formerly useful detail.”
“Formerly?”
He did not answer.
I noticed.
Before I could ask, he continued.
“I want to send Rafe.”
“No.”
“He will not command your security. He will not enter your bedroom wing. He will report to your father, not me.”
“No.”
“Then pick someone else from my team.”
“I don’t know your team.”
“You know Rafe.”
I did.
Rafe had stood at the back of our wedding.
He had once driven three hours in a snowstorm because I had called Alexander from a stranded car.
He had also spent four years protecting Alexander’s world, which meant he had failed to see Olivia too.
“Why should I trust him?”
“You shouldn’t. Check him.”
“How?”
“I’ll send his accounts, phone records, employment history, and the names of everyone he has met in the last year.”
I stared at the dark window.
“You’d let my father investigate your security chief?”
“I’d let your father search my bloodstream if it helped you sleep.”
That almost broke me.
I pressed my fingers against my eyes.
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Talking like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you suddenly know how to be my husband.”
The silence on the other end was painful.
When Alexander answered, his voice was low.
“I’m not your husband right now.”
The legal papers had not been finalized.
Technically, he was.
But I understood what he meant.
He was not claiming the role.
“I’m the man whose mistakes put you in danger,” he continued. “Let me be useful without asking you to forgive me.”
For a moment, I could not speak.
Then I said, “Rafe reports to my father.”
“Yes.”
“He does not report my movements to you unless there’s an immediate threat.”
Alexander hesitated.
I heard it.
“Alexander.”
“Yes.”
“He does not photograph me.”
“Yes.”
“He does not send you ultrasound pictures.”
The pause was longer.
“Yes.”
“And you do not come to Canada.”
His answer took three seconds.
“Yes.”
I hung up.
Rafe arrived the next afternoon.
My father searched him.
Twice.
Rafe endured it with the patience of a man who had expected worse.
He handed over his phone, a second phone, a knife, a gun, another gun, and a tiny tracking device.
My father stared at the pile.
“Anything else?”
Rafe removed a wire from his collar.
My father’s expression hardened.
Rafe raised both hands.
“Mr. Bennett, if I meant your daughter harm, I would not be this honest.”
“That remains to be seen.”
For the next six days, Rafe barely spoke to me.
He rebuilt the security perimeter.
Replaced the generator controls.
Changed the house network.
Installed independent alarms that could not be overridden from one location.
Then he showed my father how to disable every system manually.
That impressed me more than anything.
Alexander’s people were trained to keep control.
Rafe was teaching us how to take it away from them.
On the seventh night, Olivia called again.
This time, Rafe was standing in the kitchen.
My father wanted me to ignore it.
Rafe said nothing.
“What would Alexander want?” I asked.
Rafe looked uncomfortable.
“Mrs. Moretti—”
“Answer.”
“He would want you nowhere near the phone.”
“Then that’s not useful.”
Rafe almost smiled.
“What do you want?”
“I want her to talk.”
My father objected immediately.
I held up a hand.
“We record everything.”
Rafe nodded.
“We can do that.”
The phone rang a fourth time.
I answered.
“Hello, Olivia.”
She began crying.
Not quietly.
Not elegantly.
The sobs were wild.
“Claire, thank God.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to explain.”
“Explain why you locked the door.”
Silence.
There it was.
The question that had lived inside me every night since the fire.
Olivia breathed into the phone.
“I panicked.”
“No.”
“I was scared.”
“No.”
“Claire—”
“I have the access log.”
Another silence.
Then her breathing changed.
The performance stopped.
“I didn’t know the fire would move that fast.”
My skin prickled.
Rafe’s eyes sharpened.
“What did you know?” I asked.
Olivia began crying again.
“Matteo said it would be contained.”
“Contained where?”
“The room.”
“The room I was in?”
“He said Alexander would come back.”
I closed my eyes.
The kitchen disappeared.
For one second, I smelled smoke.
“Why did you lock me in?”
“I wanted time.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
She whispered, “I wanted him to choose me.”
My father turned away.
Rafe’s face became stone.
Olivia kept talking.
“I knew he would come for me first. I knew it. Daniel made him promise. I just wanted—”
“You wanted what?”
“To know I mattered more.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“You were my best friend.”
“I know.”
“I defended you when people said you were too close to my husband.”
“I know.”
“I gave you a key to my home.”
“I know.”
“You were standing in my wedding.”
“I know.”
“And you locked me in a burning room so you could find out whether my husband would carry you first?”
She sobbed.
“I thought he would go back.”
“But you were willing to find out.”
She stopped crying.
That silence was the truest answer she had ever given me.
I swallowed hard.
“What is Matteo planning?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“You know enough.”
“He wants the trust.”
“What else?”
“He has people in Chicago who think Alexander is weak because of you.”
A strange laugh escaped me.
“Because of me?”
“Because he loves you.”
My chest hurt.
“Love did not keep him in that room.”
“No,” Olivia said. “Daniel did.”
I closed my eyes.
She continued.
“I used the promise. I knew Alexander would never break it.”
“You used your dead brother.”
Her voice became small.
“Yes.”
Rafe suddenly pointed at the phone and wrote on a piece of paper.
KEEP HER TALKING.
I asked, “Where are you?”
Olivia hesitated.
“Chicago.”
“Where?”
“Why?”
“Because if you want to explain, then explain everything.”
She gave an address.
Rafe was already moving.
He called Alexander from another room.
Olivia kept speaking to me.
She admitted Matteo had paid her.
She admitted stealing security information.
She admitted copying my schedule.
She admitted that after the fire she had searched my hospital room while I slept, looking for the memory card.
Then she said something I did not expect.
“Claire, Matteo is not the one Alexander should be afraid of.”
My pulse changed.
“Who is?”
Olivia whispered, “His uncle.”
“Vittorio?”
A crash sounded on her end.
Olivia screamed.
The call disconnected.
Rafe ran back into the room.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“Someone just entered her apartment.”
“Alexander?”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“Matteo’s men.”
In Chicago, Alexander reached Olivia’s building in four minutes.
He found one man unconscious in the stairwell.
Another dead near the kitchen.
Olivia was on the floor behind the sofa, blood on her face but breathing.
A third attacker raised a gun.
Alexander fired first.
The man dropped.
Olivia stared up at Alexander.
For one irrational second, hope crossed her face.
He had come for her.
Again.
Alexander saw it.
He understood exactly what she was thinking.
He put his gun away.
Then he turned to Rafe’s second-in-command.
“Get her medical attention.”
Olivia’s expression collapsed.
“Alexander.”
He looked down at her.
There was no tenderness in his face.
No rage either.
Something worse.
Finality.
“You are alive because Claire needed you to keep talking.”
Olivia began to cry.
May you like
Alexander walked away.
This time, he did not carry her.
