Chapter 4 - The Ghost Wearing Isabella’s Face
Vincent did not touch me.
That mattered.
A year earlier, he would have walked into the hospital room, taken control, demanded discharge papers, chosen where I would stay, and surrounded the building with armed men before asking what I wanted.
This time, he stood six feet away from the bed.
Hands at his sides.
Waiting.
The difference should not have affected me.
It did.
“The doctor says the baby is fine,” I said.
Vincent nodded.
His gaze lowered toward my stomach.
Not possessive.
Almost reverent.
Then he looked away, as though even staring felt like something he had not earned.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
I hated the question because I had asked myself the same thing every night.
“I don’t know.”
His jaw moved.
“Claire—”
“I didn’t know.”
He nodded again.
No argument.
That surprised me more than anger would have.
Ethan appeared in the doorway.
His expression hardened when he saw Vincent.
Vincent looked at him once.
“You got her away from them?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
Ethan blinked.
Apparently he had expected a threat.
So had I.
Instead, Vincent stepped aside.
“You should stay until she’s discharged.”
Then he looked at me.
“My men will remain outside. You don’t have to speak to them.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I need to find out who tried to take you.”
A chill moved through me.
“Vincent.”
He stopped.
“Don’t kill anyone because of me.”
His eyes met mine.
“Then I’ll make sure they give me another reason.”
That was the Vincent I knew.
I almost smiled despite myself.
He noticed.
For the first time in weeks, something warm passed between us.
Then it disappeared.
After he left, Ethan sat in the chair beside my bed.
“You’re having his baby.”
“Yes.”
“Does that change the divorce?”
“No.”
He studied me.
“You answered too fast.”
“I’ve had three months to think about it.”
“That doesn’t mean you’ve decided.”
“I know what I decided.”
Ethan lifted both hands.
“Not my business.”
“Thank you.”
“For the record, I still think threatening people through hospital security is inefficient.”
I laughed.
It hurt my side.
But I laughed.
Meanwhile, Vincent returned to Chicago.
Within forty-eight hours, three facts became clear.
The men who attempted to take me were connected to Marcus Vale.
Someone inside Moretti Holdings had given Vale details about my New York routine.
And Sophia Reynolds was not Sophia Reynolds.
Her real name was Sofia Hayes.
With an F.
Isabella Hayes’s younger half-sister.
Vincent called me the night he confirmed it.
I was sitting in my apartment wearing sweatpants, eating toast.
When he said the name, I stopped chewing.
“Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“As in Isabella?”
“Yes.”
“How did you not know?”
His silence was answer enough.
He had never investigated Sophia properly.
Because Dominic recommended her.
Because her face reminded him of Isabella.
Because memory had made him careless.
The realization seemed to disgust him.
“She changed her last name through her mother when she was eighteen,” he said. “There’s almost nothing linking her publicly to Isabella.”
“Did Isabella know about her?”
“Yes. Barely. Their father had an affair. Sophia was fourteen when Isabella died.”
“And now she’s working for you.”
“Was.”
I set the toast down.
“Why?”
“We found payments.”
“From Vale?”
“Not directly.”
Vincent explained.
For eighteen months, Sophia had received deposits through a consulting company registered in Delaware.
The company traced back to a chain of shell entities.
One ultimately connected to Dominic Russo.
My stomach turned.
“Dominic?”
“Yes.”
The man who had stood beside Vincent at our wedding.
The man who knew where we honeymooned.
The man who called me family.
“What does Dominic want?”
“I’m finding out.”
There was something Vincent wasn’t saying.
“What else?”
Silence.
“What else did you find?”
His voice lowered.
“Isabella’s death may not have been an attack by the Vales.”
I stopped breathing.
For eight years, Vincent had believed Marcus Vale’s father ordered the bombing that killed Isabella.
That belief had shaped half of Chicago’s criminal alliances.
“What was it?”
“We found an old maintenance invoice.”
“That means nothing.”
“It was from one of our garages.”
Our.
Moretti.
The word hung between us.
“The explosive was installed while Isabella’s car was serviced at a Moretti-owned property.”
I closed my eyes.
“Someone inside your family killed her.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Dominic?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Vincent sounded exhausted.
Then he added, “Sophia accessed Isabella’s files because she was looking for the same thing.”
My confusion deepened.
“Then why work with Dominic?”
“That’s the question.”
Three days later, Sophia answered it herself.
She called me.
I almost didn’t pick up.
Then I remembered the kidnappers.
“Hello?”
“Claire?”
Her voice sounded different without office polish.
Smaller.
Terrified.
“What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“No.”
“Dominic knows about the baby.”
My entire body went cold.
“How?”
“He has someone at the hospital.”
I stood.
“Where are you?”
“Not safe.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I never wanted them to hurt you.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You stood under my husband’s umbrella while I bled ten yards away.”
Silence.
Then she whispered, “I know.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“You knew exactly what you were doing.”
“Yes.”
The honesty stunned me.
“I wanted to hurt you.”
“Why?”
“Because you had the life my sister was supposed to have.”
There it was.
Jealousy built from grief.
Ugly.
Human.
“I hated you before I met you,” Sophia continued. “I hated your photographs. Your name in private records. The fact that Vincent survived and built a life while Isabella became a file locked in his office.”
My throat tightened.
“So you became her.”
“At first.”
I closed my eyes.
The clothes.
The hair.
The smile.
All deliberate.
“Dominic found me two years ago,” she said. “He told me Vincent was responsible for Isabella’s death.”
“What?”
“He said Vincent knew the bombing was coming. That he let her die because she had discovered something.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I wanted to.”
Sophia began crying.
“He gave me a job. Told me how to behave. What perfume Isabella wore. How she used to push her hair behind her ear when she was nervous. He knew Vincent would notice.”
My stomach turned.
Dominic had weaponized a dead woman.
“He wanted Vincent distracted.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know at first.”
“And now?”
“Dominic is moving money through Moretti suppliers. Millions. Maybe more. Isabella found the same thing years ago.”
Everything clicked.
Isabella had not died because she loved Vincent.
She died because she discovered financial theft inside the empire.
“Dominic killed her.”
“I think his father did.”
Dominic’s father, Carlo Russo, had served as Vincent’s father’s consigliere.
He died six years earlier.
Sophia continued.
“Isabella found evidence Carlo was stealing from the Morettis. She planned to tell Vincent. Her car exploded the next morning.”
“And Dominic continued his father’s operation.”
“Yes.”
“Where does Marcus Vale fit?”
“He doesn’t know everything. Dominic has been feeding him information, trying to start a war that would weaken Vincent enough for Dominic to take control.”
I sat down slowly.
“And the men who came after me?”
“Dominic told Vale you had financial records that could destroy the Morettis.”
“I don’t.”
“I know.”
“Does Vale?”
“Not anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
Sophia inhaled shakily.
“I told him the truth.”
I almost laughed.
“You’re asking me to believe you suddenly developed a conscience?”
“No.”
She was crying harder now.
“I’m asking you to believe I realized Dominic plans to kill me too.”
That, I believed.
People like Dominic did not leave loose ends.
“What do you want from me?”
“Protection.”
“I can’t protect you.”
“Vincent can.”
“Then call him.”
“He’ll kill me.”
I stared out the window.
“No,” I said slowly. “He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know him better than you do.”
For all my anger, that remained true.
Vincent was capable of terrible things.
But killing Isabella’s sister after learning she had been manipulated?
No.
Not if I asked him not to.
That realization troubled me.
I still knew where the lines inside him were.
And somewhere beneath everything, he still knew mine.
I called him.
Within two hours, Sophia was moved to a secure Moretti property outside Chicago.
Not because Vincent forgave her.
Because she had evidence.
She turned over emails.
Bank transfers.
Encrypted messages.
And one recording.
A conversation with Dominic from three months earlier.
His voice was unmistakable.
“If Claire becomes a problem, Vincent will choose the ghost over the wife. He always does.”
I listened to that sentence twice.
Then turned the recording off.
Vincent sat across from me in a private conference room in New York.
He had flown in that morning.
For once, no guards were inside.
Just us.
He looked destroyed.
Dominic had not forced him to carry Sophia.
Had not forced him to buy her apartment.
Had not forced him to make me invisible.
But Dominic had studied his grief and pushed exactly where Vincent was weakest.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I stared at the table.
“You already said that.”
“I know.”
“Sorry doesn’t change five years.”
“No.”
“It doesn’t change what happened in the rain.”
“No.”
“It doesn’t make me trust you.”
“I know.”
I looked up.
“Then what do you want from me?”
Vincent’s eyes met mine.
“Nothing.”
That answer surprised me.
He continued.
“I want you safe. I want our child safe. And I want to fix what I broke whether you ever come back or not.”
May you like
For the first time since I had asked for a divorce, Vincent Moretti was not trying to stop me from leaving.
He was finally beginning to understand why I had left.
