Chapter 3 - What Sophia Wanted
Sophia Bennett had spent most of her adult life believing one thing with absolute certainty.
Vincent Moretti belonged to her.
Not legally.
Not practically.
Not even romantically anymore.
But in the strange private mythology she had built over sixteen years, Vincent remained the man who had once promised her forever beneath a broken streetlamp on Taylor Street.
She had left Chicago at twenty-two.
He had not followed.
That fact had tortured her ever since.
Sophia told herself she had escaped the Moretti world because she was frightened.
That was partially true.
Vincent's father had been murdered outside a restaurant six months before Sophia moved to Paris.
The funeral was filled with armed men.
The newspapers called the Moretti family a criminal dynasty.
Sophia imagined herself spending decades waiting for a phone call telling her Vincent had been shot.
So she left.
But she had expected him to chase her.
He didn't.
At first, she waited weeks.
Then months.
Then years.
Vincent sent no grand declaration.
No plane ticket.
No ring.
Nothing.
Eventually, Sophia created a successful life in France.
She worked in luxury fashion.
She married briefly.
Divorced quietly.
And watched from across an ocean as Vincent became wealthier, colder, and more powerful.
Then he married Emily Carter.
Sophia saw the wedding photographs online.
Emily had worn ivory silk.
Vincent had looked at her with an expression Sophia had spent hours enlarging on her phone.
It wasn't the wild love Vincent once showed Sophia.
It was steadier.
Quieter.
That frightened her more.
Because wild love could burn out.
Quiet love might survive.
So Sophia reentered his life carefully.
Never too aggressively.
Never in ways that could easily be called inappropriate.
She remembered birthdays.
Asked about his mother.
Sent condolences on the anniversaries of family deaths.
When she visited Chicago, she suggested coffee.
Then dinners.
Then longer conversations.
Vincent responded because Sophia represented a version of himself that existed before funerals, power, and responsibility.
She mistook nostalgia for devotion.
And Vincent, to his shame, allowed her to.
Three weeks before Lily's birth, Sophia called him from Paris.
Her father was dying.
This was true.
She cried.
Also true.
Then she said the sentence she knew would reach the oldest, most loyal part of Vincent Moretti.
"I don't have anyone else."
Vincent went.
That was all Sophia needed to believe Emily had lost.
When Vincent called her the day after returning to Chicago, Sophia assumed he wanted comfort.
Instead, his voice sounded like winter.
"What exactly did you tell Emily before I left?"
Sophia sat upright inside her Paris apartment.
"I didn't speak to Emily."
"Think carefully."
"I sent condolences when her grandmother died last year. That's the last time."
Vincent's silence was dangerous.
"Why are you asking?"
"My wife left me."
Sophia's heart leaped.
She forced concern into her voice.
"Vincent, I'm so sorry."
"She gave birth while I was with you."
Silence.
That part Sophia had not known.
"When?"
"The second day I was in Paris."
"Oh."
A strange thrill moved through her.
Immediately followed by something that resembled guilt.
"I didn't know."
"Neither did I."
"Vincent—"
"My daughter is twelve days old."
Sophia closed her eyes.
This was more serious than she expected.
"Emily should have told you."
The moment the sentence left her mouth, she knew it was wrong.
Vincent became very quiet.
"She called me three times."
Sophia remembered.
The restaurant.
Vincent's phone vibrating on the table.
Emily's name.
Sophia had been crying.
She remembered reaching across the table and placing her hand on Vincent's wrist.
Stay.
He had silenced the phone.
Now Sophia said, "You couldn't have known she was in labor."
"No."
His voice was flat.
"But I knew she was nine months pregnant."
Sophia felt something shift.
Vincent was not blaming Emily.
He was blaming himself.
That was dangerous.
Because guilt often revealed where love had been hidden.
"Are you coming back to Paris?"
"No."
"Perhaps after things calm down—"
"No."
A colder answer.
Sophia swallowed.
"What do you want from me?"
"The truth."
"I've told you the truth."
"Then tell me why Emily received photographs of us in Paris."
Sophia froze.
Vincent continued.
"Photographs outside the hotel. At dinner. At the cemetery. In the car."
"I don't know."
"I didn't know they existed until this morning."
"Who showed you?"
"That doesn't matter."
It did.
Sophia's mind raced.
She had hired a freelance photographer.
Not to publish anything.
Just to obtain images that could be sent anonymously to Emily.
Nothing intimate existed because nothing intimate had happened.
But angles could suggest what reality did not.
Vincent helping Sophia from a car.
Sophia leaning toward him at dinner.
Vincent placing a hand at her back while photographers crowded outside the cemetery.
Ordinary gestures.
Manipulated into something more.
"Maybe paparazzi," Sophia said.
"You aren't famous enough."
The insult almost made her flinch.
"And I don't get photographed unless somebody wants me photographed."
Vincent's voice lowered.
"Did you arrange it?"
"No."
A lie.
Vincent heard it.
Sophia knew he did.
Yet he simply said, "Goodbye."
The line disconnected.
Back in Chicago, Vincent stood inside Matteo's office.
On the desk lay printed copies of seven photographs.
Margaret had found them inside an envelope delivered to the Moretti mansion three days before Emily moved out.
No return address.
No letter.
Only photographs.
Matteo picked one up.
"You didn't tell me these existed."
"I learned ten minutes ago."
"Who sent them?"
"Find out."
"Already working on it."
Vincent stared at a photograph showing Sophia's hand looped through his arm outside the cemetery.
The image made his stomach turn.
He remembered the moment.
Sophia had stumbled on wet pavement.
He had caught her.
That was it.
But if Emily saw only the photograph?
He understood.
"What else happened while I was gone?"
Matteo hesitated.
"Your mother called."
Vincent looked up.
"Apparently Emily asked Isabella not to contact you."
"Why?"
"Because she didn't want to force you home."
His face tightened.
"That sounds like her."
Matteo nodded.
"There's something else."
"What?"
"One of the security guards saw Emily crying in the nursery the night after you left."
Vincent closed his eyes.
Matteo continued carefully.
"She had your old blue sweater."
Vincent frowned.
"What sweater?"
"The navy one you wore in college."
He remembered.
Emily stole it whenever she was cold.
He had teased her about throwing it away because the sleeves were worn.
She refused.
That sweater was gone too.
Everything expensive remained.
The worthless sweater came with her.
Something inside Vincent cracked.
That evening, I received a package.
No sender.
Rachel opened it before allowing me to touch anything.
Inside was a small velvet box.
My body went cold.
I knew the box.
Vincent's mother, Isabella, had given me an antique Moretti family necklace on our wedding day.
I had left it in the safe because it belonged to his family.
Now it had been returned.
Beneath it was a note in Vincent's handwriting.
This was never mine to take back. It was given to you because Isabella chose you. I won't use gifts to ask for forgiveness.
I stared at the words.
No flowers.
No diamonds.
No apology attached.
Just the necklace.
Rachel watched me.
"How do you feel?"
"Annoyed."
"Why?"
"Because that was unexpectedly appropriate."
She smiled.
"Terrible when people improve their strategy."
"This isn't funny."
"No."
She leaned back.
"But it means he's thinking."
"I don't want him thinking. I wanted him thinking thirteen days ago."
"I know."
I closed the box.
My phone rang.
This time I recognized the number.
Isabella Moretti.
I answered.
"Hello?"
"Emily."
Her voice broke.
"Oh, my darling."
I closed my eyes.
"Hi, Isabella."
"I want to see you."
"You can."
"And my granddaughter."
"You can see her too."
She began crying.
I nearly joined her.
Isabella had always treated me kindly.
She had warned Vincent repeatedly not to take me for granted.
Perhaps she understood her son better than I did.
She arrived the following morning.
At sixty-four, Isabella Moretti remained elegant, terrifying, and incapable of entering any room quietly.
She walked into my grandmother's house wearing black sunglasses and carrying enough food to feed twenty people.
Then she saw Lily.
Everything stopped.
"Oh."
That one sound destroyed her.
She sat beside me.
I placed Lily in her arms.
Isabella cried openly.
"She looks like Vincent when he was born."
I laughed softly.
"Everybody says she looks like me."
"They are wrong."
Lily yawned.
Isabella kissed her forehead.
"Your father is an idiot."
I blinked.
"Isabella."
"What? She should learn early."
I laughed for the first time in days.
Later, while Lily slept, Isabella and I sat in the kitchen drinking coffee.
"I'm ashamed of him," she said.
"You don't have to be."
"I raised him."
"You also raised him to know better."
"Apparently not well enough."
I looked into my cup.
"Did he love Sophia?"
Isabella was silent.
"Yes."
My chest tightened.
"But," she continued, "not the way you think."
I looked up.
"Vincent loved who he was when he loved Sophia."
I frowned.
"Explain."
"Before his father died, Vincent was different. He laughed. He played baseball. He wanted to study architecture."
I had never known that.
"Architecture?"
"Yes. Can you imagine?"
Almost not.
"Sophia was part of that life. Before blood. Before responsibility. Before he became the man everybody fears."
Isabella looked toward the window.
"When Sophia appears, Vincent remembers being twenty years old and innocent. He confuses missing himself with missing her."
The words settled painfully.
"That doesn't excuse anything."
"No."
Isabella looked at me.
"And you should not take him back because his mother explains his stupidity."
"Thank you."
"But I want you to understand something."
"What?"
"My son loves you."
I laughed bitterly.
"He's very bad at it."
"Yes."
She did not defend him.
"He thought protecting you financially, physically, and socially was enough."
"It wasn't."
"I know."
"He left me."
"I know."
"I was scared."
"I know."
"And our daughter—"
My voice broke.
Isabella reached across the table and covered my hand.
"I know."
Tears filled my eyes.
"He wasn't there."
"No."
"I kept looking at the door."
Isabella moved around the table and hugged me.
I cried against my mother-in-law's shoulder.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
Weeks of humiliation came loose all at once.
Meanwhile, Vincent sat in his office staring at a financial report he had not read for thirty minutes.
Matteo entered.
"We found the photographer."
Vincent looked up.
"Name?"
"Daniel Reeves. Freelance. Lives in Paris."
"Who hired him?"
Matteo placed a printed bank record on the desk.
Payment had come from a consulting company.
The company's owner was hidden behind layers of registration.
But Matteo had kept digging.
Eventually, the trail led to a woman.
Sophia Bennett.
Vincent stared at the document.
His expression became unreadable.
"There's more," Matteo said.
The anonymous envelope delivered to Emily had been arranged through the same assistant Sophia used in Paris.
Vincent leaned back.
"So she created the photographs."
"Looks that way."
"Sent them to my pregnant wife."
"Yes."
Matteo watched his friend carefully.
"What do you want to do?"
Ten years earlier, Vincent might have destroyed somebody's life over less.
But something had changed.
He thought of Emily.
Of Lily.
Of the empty nursery.
"No violence."
Matteo raised an eyebrow.
"That's new."
"I don't want Emily thinking I'm solving another problem with fear."
"Then?"
Vincent picked up his phone.
He called Sophia.
She answered.
"Vincent—"
"I know."
Silence.
"What?"
"The photographer."
Sophia did not speak.
"The shell company."
Still nothing.
"The delivery to my house."
Sophia's breathing changed.
"Vincent, I can explain."
"No."
"I was trying to make her see—"
"See what?"
"That you still loved me."
Vincent closed his eyes.
The truth was surprisingly easy.
"I don't."
Sophia went silent.
"That's not true."
"It is."
"You came to Paris."
"Because your father died."
"You stayed."
"Because I believed you had nobody."
"You chose me over her."
Vincent's jaw tightened.
"Yes."
He forced himself to say it.
"That was my failure. Not proof of love."
Sophia began crying.
"She changed you."
"No."
Vincent looked toward the photograph of Lily that Rachel had finally allowed him to receive.
"I failed to change soon enough."
He ended the call.
Then he told Matteo to block Sophia from every Moretti property and business.
No threats.
No retaliation.
Just a closed door.
That night, Vincent drove alone to Evanston.
He did not approach my house.
Rachel had forbidden it.
Instead, he parked half a block away.
Through one upstairs window, he could see warm yellow light.
A shadow crossed the curtain.
Me.
Then another tiny shape against my shoulder.
Lily.
Vincent gripped the steering wheel.
For twenty minutes, Chicago's most feared man sat alone in a parked car looking at the family he had driven away.
Then he whispered into the darkness:
"I'm sorry."
May you like
But this time, nobody was there to hear it.
And he finally understood that apologies were useless when spoken to an empty street.
