Chapter 2 - The Other Mrs. Moretti
Vanessa Reed did not scream.
That surprised me.
Maybe because people imagine discovering betrayal as something loud.
Broken glasses.
Slapped faces.
Accusations thrown across rooms.
Real shock can be much quieter.
Vanessa stared at Vincent from her hospital bed as though someone had removed a familiar face and replaced it with a stranger’s.
“You said Claire was your ex-wife.”
Vincent moved toward her.
“Vanessa, you need to stay calm.”
She looked at me.
“Is your name Claire Moretti?”
“Yes.”
“Are you married to him?”
“Yes.”
Her lips parted.
“For how long?”
“Five years.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
A monitor beside her accelerated.
I immediately stepped forward.
“Vanessa.”
She looked at me.
“Slow breaths.”
She laughed once, but it turned into a sob.
“I’m sorry.”
“You need to breathe.”
“I’m sorry.”
“This conversation can wait.”
“No, it can’t.”
“Medically, it can.”
That was the doctor in me.
Maybe also the woman who could not survive another revelation in that hallway.
The obstetric resident, Dr. Owen Mercer, entered.
He was thirty-five, calm under pressure, and one of the few physicians I trusted not to turn a crisis into theater.
“What happened?”
“Emotional stress.”
I kept my tone clinical.
“Heart rate increased.”
Owen looked at Vincent.
Then me.
He knew I was married.
His expression told me he understood enough not to ask.
“Mr. Moretti,” he said, “you need to wait outside.”
“I’m her husband.”
Vanessa opened her eyes.
“No.”
Vincent turned.
“Vanessa.”
“No.”
Her voice shook.
“You leave.”
“Baby—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Please.”
Owen stepped between them.
“She asked you to leave.”
Vincent looked furious for half a second.
Then he remembered where he was.
He walked out.
I followed.
Rebecca waited in the corridor.
The divorce papers were still in Vincent’s hand.
He stared at me.
“She didn’t know.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“Vanessa.”
He lowered his voice.
“She thought we were separated.”
I looked through the glass in her door.
“How generous of you to tell me.”
“Claire, please listen.”
“Did you marry her?”
His expression changed.
“No.”
“She calls you her husband.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Stop saying that.”
“We had a ceremony.”
My stomach turned.
“A ceremony.”
“It wasn’t legal.”
“Did she know that?”
Silence.
Rebecca folded her arms.
“That silence could become very expensive, Mr. Moretti.”
Vincent looked at her.
“This is private.”
“Not anymore.”
I stared at him.
“When?”
“What?”
“When was your ceremony?”
He rubbed his face.
“Last summer.”
I felt my heart pound once.
Hard.
Then strangely steady.
“Where?”
“Lake Geneva.”
“Who attended?”
“Claire.”
“Who attended?”
“Vanessa’s family.”
I almost admired the scale of it.
Not the betrayal.
The logistics.
This man had maintained two marriages in the same region.
Two anniversaries.
Two sets of lies.
Two women who believed different versions of the same life.
“How did you explain me?”
“I told her we were separated.”
“Three years ago?”
He said nothing.
“So when she said you told her the divorce was final three years ago, she was telling the truth.”
“I was trying to figure things out.”
“For three years?”
“I loved you.”
“Stop.”
“I did.”
“Stop using that word.”
His face crumpled with frustration.
“You think everything between us was fake?”
“I think enough of it was.”
Rebecca touched my arm.
“Claire, you’re still on shift.”
She was right.
I looked at Vincent.
“You have the papers.”
“I’m not signing anything tonight.”
“That isn’t how being served works.”
His jaw tightened.
“I want to talk at home.”
“No.”
“You cannot lock me out of my house.”
“I’m not going home.”
His face changed again.
“Where are you going?”
“Not your concern.”
“Claire.”
“You lost the right to ask.”
I returned to work.
Not because I was strong.
Because there were patients.
Chest pain did not care about infidelity.
A broken wrist did not care about Christmas.
A six-year-old with croup did not care that my husband had staged a second wedding.
For the next three hours, I functioned by moving from room to room.
Orders.
Exams.
Discharge instructions.
Consults.
At 3:20 a.m., Vanessa asked to speak with me.
Not as her physician.
As Vincent’s wife.
I almost refused.
Owen offered to take over medically.
“You don’t owe anyone this tonight,” he said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you going?”
“Because I need facts.”
He studied me.
“Facts are not always kind.”
“Neither is uncertainty.”
He nodded.
Vanessa looked exhausted when I entered.
Her face was washed clean of makeup.
Her hair was pulled into a loose knot.
Without the panic and bleeding, she seemed younger.
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately.
I closed the door.
“You already said that.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I believe you might not have known we were still married.”
Her eyes filled.
“Might?”
“You had a relationship with a married man for three years.”
“I thought he was separated.”
“And you never checked?”
“That sounds stupid now.”
“It sounds convenient.”
She absorbed that without defending herself.
Then she reached toward the nightstand.
“My phone.”
I handed it to her.
She opened photographs.
The first image showed Vanessa in a simple ivory dress.
Vincent beside her.
Lake behind them.
Flowers.
Chairs.
Guests.
A ceremony.
My husband’s hand around another woman’s waist.
Date stamp: June 14.
On June 14, Vincent had told me he was attending a three-day leadership retreat in Wisconsin.
Technically, he had been in Wisconsin.
Vanessa swiped.
There was a cake.
A first dance.
Vincent kissing her forehead.
Her parents hugging him.
A man standing beneath an arch holding a leather folder.
“Who officiated?”
“His friend Marcus.”
“Marcus Bell?”
She nodded.
I knew Marcus.
He had attended our wedding.
For several seconds, I could not speak.
Vanessa whispered, “Vincent told everyone your divorce had been finalized quietly because you didn’t want publicity.”
I almost laughed.
“What publicity?”
“He said your family was traditional.”
“My parents have been dead for seven years.”
Vanessa stared at me.
“What?”
“He told you my family cared about scandal?”
“He said your father still hated him.”
“My father never met Vincent.”
The horror on Vanessa’s face became genuine.
“What happened to him?”
“Car accident when I was twenty-two.”
Vanessa covered her mouth.
I sat because suddenly standing felt unnecessary.
“How much do you know about me?”
“Not much.”
“What did he tell you?”
She hesitated.
“Claire.”
“Tell me.”
“That you were a surgeon.”
“I’m an emergency physician.”
“He said you moved to Boston after the divorce.”
“I’ve lived in Chicago since residency.”
“He said you didn’t want children.”
My hand instinctively moved toward my stomach.
I stopped halfway.
Vanessa did not notice.
“He said that was why the marriage ended.”
I looked at her.
“He told you I didn’t want children.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
The room blurred for half a second.
Three years.
The same length of time she said they had waited for her pregnancy.
“When did you start trying?”
Vanessa looked down.
“Almost immediately.”
“While he was married to me.”
“I didn’t know.”
“How did you meet?”
“At one of his company events.”
“When?”
“April, three years ago.”
Vincent and I had celebrated our second anniversary that May.
He had taken me to Napa.
At the time, I thought the trip had been romantic.
Now I wondered whether guilt had paid for the wine.
Vanessa unlocked a document app.
“He showed me this.”
A PDF.
Dissolution of Marriage.
Cook County Circuit Court.
My name.
His name.
A judge’s signature.
A date from three years earlier.
I stared.
“That is fake.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“Oh God.”
“It’s fake.”
“He showed me the certified copy.”
“That is not a certified copy.”
“I don’t know what those look like.”
“I do.”
The document used an outdated seal.
Rebecca would notice instantly.
My anger shifted.
Not disappeared.
Shifted.
Vanessa had ignored warning signs.
She had accepted easy explanations.
But Vincent had built documentation to support the lie.
This was not merely adultery.
It was architecture.
“Did he ever ask you to sign anything?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“House paperwork.”
“House?”
“Our condo.”
My pulse changed.
“Where?”
“Lincoln Park.”
“Whose name?”
“His.”
“Did you contribute?”
“I paid toward renovations.”
“How much?”
“About thirty thousand.”
I sat straighter.
“And fertility treatment?”
Her expression softened painfully.
“Insurance didn’t cover most of it.”
“Who paid?”
“Vincent.”
Of course.
“How much?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Roughly.”
“Maybe ninety thousand over three years.”
I looked away.
Unexplained transfers.
Hotel receipts.
Large payments to an LLC Rebecca had flagged.
Not business expenses.
A second household.
A second marriage.
A second attempt at fatherhood.
I stood.
“I need your permission to send Rebecca a copy of that fake decree.”
Vanessa looked at me.
“Your lawyer?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed.
“Will I get in trouble?”
“For what?”
“Thinking I was married.”
“No.”
I paused.
“I’m not your lawyer.”
She nodded.
“But if he forged a court document using my name, I need it.”
Vanessa sent it.
Then she looked at me with tears running silently down her face.
“I loved him.”
I believed her.
That was the worst part.
“So did I.”
At 6:10 a.m., I finally left the hospital.
Christmas morning had arrived gray and bitterly cold.
Rebecca drove.
I had been awake almost twenty-four hours.
“You are not going home,” she said.
“I know.”
“You’re staying with me.”
“You live forty minutes from the hospital.”
“You can survive forty minutes.”
“I have a shift tomorrow.”
“You’re calling out.”
“I don’t call out.”
“You’re pregnant.”
I looked at her.
Rebecca knew.
She was one of only two people besides me.
My obstetrician’s scheduling nurse was the other.
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“You said that while sitting on a hospital floor crying.”
“Attorney-client privilege.”
“Friend privilege overrides it.”
Rebecca and I had known each other since college.
She became a divorce attorney.
I became a doctor.
Neither of us had expected our careers to intersect personally.
She handed me a folder at a red light.
“What’s this?”
“Financial preliminary.”
I opened it.
Six accounts.
Two I recognized.
Four I did not.
Rebecca pointed.
“Vincent transferred roughly two hundred forty thousand dollars over thirty months into VRM Holdings.”
“VRM.”
“Recognize it?”
“No.”
“Vincent Reed Moretti.”
I looked at her.
“Reed?”
“Vanessa Reed.”
My stomach turned.
“That can’t be real.”
“It is.”
“Who owns the company?”
“Vincent.”
“What does it own?”
Rebecca glanced at me.
“The Lincoln Park condo.”
I closed the folder.
For a few seconds, I could not breathe.
My husband had not merely paid for an affair.
He had created a company using his name and his mistress’s name to purchase their home.
“Marital money?”
“Appears so.”
“How much?”
“Down payment was one hundred eighty thousand.”
I stared out at snow lining the streets.
Rebecca continued carefully.
“There’s something else.”
“Of course there is.”
“The transfer date.”
I looked back.
She handed me the page.
January 18 of the previous year.
I knew that date.
Every woman who had lost a pregnancy knew certain dates forever.
January 18.
The day after my miscarriage.
Vincent had moved ninety thousand dollars into VRM Holdings while I was still physically recovering.
I closed my eyes.
“What kind of man does that?”
Rebecca did not answer.
At her house, I slept for three hours.
When I woke, I had twenty-seven missed calls.
Fourteen from Vincent.
Three from his mother.
Two from Marcus Bell.
Eight unknown.
There was also one message from Vanessa.
I opened it.
I found something else.
Please call me.
Then another image arrived.
A fertility clinic invoice.
Patient: Vanessa Reed.
Emergency contact: Vincent Moretti.
Relationship to patient: Husband.
Service date:
May you like
January 17.
The night I lost our first baby.
