Chapter 4 - The Bullet That Changed the Rules
For years, I had imagined what it would feel like if Alexander Moretti were ever forced to face the consequences of the world he controlled.
I never imagined it would happen with him bleeding into the rain at my feet.
“Alexander!” Luca shouted.
Men moved everywhere.
Marcus pulled me behind the SUV while Romano Security surrounded Dino and the others. One of Carlo’s men tried to run toward the tree line. He made it less than twenty yards before two guards tackled him into the wet grass.
I barely saw any of it.
My eyes were on Alexander.
He had one hand pressed against his side.
Blood was leaking between his fingers.
He looked furious about it, which was so completely Alexander that a hysterical laugh almost escaped me.
“Get her inside the vehicle,” he ordered.
Even wounded, he was still giving commands about me.
I stepped around Marcus.
“Stop.”
Alexander looked up.
Rain ran down his face.
“You’re hurt.”
“It went through.”
“That is not the same as being fine.”
His mouth almost moved into the ghost of a smile.
“No. I suppose not.”
Luca crouched beside him and cut open the side of his shirt. The bullet had passed through the flesh beneath his ribs without striking bone, but the bleeding was heavy enough to turn everyone serious.
Marcus came beside me.
“You don’t owe him anything.”
“I know.”
I knelt anyway.
Not because Alexander was my husband.
Not because I had changed my mind about the divorce.
Because I was not the kind of person who could watch a man bleed and pretend I felt nothing.
Especially when that man had just stepped between me and a gun.
Alexander’s eyes dropped to my hand as I pressed a folded cloth against the wound.
His breathing caught.
“You shouldn’t be down here,” he murmured.
“Then stop getting shot.”
There it was again—that almost-smile.
Then his expression broke.
“Two months?”
I knew exactly what he meant.
I looked away.
“Claire.”
“This is not the time.”
“I didn’t know.”
“No.”
“If I had known—”
I turned back sharply.
“What?”
He stopped.
The rain seemed louder around us.
“What would you have done differently, Alexander? Would you have believed me when I said Olivia was crossing boundaries? Would you have kept your promise not to bring her back? Would you have told her she could survive one flight without holding your hand?”
He flinched.
Good.
Because I was done protecting him from the shape of what he had done.
“You didn’t need to know I was pregnant to respect me,” I said. “You didn’t need a baby inside me to remember I was your wife.”
Alexander stared at me.
Then, very slowly, he nodded.
“You’re right.”
No defense.
No excuse.
No attempt to tell me what I had misunderstood.
It was the first correct thing he had said in weeks.
An SUV pulled beside us.
“We need to move,” Luca said.
Alexander tried to stand and nearly fell.
Marcus caught his arm before he hit the road.
The two men looked at each other.
They had disliked each other from the first day they met.
Marcus had once told Alexander that if he ever broke my heart, he would help me disappear so thoroughly that Alexander’s own intelligence network would question whether I had ever existed.
Alexander had replied that no one took his wife anywhere.
Now Marcus was the reason I had escaped.
And Alexander was bleeding because he had protected both of us.
Life had a cruel sense of timing.
We took Alexander to a private clinic Marcus trusted rather than a Moretti-controlled hospital. Alexander objected exactly once.
Marcus looked at him and said, “You are currently leaking on my sister’s coat. You don’t get a vote.”
Alexander shut up.
The doctor confirmed the bullet had passed cleanly through soft tissue. Painful. Bloody. But not life-threatening.
I should have felt relieved only because the father of my child was going to live.
Instead, when the doctor said he would recover, my knees almost weakened.
I hated that.
I hated that love did not disappear simply because trust did.
Love was inconvenient that way.
It remained in the body long after the mind had filed for divorce.
While Alexander was being treated, Marcus and Luca questioned the men who had followed us.
Dino refused to speak at first.
Then Luca showed him the service corridor video of Olivia entering Alexander’s room.
Dino laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because it confirmed something he already knew.
That was enough.
Luca leaned closer.
“How long has Carlo been using her?”
Dino’s smile vanished.
No answer.
Marcus placed photographs from Elena’s file on the table.
Richard Hayes.
Carlo Moretti.
A hotel lobby in 2008.
Dino’s face changed.
He had not expected us to have that.
“Your uncle knows Claire opened the box,” Dino finally said.
“How?” Luca asked.
“Carlo has someone at the bank.”
“Why does he want the records?”
Dino looked toward the closed treatment-room door.
“Because Mrs. Moretti has more than Elena ever did.”
Marcus went still.
“What does that mean?”
Dino smiled again, but this time there was fear behind it.
“Ask her.”
When Marcus came into the waiting room, I knew from his face that he was angry.
Not with Alexander.
With me.
“What didn’t you tell me?”
I looked at Luca behind him.
“About what?”
“Dino says Carlo believes you have more than Elena’s records.”
I said nothing.
Marcus lowered his voice.
“Claire.”
I looked toward the treatment room.
Alexander was still inside.
Then I opened my purse and removed a small silver flash drive.
“I made a copy of Olivia’s office computer.”
Luca stared at me.
“You did what?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“How?”
“She left her laptop open during a charity planning meeting at the house. I had six minutes.”
Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You copied a Mafia boss’s secretary’s computer while you were pregnant and didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know I was pregnant then.”
“That is not the part of that sentence I’m upset about.”
Despite myself, I smiled faintly.
Then it disappeared.
“Most of it was ordinary,” I said. “Calendars, meeting notes, invoices. But there was an encrypted folder. I couldn’t open it until after I left Alexander.”
“What was inside?” Luca asked.
I looked at him.
“Lists.”
“What kind of lists?”
“Routes. Properties. Security rotations. Names of judges, attorneys, business owners. Men Alexander trusts.”
Luca’s face hardened.
“Olivia was copying internal intelligence.”
“Yes.”
“For Carlo?”
“I think so.”
“You think?” Marcus asked.
“There’s something else.”
I opened my phone and pulled up a screenshot.
A spreadsheet.
One column contained dates.
The other contained names.
Several names had the word REMOVED beside them.
Two had D delayed.
One had C pending.
Luca stared at it.
“What is C?”
“I don’t know.”
Marcus did.
His eyes moved to me.
“Claire.”
A cold feeling passed through my stomach.
Before anyone could speak, the treatment-room door opened.
Alexander stood there, pale beneath the fluorescent lights, fresh bandages wrapped around his ribs.
He had heard enough.
“C is Claire,” he said.
No one argued.
He walked slowly toward us.
“Olivia didn’t just want you out of my marriage.”
His voice was almost empty.
“She was waiting for you to be unprotected.”
I looked down at the spreadsheet again.
C pending.
The anniversary trip had not merely been designed to humiliate me.
It had been designed to make me leave.
And the moment I did, someone had begun following me.
Alexander took the phone from my hand.
His eyes moved across the names.
Then he stopped at one.
His face changed.
“What?” I asked.
He enlarged the row.
M. Moretti — REMOVED.
My breath caught.
Alexander whispered the name aloud.
“Matteo.”
His dead brother.
The ambush that had happened fifteen years earlier.
The event that had shaped the man Alexander became.
It was on Olivia’s list.
A file created only four months ago.
Which meant whoever made the list was not simply planning future targets.
They were recording old ones.
Alexander lifted his eyes to Luca.
“My brother wasn’t caught in an ambush.”
May you like
His voice sounded like something tearing.
“He was selected.”
