Chapter 3 - THE FIRST TIME ADRIAN TOLD ME THE TRUTH
The men outside my hotel room left before police arrived.
No threats.
No forced entry.
Nothing dramatic enough to arrest anyone.
Just a message.
Salvatore knew where I was.
And he wanted me to know he knew.
Adrian arrived two hours later.
I had not invited him.
Rebecca almost threw him out anyway.
Then I saw his face.
He looked like he hadn’t slept since finding the ultrasound.
His tie was missing.
His hair was disordered.
The Adrian Moretti Manhattan knew would have fired three people before allowing himself to appear that human.
I stood behind Rebecca.
“You have five minutes.”
His eyes dropped automatically to my stomach.
I folded my arms.
“Don’t.”
He looked back at my face.
“Okay.”
That mattered.
Small.
But it mattered.
Rebecca stayed in the room.
Adrian didn’t object.
“Salvatore knew we were married,” he said.
The words hit me instantly.
“How long?”
“From the beginning.”
I stared.
“So almost nobody knew except the man most dangerous to me?”
“I thought knowing made you safer.”
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes.”
For once, he looked ashamed.
I waited.
“Why did you hide me?”
He sat down.
Not like a crime boss.
Like a husband finally forced to answer the question he had dodged for three years.
“My father publicly loved my mother.”
I frowned.
“Adrian—”
“Listen.”
So I did.
His father had made Adrian’s mother visible.
Jewelry.
Galas.
Photographs.
Everyone knew who she was.
When Adrian was sixteen, a rival group kidnapped her.
She survived.
Barely.
Afterward, his father became more violent.
More paranoid.
His mother left New York and never came back.
“I grew up believing secrecy kept people alive.”
My anger did not disappear.
“That explains you. It does not excuse what you did to me.”
“I know.”
I almost hated him for saying it correctly.
“Then the gala?”
His face changed.
That was the wound.
“I planned to announce us.”
My chest tightened.
“Don’t.”
“It’s true.”
“You had three years.”
“I know.”
He looked toward the rain-dark window.
“Salvatore came to me twenty minutes before the chairman announcement.”
“What did he say?”
“That federal investigators had reopened an old organized-crime case.”
“And?”
“He said if I identified you publicly, he would make sure your name appeared in the financial records they received.”
My stomach turned.
“My name?”
“Because of the legitimate models he had already stolen from your work.”
The shell companies.
Suddenly Rebecca leaned forward.
“He was preparing to frame her.”
Adrian nodded.
“If Claire became publicly connected to me, he could make her look like my financial architect.”
“So you denied being married.”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
“You could have warned me.”
“I wanted to handle it.”
“You mean control it.”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
That honesty hurt worse than a lie.
“You let me believe I was the shameful secret.”
“I know.”
“You let Vanessa stand beside you while people laughed.”
“I know.”
“You watched my face.”
He closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
I looked away before my own tears came.
Then Adrian said something else.
“Vanessa knows too.”
I turned back.
“What?”
“She knew we were married.”
My stomach dropped.
“Since when?”
“Two years.”
“Why?”
“Because Salvatore approached her family about a political marriage between us.”
A cold laugh escaped me.
“Political marriage?”
“He wanted Russo money and Moretti influence aligned.”
“And Vanessa?”
“She refused.”
That surprised me.
Adrian continued.
“She came to the gala because Salvatore asked her to make people believe there was still something between us.”
“And she agreed?”
“For her own reasons.”
I didn’t like that answer.
“Which were?”
Before Adrian could respond, Rebecca’s phone buzzed.
She looked at the screen.
Then at me.
“Claire.”
“What?”
“Vanessa Russo is downstairs.”
Adrian stood sharply.
Rebecca continued:
“She says she has proof Salvatore has been moving against Adrian for eighteen months.”
Then her expression hardened.
“And she says the real target isn’t Adrian.”
My hand moved protectively over my stomach.
May you like
Rebecca finished:
“It’s the baby.”
