Chapter 1 - THE RING BESIDE HIS PLATE
Adrien Moretti had faced hostile boardrooms, federal subpoenas, billion-dollar lawsuits, and men who had threatened to destroy everything his family built.
None of them frightened him as much as my wedding ring sitting beside his untouched anniversary dinner.
“Elena?”
His voice carried through the penthouse.
No answer.
He checked our bedroom again, as though I might somehow appear inside the empty section of the closet if he looked hard enough.
Then he called me.
Once.
Twice.
Nine times.
By the fifteenth call, I had turned my phone facedown on the cracked vinyl seat of the cab.
I was thirty blocks away.
The driver glanced at me in the mirror.
“You okay, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
It was an obvious lie.
My fingers were wrapped around the cream-colored box in my lap.
Inside were the tiny white socks.
Under them was the pregnancy test.
Two pink lines.
Three days earlier, I had sat on our bathroom floor crying because I had never been happier.
Now every time I looked at that box, happiness felt like evidence from somebody else’s life.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
I had given him an address when I climbed into the cab, but apparently I had spoken too softly.
“Brooklyn.”
I swallowed.
“Park Slope.”
My college roommate, Hannah Pierce, lived there with her daughter. We hadn’t spoken in three months because life had become complicated and I had become increasingly good at pretending mine wasn’t.
I texted her only four words.
Can I come over?
Her answer arrived immediately.
Door is unlocked.
Back at the penthouse, Adrien stood in our bedroom while Maria watched from the doorway.
“What did she take?”
Maria looked uncomfortable.
“Clothes. Books. Her mother’s photograph.”
“Jewelry?”
“No.”
“Cash?”
“No, Mr. Moretti.”
He opened the safe.
Everything remained.
The necklace from Paris.
The sapphire bracelet he bought me in Geneva.
Even the envelope containing ten thousand dollars in emergency cash.
Adrien’s expression hardened.
People who planned to return took valuables.
People who wanted to punish you sometimes took valuables too.
I had left everything because I wanted no excuse to return.
Then he spotted the small trash can beside my vanity.
Something white lay beneath a tissue.
Adrien reached down.
A pharmacy receipt.
Three days old.
He unfolded it.
One line had been circled by the cashier.
PRENATAL VITAMINS.
Adrien stopped breathing.
Maria whispered, “Mr. Moretti?”
He stared at the receipt.
Then at the empty closet.
Then at my ring.
His phone rang.
Vanessa Cole.
Adrien answered with a voice so cold Maria later told me she barely recognized it.
“What did you do?”
Vanessa went silent.
Adrien’s hand tightened around the receipt.
“Elena is gone.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I didn’t—”
“And she’s pregnant.”
Another silence.
This one was different.
May you like
Vanessa finally whispered:
“Adrien… if Elena is pregnant, you need to find her before your brother does.”
