Chapter 7 - THE MAN OUTSIDE MY DOOR
I didn’t open the door.
That decision probably saved my life.
Gabriel knocked again.
“Mrs. Moretti?”
I called hotel security.
Then Vincent.
He answered on the first ring.
“Claire?”
“Gabriel is outside my room.”
Silence.
Then his voice changed.
“Do not open that door.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Where is hotel security?”
“Coming.”
“I’m calling Harris.”
A shadow moved beneath the door.
Gabriel spoke again.
“Mrs. Moretti, Mr. Moretti sent me.”
Vincent heard him through the phone.
“No, I didn’t.”
The handle moved.
Locked.
Then stopped.
Hotel security arrived from both ends of the hallway.
Gabriel didn’t resist.
The gun turned out to be licensed.
That didn’t make the situation less frightening.
His explanation was worse.
Matteo had contacted him.
Offered money.
Gabriel refused.
Then Matteo threatened his teenage daughter.
Gabriel had come to warn me.
“Why the gun?” Detective Harris asked.
“Because Matteo has men watching this hotel.”
Gabriel produced photographs.
Me entering.
Me leaving.
Vincent visiting.
Matteo had tracked every move.
Then Gabriel handed over a flash drive.
“I copied this from Mr. Matteo’s server three months ago.”
Vincent stared.
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because I didn’t know who inside your organization I could trust.”
Fair.
The drive contained payments.
Vanessa.
Drivers.
Contractors.
Security staff.
And one document that made Vincent go completely still.
A contract labeled SUCCESSION CONTINGENCY.
If Vincent died without a legal heir, Matteo would gain temporary voting control of Moretti Holdings.
But there was a second clause.
If Vincent’s spouse died while pregnant, succession rights remained suspended for five years during investigation of possible unborn inheritance claims.
Matteo hadn’t simply wanted my baby gone.
He needed me gone too.
Otherwise lawyers could challenge his control.
I stared at the page.
“This is insane.”
Vincent’s voice was ice.
“This is my family.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“This is what your family became.”
Something changed in his expression.
Maybe because I had finally separated him from it.
Maybe because he realized he had never separated himself.
Then Gabriel opened another folder.
“There’s more.”
An audio file.
Matteo’s voice.
“Claire is softer than Vincent. She’ll break first.”
Another man asked:
“And if the accident fails?”
Matteo laughed.
“Then use the marriage.”
I stopped breathing.
“Meaning?”
The recording continued.
“Keep Vincent busy. Keep the wife lonely. Make her doubt him. By the time we need her isolated, she’ll already have nowhere to turn.”
I looked at Vanessa through the observation window.
She had not simply exploited our broken marriage.
Matteo had encouraged it.
But the recording did not absolve Vincent.
That was the worst part.
Matteo had succeeded because Vincent gave him exactly the weakness he needed.
Distance.
Silence.
Fifteen minutes.
Vincent listened to the recording twice.
Then walked out.
I followed him into the corridor.
“Where are you going?”
“To end this.”
My stomach tightened.
“With a gun?”
He stopped.
For several seconds, the old Vincent fought with something new.
Then he removed the weapon from beneath his jacket.
He handed it to Gabriel.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“With evidence.”
That was the first moment I wondered whether the man I had married was finally becoming someone else.
Then Harris’s phone rang.
His expression darkened.
“What?”
He ended the call.
“Matteo is gone.”
“Where?”
“We don’t know.”
Then he looked at me.
“But he left a message at your old house.”
Vincent’s face hardened.
“What message?”
Harris answered:
May you like
“He wants Claire to come alone.”
And according to Matteo, he had the final page of my mother’s testimony.
