Chapter 3 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
Claire looked at Vincent’s outstretched hand.
It was calloused. Strong. It didn't belong to the polished, sterile world Preston had locked her in for the past nine months.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“Somewhere safe,” Vincent replied. “Somewhere he can’t ever correct you again.”
“Claire, if you walk out that door with him, you get nothing!” Preston yelled, struggling uselessly against the chair. “I’ll freeze the accounts! I’ll lock you out of the house!”
Claire looked at the boarding pass in her hand.
“You were already leaving me, Preston,” she said, her voice remarkably steady.
She placed her hand in Vincent’s.
His grip was firm, anchoring her in a room that felt like it was spinning.
Vincent didn’t run. He walked her slowly, deliberately through the dining room of Aurelio’s. The elite of Wintermere parted for them like water. Nobody made a sound. Nobody tried to stop them.
The elevator doors closed, cutting off the sight of Preston sitting helplessly at the ruined table.
As they descended forty-two floors, the silence between Claire and Vincent was heavy, thick with a hundred unasked questions.
“My cheek hurts,” she said quietly. It was a stupid, meaningless thing to say, but she needed to hear her own voice to prove she was actually awake.
Vincent reached into his breast pocket and handed her a pristine, folded white linen handkerchief.
“Hold it against the skin,” he said gently. “The cold will help with the swelling.”
“Thank you.” She pressed it to her face. “How did you know my name?”
The elevator chimed, opening into the subterranean parking garage.
“I know a lot of things about you, Claire,” Vincent said, leading her toward a sleek, armored black sedan idling near the elevators. A driver in a dark suit immediately opened the back door for them.
“That’s not an answer,” she said, refusing to get in.
Vincent stopped. He looked at her, his dark eyes studying the defiance that Preston had spent nine months trying to beat out of her.
“Your husband is a financial fixer,” Vincent said, his tone turning entirely business. “He moves money for people who don’t want their money tracked. Three weeks ago, fifty million dollars vanished from one of my family’s offshore accounts. Preston was the architect of that account.”
Claire’s blood ran cold. “Preston stole from the Mafia?”
“Preston stole from me,” Vincent corrected. “And tonight, he was planning to flee to Geneva with the decryption codes to access it. He brought your father’s watch tonight because he was going to hand it over to a buyer in Switzerland. It’s an antique worth more than your house.”
“He told me it was lost,” Claire repeated, the sheer scale of the manipulation making her sick.
“Get in the car, Claire,” Vincent said softly. “We have to move before Preston realizes I took his leverage.”
“His leverage?”
“You,” Vincent said.
Claire got into the car.
The city of Wintermere blurred past the tinted windows. The rain began to fall, streaking the glass with neon light.
Vincent didn’t take her to a safe house. He didn’t take her to a police station.
The sedan pulled into a desolate, industrial park on the edge of the harbor. They stopped in front of a heavily reinforced brick building.
“Where are we?” Claire asked.
“Preston’s private office,” Vincent said, stepping out into the rain. “The one he doesn’t tell you about.”
Claire followed him. Two of Vincent’s men were already there, standing over a shattered glass door.
Vincent led her down a dark hallway and into a massive, minimalist office. The walls were lined with monitors.
“My men cracked the door ten minutes before I sat down at Aurelio’s,” Vincent explained, walking behind Preston’s massive mahogany desk.
“Why bring me here?” Claire asked, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the chill.
“Because Preston didn’t just steal my money,” Vincent said. “He stole your past. And I need you to see it before he tries to lie his way out of this.”
Vincent opened the top drawer of Preston’s desk.
He pulled out a silver picture frame and placed it face-up on the leather blotter.
“He kept this hidden from you,” Vincent said.
Claire stepped forward. She looked down at the photograph.
It was an old Polaroid. Faded at the edges.
It showed a little girl, maybe eight years old, with missing front teeth, sitting on the shoulders of a tall, smiling man. Her father.
But it was the third person in the photo that made the breath leave Claire’s lungs entirely.
Standing next to her father, looking awkward and bruised but fiercely loyal, was a teenage boy.
He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a cut on his lip.
Claire stared at the teenage boy, and then slowly looked up at the Mafia boss standing across the desk from her.
“Vincent?” she whispered.
“Your father was an accountant, Claire,” Vincent said quietly. “But twenty years ago, he did the books for a very dangerous man. My uncle. When my uncle tried to have me killed to secure his power, your father hid me in his basement for three weeks. He saved my life.”
The reversal hit Claire with the force of a physical blow.
Vincent wasn’t using her as a pawn to get to Preston.
He had been watching over her all along.
Suddenly, the heavy metal door at the front of the warehouse slammed shut with a deafening crash.
The monitors on the walls flickered and died.
“Nobody move,” a voice echoed from the hallway.
Vincent drew a gun from his shoulder holster with terrifying speed, stepping in front of Claire.
Footsteps echoed on the concrete.
Preston walked into the office.
His face was pale, his tie undone, but he wasn’t alone.
He was flanked by four men carrying automatic weapons.
“You really think I didn’t have a silent alarm on this office, Moretti?” Preston sneered, stepping into the light. “I wasn’t running from you tonight. I was running from them.”
May you like
Preston pointed at the armed men beside him.
“And they are very eager to get their money back.”
