Chapter 3 - THE EMPTY PENTHOUSE
Lucian landed at Teterboro at 6:11 that evening.
He did not wait for the stairs to settle completely before stepping onto the wet tarmac.
Marco was waiting.
“Hospital.”
Marco did not move.
Lucian’s expression hardened.
“What?”
“She checked out.”
Lucian stopped.
“With a newborn?”
“Against recommendation, but medically cleared.”
“Where did she go?”
Marco’s silence lasted one second too long.
Lucian crossed the distance between them.
“Where is my wife?”
“We don’t know.”
That answer had not been spoken to Lucian Moretti in fifteen years.
He stared at Marco.
“You lost a woman who gave birth this morning?”
“She dismissed her detail.”
“They work for me.”
“She reminded them they also work for Moretti Atlantic.”
Lucian’s face changed.
Marco continued carefully.
“She showed them incorporation documents bearing her signature.”
Lucian understood immediately.
Serena knew.
He entered the car.
“Home.”
The penthouse looked unchanged when he arrived.
That made it worse.
Her tea remained in the kitchen cabinet.
Her slippers were beside the bed.
A pregnancy book lay open on the nightstand.
But Serena was gone.
So were the clothes she actually loved instead of the ones stylists purchased for her.
Her passport was gone.
Her father’s photographs were gone.
The old blue ceramic bowl they had bought for twelve dollars during their first year together was gone.
Lucian entered the nursery.
The crib was empty.
He stood there for a long time.
Then he noticed something on the changing table.
His wedding ring.
No.
Hers.
Serena had left it beside the baby monitor.
Lucian picked it up.
For the first time since his father’s funeral, his hands shook.
His phone rang.
Palermo.
He rejected it.
It rang again.
Rejected.
Again.
Lucian hurled the phone across the nursery.
It struck the wall and shattered.
Marco appeared at the door.
“Get me another phone.”
“Yes.”
“And find Serena.”
Marco hesitated.
“Legally?”
Lucian turned.
The warning in Marco’s question was unmistakable.
Seven years earlier, no one would have dared ask.
“Legally,” Lucian said.
Marco nodded.
Then he placed an envelope on the dresser.
“This arrived.”
Lucian recognized Marcus Chen’s firm.
Divorce papers.
He read the first page twice.
Serena requested dissolution of marriage, primary physical custody, and enforcement of her ownership interest in Moretti Atlantic Holdings.
Lucian laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“She planned this.”
“No,” Marco said.
Lucian looked up.
Marco had served him for twelve years and rarely contradicted him.
“She prepared to survive it. That isn’t the same thing.”
Lucian’s jaw tightened.
“Careful.”
“I have been careful for twelve years.”
Marco’s voice remained respectful.
“Maybe everyone around you has been too careful.”
Lucian stared at him.
Then came the sentence no one else had possessed enough courage to say.
“You missed your son’s birth because you were in Sicily with Bianca Vale.”
Lucian’s expression turned lethal.
Marco did not retreat.
“Whatever the reason was, that is what Serena knows.”
Lucian looked down at the ring in his palm.
Bianca.
The photograph.
Palermo.
Suddenly he understood the shape of what Serena had seen.
And for the first time, panic broke through his anger.
“Bianca isn’t my mistress.”
Marco’s eyebrows moved.
“Then you should have told your wife why you were there.”
“I couldn’t.”
“And now?”
Lucian looked toward the empty crib.
“Now I may not have a wife to tell.”
Three days passed.
No Serena.
No Leo.
Lucian slept perhaps four hours total.
Then Marcus Chen called.
“Your wife and son are safe.”
“Where?”
“I’m not authorized to disclose that.”
“You are speaking about my child.”
“And your wife has not denied reasonable contact. She has requested temporary boundaries while recovering from childbirth.”
“I want to see my son.”
“That can be arranged.”
Lucian’s grip tightened around the phone.
“And Serena?”
“That is Serena’s decision.”
The meeting took place the next afternoon at Marcus’s office.
Lucian arrived ten minutes early.
Serena arrived exactly on time.
She entered carrying Leo.
Lucian forgot how to breathe.
The baby was impossibly small.
Dark hair.
Serena’s mouth.
Perhaps his nose.
Lucian rose.
Serena stopped several feet away.
“You can hold him.”
That hurt more than refusal would have.
Permission.
He needed permission to touch his own son.
Serena transferred Leo carefully into his arms.
Lucian had held guns steadier.
Leo opened gray-blue eyes and stared up at him.
Something inside Lucian collapsed.
“Hello,” he whispered.
Serena looked away.
Lucian touched one tiny cheek.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not the person you owe that apology to.”
He looked at her.
“You think Bianca and I—”
“I saw the photograph.”
“It isn’t what you think.”
Serena gave him a tired smile.
“Seven years, Lucian. Do you understand that I don’t even care anymore whether that photograph shows adultery?”
He went still.
“You left.”
Her voice remained soft.
“That is the part you still don’t understand. I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, and you chose secrecy over me. Again.”
Lucian looked down at Leo.
“What if the secrecy was protecting you?”
“Then you should have trusted me enough to let me decide whether I wanted that protection.”
Before Lucian could answer, Marcus entered.
His expression was grim.
“Serena.”
“What?”
“We have a problem.”
He placed a photograph on the table.
It showed Serena leaving the hospital with Leo.
Taken from across the street.
Another photograph followed.
Elena entering an apartment building in Brooklyn.
Then a third.
Marcus spoke quietly.
“Someone has been following you.”
Lucian’s entire body changed.
“Who?”
Marcus looked directly at him.
“That’s what I was hoping you could tell us.”
Lucian stared at the photographs.
On the bottom corner of the final image was a tiny handwritten symbol.
A black crown.
Lucian’s blood went cold.
Because Bianca Vale had shown him that same symbol in Palermo.
May you like
And the men using it had not followed Serena to expose an affair.
They had followed her because they wanted Lucian Moretti’s newborn son.
