Chapter 2 - THE ENVELOPE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
“In what capacity?” Rebecca asked.
I opened the staff lounge door before Vincent could answer for me.
“In every capacity necessary.”
Rebecca stood beneath the fluorescent lights in a charcoal suit, carrying a leather briefcase and wearing the expression of a woman who had already read the ending of a story everyone else was still struggling to understand.
She was forty-three, sharp-eyed, and famously difficult to intimidate.
Vincent had once described her as a shark in designer heels.
Tonight, I was grateful for the shark.
“Claire.” Her expression softened. “Are you all right?”
“I’m standing.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I know.”
She glanced at my hand, which had drifted back to my abdomen.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she said nothing.
Vincent noticed the exchange.
“What is this?” he demanded. “You hired a divorce attorney without telling me?”
“I hired an attorney because I discovered you were lying to me.”
“You could have spoken to me.”
“I tried that for five years.”
Rebecca stepped between us.
“Mr. Moretti, my client has requested that all communication concerning the dissolution of your marriage go through my office. You may receive formal paperwork after the holiday.”
Vincent laughed once, without humor.
“Dissolution? We had an argument.”
“No,” I said. “You brought another woman into my emergency department and called her your wife.”
His face reddened.
“Not here.”
“You chose here.”
A nurse passing with a chart slowed, then thought better of stopping.
Vincent lowered his voice.
“Claire, I understand that you’re upset. But you have no idea what’s been happening.”
“Then enlighten me.”
He looked at Rebecca.
“Can we speak privately?”
“No,” I answered.
For a moment, he looked almost wounded.
That nearly undid me.
I remembered our first apartment, where we ate takeout on overturned boxes because we couldn't afford a dining table. I remembered him staying awake beside my hospital bed after my appendectomy, reading terrible mystery novels aloud until I fell asleep.
I remembered the man who had once promised that if we ever had a family, our children would never have to wonder whether they were loved.
Then I remembered the seventeen unanswered calls.
“Tell me one thing,” I said. “Did you love her?”
Vincent's eyes flickered toward Vanessa's room.
“I don't know what love means anymore.”
The answer was worse than a confession.
Rebecca closed her briefcase.
“We're finished here.”
She led me toward the elevators, but Vincent followed.
“Claire, wait. At least let me explain the money.”
I stopped.
“What money?”
His silence lasted half a second too long.
Rebecca turned around.
“Perhaps you should explain it to me instead.”
Vincent's jaw tightened.
“There are business matters you don't understand.”
“I understand that $640,000 disappeared from our joint investment account over six months,” I said. “I understand that the transfers went through a company called VMR Holdings. And I understand that the company was registered to an address belonging to your brother.”
Vincent stared at me.
“How did you find that?”
“Your accountant emailed me a tax document by mistake.”
It was technically true. The accountant had sent the document to our shared email address, and the figures had led me to a bank statement I had never seen before.
I had spent three weeks tracing the transfers.
Three weeks watching my marriage collapse in slow motion.
“Those funds are secure,” Vincent said. “They were moved temporarily.”
“Into an account I can't access?”
“It's complicated.”
“Then let a judge simplify it.”
His expression hardened.
“You're making a serious mistake.”
Rebecca took one deliberate step toward him.
“Careful.”
For the first time that night, Vincent looked away.
I followed Rebecca into the elevator.
As the doors began to close, he said something that stopped my breath.
“Ask Vanessa why she came to Chicago tonight.”
The doors shut between us.
I turned to Rebecca.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know.”
“He was expecting her to come here?”
“Possibly.”
“He said she was eight weeks pregnant. He told me he was in New York.”
Rebecca pressed the button for the parking garage.
“Claire, we need to separate what you know from what you fear. We have evidence of an affair and suspicious financial transfers. We don't yet know how those things connect.”
I hated how reasonable she sounded.
Because reason had become the only thing keeping me upright.
In the parking garage, she unlocked her car and waited while I climbed inside.
Then she looked at me.
“Before we go anywhere, I need to ask you something. Are you pregnant?”
I stared at the dashboard.
“Yes.”
“How far along?”
“Approximately five weeks.”
“Does Vincent know?”
“No.”
“Does anyone else?”
“No.”
She exhaled slowly.
“Then for now, we keep that information private until we understand what we're dealing with.”
I looked at her.
“Do you think he could hurt me?”
“I think a man who has hidden money, maintained another relationship, and lied about where he was deserves to have his behavior examined very carefully.”
It wasn't an answer.
It was enough.
Rebecca drove me to my apartment, where I had been staying alone for the previous two weeks.
Before I went upstairs, she handed me a small envelope.
“Your accountant forwarded this to my office yesterday. He said Vincent's signature appeared on the authorization.”
Inside was a copy of a wire transfer dated six months earlier.
The recipient was a private fertility clinic in Manhattan.
The amount was $38,500.
I stared at the name.
Harrington Center for Reproductive Medicine.
My throat tightened.
That was the clinic Vincent and I had visited after our miscarriage.
We had completed fertility testing. We had discussed treatment. We had even talked about preserving embryos, although we never went through with it.
At least, I had never gone through with it.
Beneath the transfer confirmation was a second document.
A consent form.
My name appeared at the bottom.
The signature looked like mine.
But I had never signed it.
And beside my forged signature was a handwritten note.
Embryo transfer completed. Patient: Vanessa Reed.
I forgot how to breathe.
Rebecca took the paper from my shaking fingers.
“Claire?”
I stared through the windshield at the snow falling beneath the garage lights.
My husband had not merely cheated on me.
He might have used something that belonged to both of us to create a child with another woman.
May you like
And if that document was genuine, the betrayal had begun long before Christmas Eve.
It had begun with a decision made in a room where I wasn't present.
