Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Disappeared in the RainThe first thing Aleandro Bellini noticed after his wife left was the silence.
Not the ordinary silence of his enormous Chicago mansion. He had lived with that kind of silence for years, long before Emily arrived.
This was different.
It was the absence of someone who had made a cold house feel like a home.
Her favorite mug sat beside the coffee machine. A half-finished book rested on the living room sofa. Upstairs, a tiny pair of pink knitted socks lay on the nursery dresser.
And on the marble table, beneath the chandelier, sat his black credit card.
Aleandro stared at it.
His sister Isabella was still speaking.
“Honestly, Aleandro, you handled that better than I expected. She needed to understand that being married to you doesn't put her above accountability.”
He turned toward her.
“Get out.”
Isabella blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“I said get out of my house.”
Her expression hardened.
“I'm the one trying to protect this family.”
“Then protect it somewhere else.”
She gathered the financial statements, but Aleandro caught her wrist before she could lift the final page.
“Leave those.”
For a second, something resembling panic crossed her face.
Then she smiled.
“Of course.”
When she disappeared down the hallway, Aleandro picked up his phone.
“Marco.”
His security chief answered immediately.
“Yes, boss?”
“Where is Emily?”
A pause.
“She passed the front gates twenty-three minutes ago.”
“Did anyone follow her?”
“You ordered us to let her leave.”
“I didn't ask what I ordered.”
“No, sir. Nobody followed her.”
Aleandro closed his eyes.
He had spent fifteen years building an organization that controlled half the shipping contracts along Chicago's southern waterfront. Men twice his age feared disappointing him.
Yet he had just allowed his seven-month-pregnant wife to drive alone into a storm.
“Find her,” he said.
Then he stopped.
He remembered her expression when he had told her she couldn't leave.
Not fear.
Disappointment.
“Make sure she's safe,” he corrected. “Do not approach her. Do not frighten her.”
“Yes, boss.”
Across town, Emily's windshield wipers struggled against the rain.
Her hands trembled around the steering wheel.
She had no destination.
Her mother had died six years earlier. Her father had disappeared from her life when she was seventeen. Her closest friend, Hannah Porter, lived in a small apartment above a bookstore in Lincoln Park.
Emily could call her.
But she couldn't bear the thought of explaining why she was leaving her marriage.
Not yet.
A sharp pain tightened across her abdomen.
She inhaled slowly.
“Easy, sweetheart.”
The baby moved.
Emily tried to smile.
Then another cramp came.
Stronger.
She pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and rested her forehead against the steering wheel.
Her phone rang.
Aleandro.
She watched his name illuminate the screen.
For two years, that name had meant safety.
Now it made her stomach twist.
She declined the call.
A text arrived.
Emily, please tell me where you are.
She typed three words.
Leave me alone.
Then deleted them.
Instead, she turned off her phone.
Twenty minutes later, Hannah opened her apartment door wearing pajama pants and holding a mug of tea.
“Emily?”
One look at her friend's soaked clothes and swollen eyes changed everything.
“Oh, honey.”
Emily tried to speak.
She couldn't.
Hannah pulled her inside.
Only when Emily sat on the couch did she finally whisper, “He thinks I stole from him.”
Hannah stared.
“Aleandro?”
Emily nodded.
“And he thinks I married him for his money.”
Hannah set down her tea.
“That son of a—”
“Please.”
Hannah stopped.
Emily rested both hands over her belly.
“I just need somewhere quiet.”
“You can stay as long as you want.”
Emily began crying.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
She cried the way exhausted people cry when they've spent too long pretending they're strong.
Hannah sat beside her and held her hand.
Then Emily's phone, now switched on to contact her obstetrician, began vibrating with incoming messages.
One was from an unknown number.
You should have stayed in that mansion, Emily.
She stared at the screen.
Another message appeared.
Leaving doesn't make you safe.
Attached was a photograph.
Her car.
Parked outside Hannah's building.
Taken less than a minute earlier.
Emily rose so abruptly that Hannah reached for her.
“What happened?”
Emily showed her the photograph.
Hannah hurried to the window.
A black SUV sat across the street.
Its headlights were off.
“Call the police,” Hannah whispered.
Before Emily could answer, her phone rang again.
Unknown number.
She hesitated, then accepted.
A man's voice spoke softly.
“Mrs. Bellini, your husband isn't the person you need to fear.”
Emily's blood turned cold.
“Who is this?”
The man ignored her question.
“Ask yourself why his sister needed you out of the house tonight.”
May you like
The call ended.
And across the street, the black SUV slowly pulled away.
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