Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Vanessa Russo
The rain began to fall in heavy, slate-gray sheets over Manhattan by four that afternoon. I took the subway back to Brooklyn—refusing to hail a cab that might be followed—and walked the three blocks from the Borough Hall station to my modest two-bedroom brownstone.
The apartment smelled of old pine floors and my lavender tea. It was small, a fraction of the size of the master closet in the 72nd Street penthouse, but it was mine. I had bought the secondhand sofa myself. I had spent the last three weekends painting the smaller bedroom a soft, warm cream, dreaming of white cribs and soft blankets.
I took off my damp coat, hung it on the brass hook behind the door, and placed a kettle on the small gas stove. My hands were still trembling from the confrontation.
*He knows.*
The thought circled my mind like a bird of prey. Adrian Moretti was not a man who accepted loss. When competitors tried to squeeze him out of real estate deals, he bankrupted them. When board members plotted against him, he bought their debts and owned their futures.
What would he do now that he knew his heir was growing inside the woman he had discarded?
A sharp, firm knock rattled the wood of my apartment door.
I froze. The apartment building had a locked front entrance downstairs. No one could get past the foyer unless someone buzzed them up.
The knock came again. Two distinct raps. Confident. Authoritative.
I walked slowly to the door and looked through the brass peephole.
Standing in the dim, wallpapered hallway, his hair dark from the rain and his overcoat damp at the shoulders, was Adrian. Marco stood three paces behind him, holding an umbrella and a large manila envelope.
“Claire,” Adrian said through the wood, his voice quiet but penetrating. “Open the door. If you don’t, I will buy this entire building in the next twenty minutes and remove the door myself.”
I knew he wasn’t bluffing. That was the sickening part. He had the liquid capital to buy a Brooklyn block before dinner if it suited his mood.
I undid the deadbolt and pulled the door open six inches, keeping the chain locked. “Go away, Adrian.”
Adrian looked exhausted. The polished, unassailable CEO was gone. In his place was a man whose dark eyes were bloodshot, his tie loosened by half an inch, the shadow of a five-o'clock stubble darkening his square jaw.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“There is nothing to talk about. The divorce decree was signed by Judge Vance. We have no legal ties.”
“You are carrying my child, Claire. That makes us tied for the rest of our lives.”
“You didn’t want me in your life,” I spat, anger burning through my fatigue. “You made that abundantly clear sixty-three days ago. Or did you forget that speech? ‘Let’s be practical, Claire. This arrangement has run its course.’”
Adrian flinched. The reaction was subtle, but I had studied that face for three years; I knew the microscopic shifts in his expression.
“Let me in,” he said softly. “Five minutes. If you still want me to leave after five minutes, I will walk out that door.”
I stared at him. The sheer weight of his presence was suffocating. But I also knew that if I refused, he would station guards outside my door, suffocating my life until I broke.
I closed the door, slid the chain off, and opened it wide.
Adrian stepped inside. His eyes swept across my modest living room—the secondhand furniture, the small stack of freelance interior design blueprints on the dining table, the single mug on the counter. His jaw tightened as if the sight of my independent life was a physical slap to his pride.
“Marco, wait downstairs,” Adrian instructed without looking back. Marco nodded, pulled the door shut, and left us alone.
Adrian turned to face me. He stood in the center of my small living room, making the high ceilings feel low and cramped.
“You’re seeing Vanessa,” I blurted out before he could speak, the poison that had festered in my heart all afternoon finally spilling out. “That’s why you were at the hospital. You put me through three years of a cold, passionless marriage while you mourned her, and the second you got rid of me, you ran right back to her bedside.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed, a dark, dangerous light igniting behind them. “Is that what you think happened?”
“I heard the doctor, Adrian! Miss Russo needs rest. Her heart condition. You were there with her medical files!”
Adrian reached inside his coat pocket, pulled out the thick manila envelope Marco had been holding, and tossed it onto my dining table. It landed with a dull thud against the blueprints.
“Read it,” Adrian said coldly.
“I don't care about her medical records—”
“It’s not her medical records, Claire,” Adrian cut in, his voice rising, raw with an emotion I had never heard from him before. “It’s the report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the NYPD Special Task Force. Vanessa Russo’s father ran the logistics arm for the Castiglione syndicate. Three months ago, he went into federal custody. The syndicate believed I held the digital ledgers his father hid before his arrest.”
I stopped breathing. The air turned brittle.
“They targeted you,” Adrian whispered, stepping toward me, his hands shaking slightly. “A sniper took out my rear car window on the FDR Drive four days before I asked for that divorce. They sent a courier to my office with photographs of you walking into your design studio, a red crosshair painted over your chest. They gave me an ultimatum: give up the ledgers, or they would kill my wife to prove they were serious.”
The room seemed to tilt. I reached out, gripping the back of the sofa to steady myself.
“What?” I whispered.
May you like
“I didn't discard you, Claire,” Adrian said, his voice cracking down the middle. “I stripped you of my name because being Claire Moretti was a death sentence.”
***
