Chapter 3 - The Shadow of Vanessa Russo
With trembling hands, I unlocked the window latch and pushed the heavy frame up six inches. A blast of freezing winter air rushed into the warm room, carrying the scent of expensive cologne and damp wool.
"Are you insane, Adrian?" I whispered furiously, refusing to open it any wider. "You're a billionaire hedge-fund CEO climbing up a Brooklyn fire escape like a common prowler! Go home."
"I am not leaving until you talk to me, Claire," he said, his voice husky and rough from the cold. He knelt down so his face was level with mine through the opening. "You're freezing. Let me inside for ten minutes. That's all I ask. Ten minutes, and if you still want me to leave, I'll walk away."
"You walked away two months ago!" I snapped, the anger I had buried for sixty-three days boiling to the surface. "You stood in our bedroom and told me you had nothing to give me! And now you show up here because you found out about the baby?"
"I was at the hospital because of Vanessa," he said suddenly, his voice tightening.
The mention of her name felt like salt in an open wound. "I know. The doctor said her treatment is progressing. Why aren't you by her bedside holding her hand, Adrian? Why are you here?"
Adrian closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if battling an invisible migraine. When he opened them, the intensity in his gaze made me take a half-step back.
"Vanessa's father was my father's business partner," he said, speaking slowly, deliberately. "When her father died, he left her guardianship and medical trust in my family's hands. She has a degenerative cardiac condition. I pay her bills, Claire. I coordinate her specialists. But I do not love her. I haven't loved her in five years."
"You said her name in your sleep!" I cried out, my voice cracking under the weight of that humiliating memory. "Two weeks before you asked for a divorce, you woke up in a cold sweat gasping her name! Do you have any idea what that felt like? To lie in bed next to my husband and realize I was nothing more than a placeholder for a ghost?"
Adrian's eyes widened in genuine shock. "Claire... that night, Vanessa's doctors called to tell me she had flatlined during surgery. I didn't say her name because I wanted her. I said it because I thought she had died on my watch."
"It doesn't change anything," I said, shaking my head as tears blurred my vision. "You shut me out. Every time she had a crisis, every time your past called, you closed the door in my face. You treated our marriage like a business contract that you couldn't wait to terminate."
"I did it to protect you," he murmured, his hand reaching through the gap to touch the hem of my sweater.
"Protect me from what?"
"From my world," Adrian whispered, his gaze dropping to my stomach. "From the enemies my father made, from the press, and from the poison that runs in my family. I thought you would be safer far away from me with a clean break. But I was a fool, Claire. I didn't know you were carrying our child."
"She is my child, Adrian," I said firmly, emphasizing the pronoun. "I am the one who carried her through the nausea, the exhaustion, and the heartbreak of our divorce. You gave up your rights to this family the moment you handed me that settlement agreement."
"I don't care about the agreement," he replied, his voice hardening with that fierce, unyielding authority I knew so well. "I will rewrite every law in this state if I have to. That child is half of me, Claire. And more importantly, you are still the only woman who holds my soul. I made a catastrophic mistake, and I will spend every remaining breath of my life earning you back."
Before I could reply, he pulled an envelope from his inner coat pocket and slid it through the opening onto the floor.
"What is this?" I asked warily.
May you like
"The medical records you saw Marco holding today," Adrian said quietly. "Read them. See the truth for yourself. And tomorrow morning, I am sending a car to take you to the best obstetrician in North America. Whether you let me in the room or not, Claire, you and our baby will have the world."
Without waiting for my answer, Adrian stepped back into the snow and climbed down the fire escape, disappearing into the dark Brooklyn street.
