Chapter 2 - THE COLD SIDE OF THE BED
The grandfather clock struck five.
Lorenzo pushed open the heavy bedroom doors.
The room smelled of nothing.
No vanilla perfume.
No cedar smoke.
Just cold, stagnant air.
His head pounded from cheap scotch and three hours of interrogating men who lied for a living.
He unbuttoned his collar with shaking fingers.
“Vivienne?”
Silence answered him.
The king-sized bed was made with military precision.
No rumpled sheets.
No indented pillows.
Lorenzo stopped in the center of the Persian rug.
A strange tightness seized his chest.
It was the same reflex that kept him alive in back alleys: the sudden realization that the room had been cleared.
He walked to the edge of the bed.
On the linen pillow rested a circle of platinum.
Her wedding band.
Beside it sat a black flash drive.
Lorenzo did not touch the drive.
His eyes remained locked on the ring.
The platinum caught the gray dawn light leaking between the heavy drapes.
“Vivienne?”
He said it louder this time.
His voice bounced off the high ceiling and died.
He ripped open the walk-in closet.
Half the hangers hung empty.
Her designer gowns still hung encased in plastic.
The emerald necklace he bought her for their anniversary lay untouched on the vanity.
She had taken two pairs of denim.
Her heavy winter coat.
Her mother’s worn leather journal.
Nothing he had ever paid for remained missing.
Lorenzo turned on his heel and strode into the adjoining bathroom.
The medicine cabinet stood wide open.
Her prescription bottles were gone.
Then his eyes dropped to the small marble wastebasket beside the sink.
Inside lay a torn piece of white paper.
Lorenzo dropped to one knee.
He reached into the bin with fingers that had never trembled during a firefight.
The paper was thick cardstock.
A clinic logo was stamped across the top: St. Jude Women’s Health.
Lorenzo smoothed out the creases against his thigh.
His breath caught in his throat.
Patient: Vivienne Falcone.
Gestational Age: Eight Weeks.
Status: Viable pregnancy. High risk due to previous trauma.
The room seemed to tilt sideways.
Lorenzo stared at the black-and-white sonogram image stapled to the corner.
A tiny, indistinct smudge.
His child.
He remembered her standing by the fireplace at two in the morning.
He remembered her hand pressed tightly against the pocket of her robe.
“I only wanted to know you were alive.”
And his own voice, poisoned with pride and fear:
“I never loved you, Vivienne.”
A sound tore from Lorenzo’s throat—half curse, half sob.
He crushed the sonogram against his chest.
He had shoved a knife into the only pure thing left in his ruined life.
He bolted back into the bedroom and grabbed the black drive from the pillow.
He shoved it into his laptop on the desk.
The screen flickered green, decrypting the partition.
Folder after folder filled the display.
Wire transfers.
Audio transcripts.
Encrypted port manifests.
Vivienne had cracked the safe he believed was impenetrable.
She had bypassed his firewall.
She had downloaded the complete record of the Falcone syndicate’s internal corruption.
And at the very bottom lay an unsent email drafted to the United States Attorney.
The subject line was two words:
FULL IMMUNITY.
Before Lorenzo could read the text, his encrypted phone screamed on the nightstand.
He snatched it up.
“Speak.”
Mateo’s voice was ragged on the other end.
“Boss, we have a catastrophic breach.”
“Where?”
“Silvio’s crew just intercepted an emergency ping from Route 3.”
Lorenzo’s blood ran ice-cold.
“What ping?”
“A private car registered to your father-in-law’s old estate was just forced off the road by two black Suburbans.”
May you like
Mateo paused, his voice trembling.
“They’re shooting to kill, Lorenzo.”
