Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN FROM THE HOTEL
Z
The black SUV disappeared before the police could arrive.
June wanted to report everything.
I wanted to leave.
We compromised by closing the bookstore and moving upstairs while I tried to decide whether calling Adrien was the most dangerous thing I could do—or the safest.
My prepaid phone rang.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then a text appeared.
MY NAME IS VANESSA COLE. PLEASE DON’T HANG UP.
My stomach twisted.
The phone rang again.
I answered.
“What do you want?”
“Elena?”
Her voice sounded nothing like I expected.
Not seductive.
Not triumphant.
Scared.
“I’m sorry.”
I nearly laughed.
“For sleeping with my husband?”
“I didn’t sleep with your husband.”
I closed my eyes.
“Of course.”
“I’m engaged.”
“Congratulations.”
“To a woman.”
That silenced me.
Vanessa continued quickly.
“Her name is Rachel. She’s a pediatric surgeon in Boston. She currently thinks I’m at a corporate fraud conference because Adrien decided the fewer people who knew what I found, the safer everyone would be.”
I leaned against the wall.
“What did you find?”
“I can’t explain all of it over the phone. But the hotel photograph was manipulated.”
“I saw his hand on you.”
“He was moving me.”
“Where?”
“Away from a bullet.”
Silence.
Vanessa sent me a video.
Hotel security footage.
I watched Adrien and Vanessa leave an elevator.
Two security men moved ahead.
Another followed behind.
Vanessa’s coat sleeve was torn.
Adrien kept one hand against her back while his head turned toward every doorway they passed.
It didn’t look intimate.
It looked exactly like what Vanessa said it was.
An evacuation.
My knees weakened.
June caught my elbow.
“Are you okay?”
No.
Because part of me wanted the photograph to be proof.
Proof would have made leaving simple.
If Adrien had cheated, I could hate him.
But if he hadn’t, then I had to confront a more complicated truth.
My husband had not betrayed our vows with Vanessa.
He had simply made me feel lonely enough to believe he had.
“Why were you there?” I asked.
Vanessa explained the shell companies.
The missing money.
The attempted assassination.
The fact that somebody inside Adrien’s organization had access to private family schedules.
“And your medical records,” she added.
I went cold.
“He knows?”
“I’m sorry.”
My free hand covered my stomach.
“When?”
“This morning.”
I closed my eyes.
I pictured Adrien learning from some security report instead of from me.
The tiny socks inside my suitcase suddenly felt heartbreaking.
“How did he react?”
Vanessa hesitated.
“Elena, I have worked around very dangerous men for years.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I have never seen anyone look the way Adrien did when he realized you were going to tell him.”
I swallowed.
Vanessa continued.
“He hasn’t left the apartment except to search for you. He hasn’t slept. He hasn’t eaten. And before you think I’m defending him, I’m not.”
I opened my eyes.
“He was an idiot.”
Despite everything, a broken laugh escaped me.
Vanessa sighed.
“He thought not telling you about his problems was the same as protecting you.”
“That sounds like him.”
“He was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“But the person who sent you that photo didn’t just want you angry.”
My smile disappeared.
“They wanted me isolated.”
“Yes.”
June, listening from several feet away, looked toward the window.
I asked the question I had been avoiding.
“Why?”
Vanessa’s answer came quietly.
“Because they know your baby changes everything.”
Adrien’s organization had operated under old rules.
Rules I despised and mostly refused to learn.
But one mattered now.
Bloodline.
Adrien had no children.
His younger brother had died eleven years earlier.
His father was dead.
If Adrien died without an heir, control of the legitimate Moretti holdings—and influence over everything beneath them—would become a battlefield.
My pregnancy changed that.
Someone had discovered it before Adrien.
Which meant someone had been watching me closely enough to know something I had barely accepted myself.
The black SUV returned at 4:12 p.m.
This time it stopped.
Two men stepped out.
June gripped her baseball bat.
I grabbed her wrist.
“No.”
“Elena—”
“If they came because of me, you’re staying upstairs.”
“You have completely lost your mind.”
The first man reached the bookstore entrance.
Then the glass shattered.
June screamed.
I dragged her behind the counter as another window exploded.
They weren’t coming to talk.
Outside, tires screamed.
A second vehicle slammed to a stop.
Men poured onto the sidewalk.
Gunfire cracked through the street.
June pressed both hands over her ears.
I knew that black sedan.
I knew the license plate.
I knew the man who emerged from the rear passenger door before his bodyguards could stop him.
Adrien.
He crossed the sidewalk while bullets were still striking brick.
“ELENA!”
I rose before June could stop me.
Adrien saw me.
Everything on his face changed.
For five years I had watched powerful men lower their voices when my husband entered rooms.
I had watched Adrien negotiate with senators, billionaires, union bosses and criminals without displaying a single unnecessary emotion.
But when he saw me behind that broken window, there was nothing controlled about him.
Fear.
Pure fear.
He entered the bookstore.
His gaze swept over me.
Face.
Arms.
Torso.
Looking for blood.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He stepped closer.
I stepped backward.
Adrien stopped immediately.
That hurt him.
I could see it.
His voice lowered.
“Elena.”
“You knew where I was.”
“Vanessa traced the prepaid phone when you answered her call.”
I looked toward the window.
“You brought them here?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“We’re trying to determine that.”
Gunfire outside stopped.
Luca entered.
“They’re gone. One vehicle escaped north.”
Adrien never took his eyes off me.
“You’re coming with me.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
It was the old Adrien.
The man accustomed to obedience.
Then he saw my expression and forced himself to change the sentence.
“Please come with me.”
I stared at him.
“You don’t get to order me home.”
“I’m not asking you to come home.”
That surprised me.
“I have a secure property twenty minutes away. June can come. Vanessa is already there. You can have an entire floor. I won’t enter it without permission.”
“Adrien—”
“They fired into a bookstore because you were standing inside it.”
For the first time his voice cracked.
“I almost got here too late.”
Silence settled between us.
June slowly lowered her baseball bat.
I looked at Adrien.
Then at my stomach.
He followed my movement.
His eyes dropped to my hand.
Neither of us spoke.
His expression changed so profoundly that I almost looked away.
“You know,” I whispered.
He nodded once.
“How?”
“Someone accessed your doctor’s records.”
Anger rose through my fear.
“You investigated me?”
“No. The person who sent the photograph accessed them first.”
His eyes stayed on mine.
“They knew before I did.”
The pain in those words was impossible to miss.
I swallowed.
“I was going to tell you.”
“Last night.”
“Yes.”
Adrien looked away for one second.
Then back.
“I saw the ring.”
My throat tightened.
He stepped no closer.
“Elena, I did not sleep with Vanessa.”
“I know.”
His shoulders loosened, but only slightly.
“That doesn’t fix everything.”
“I know.”
That answer surprised me more than any denial could have.
“The hotel wasn’t the whole reason I left.”
“I know that too.”
Outside, Luca called Adrien’s name.
Another vehicle had been spotted.
Adrien extended his hand.
Not touching me.
Just offering it.
“For tonight,” he said. “Let me keep you safe.”
I stared at the hand I had held on our wedding day.
Then I looked at the shattered glass covering June’s bookstore floor.
I placed my hand in his.
But before Adrien could close his fingers around mine, another shot cracked from somewhere across the street.
His body slammed into me.
May you like
We hit the floor.
And when I opened my eyes, there was blood on Adrien’s shirt.
