Vanessa let out a low whimper. “Daddy… he knows. He knows about Daniel Bennett.”
Richard shot his daughter a look so venomous it could have killed her where she sat. “Be quiet, Vanessa.”
“Daniel Bennett wasn’t just a trucker, was he, Richard?” Vincent leaned forward, his dark eyes boring into the older man. “You hired him out of your private security slush fund. You paid him half a million dollars to take my newborn daughter from an airfield in Rockford and hide her in a foster home in northern Wisconsin under a false identity.”
Richard let out a soft, dry laugh. He leaned back, crossing his legs.
“And what if I did, Vincent?” Richard said, dropping all pretense of gentility. His voice turned hard, cynical, and ruthless. “What are you going to do? Shoot me? Call the Chicago police? Half the precinct commanders sit at my dinner table every Thanksgiving. Two of the judges who oversee the Cook County circuit court owe their seats to my political action committee.”
“You think the law protects you?” Vincent asked softly.
“I know it does,” Richard sneered. “You run a legacy family, Vincent. You think because you wear five-thousand-dollar suits that you’re legitimate? One word from me, and the Department of Justice unseals four grand jury indictments against your shipping operations. You’ll spend the next twenty years in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute.”
Richard leaned forward, tapping his cane against the floorboards.
“Here is what is going to happen,” Richard dictated coldly. “You will sign over the forty percent non-voting proxy shares of the Moretti Logistics Group to Vanessa as an early wedding gift. You will let me take Clara Bennett to a private clinic in Geneva where the pregnancy will be safely terminated. And then you will marry my daughter, and we will continue as partners.”
The fire popped loudly in the hearth.
Vincent didn’t blink. He didn’t shout. He simply picked up his desk phone, pressed a single digit, and said:
“Bring him in.”
The heavy pocket doors at the rear of the library slid open.
Two of Vincent’s men entered, dragging a man in a disheveled suit whose hands were zip-tied behind his back.
Richard Sterling’s smug expression dissolved in an instant. His jaw dropped.
“Special Agent Miller?” Richard whispered, the color draining completely from his face.
The man on his knees looked up, bleeding from a split lip. He was the deputy director of the regional FBI field office—the very man Richard had paid off for nearly a decade.
“He sang twenty minutes after we picked him up from his mistress’s townhouse in Lincoln Park,” Vincent said quietly. “He gave us the location of the safehouse in Pine Ridge, Wisconsin. He gave us the bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. And he gave us the signed wire transfers confirming you paid fifty thousand dollars to a hitman to stage an accident at a construction site in Gary, Indiana, eight months ago.”
Vincent stood up. He walked around the desk until he was standing inches from Richard Sterling.
“You killed Daniel Bennett,” Vincent whispered, his voice like iron sliding from a scabbard. “You tried to kill my wife. You stole my daughter. And you forced the woman carrying my unborn child to drag her sister’s memories down a flight of stairs.”
Richard looked at the FBI director, then at the doors. His hands began to shake violently.
“Vincent… let’s talk. We can make a deal. I have Grace. I’m the only one who knows the security codes to the compound!”
Vincent leaned down until his lips brushed Richard’s ear.
“You don’t have Grace anymore,” Vincent whispered. “My men breached that cabin twenty minutes ago.”
In the quiet bedroom on the third floor, my hands shook as I held a fresh cup of chamomile tea. The IV line had been removed, and Dr. Harris had assured me that my cervix was closed and the baby’s vitals were completely stable.
The door opened gently. Vincent entered, looking exhausted, yet there was a burning light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
He walked over to my bedside and pulled a burner phone from his pocket.
“Clara,” he said, his voice husky. “There is someone who needs to talk to you.”
My breath caught. “Who?”
Vincent pressed speakerphone and placed the device on the bed between us.
A click sounded over the line, followed by the soft, trembling static of a long-distance connection.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice whispered.
It was the same voice from the old recordings. But it wasn’t recorded this time. It was alive. It was breathing.
“Elena?” Vincent asked, his hand coming up to shield his eyes as tears broke through his legendary composure.
“Vincent,” she sobbed over the line. “Oh God, Vincent… is it true? Is she really with you?”
