Chapter 2 – THE TICKET TO LEAVE HER BEHIND

The dining room spun.

I reached for the back of Henry’s wheelchair to steady myself. The name on the boarding pass echoed in my ears. Mark. The man who had kissed my forehead five months into my pregnancy, promised he was going out to buy a crib, and never came back.

“Your husband,” Dante repeated slowly, looking from the boarding pass to me. “The one who abandoned you.”

“Yes,” I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribs. “But he doesn’t have any money. How could he afford a first-class ticket to Switzerland?”

Dante turned his dark gaze back to Vivienne. She was standing rigidly between the two security guards, her face pale but defiant.

“He didn’t buy it,” Dante said, walking toward her. “She did.”

Vivienne scoffed, looking away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Dante warned, holding the boarding pass inches from her face. “You bought a flight for this woman’s runaway husband. The same night you stole my financial ledgers. Why?”

Vivienne remained silent.

Dante snapped his fingers. “Check her purse.”

One of the guards grabbed Vivienne’s designer clutch from the table. She shrieked as he dumped the contents onto the pristine white tablecloth. Lipstick, a compact mirror, a set of keys, and a thick, sealed envelope tumbled out.

Dante picked up the envelope. He tore it open.

Inside were bank transfer receipts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, wired to an account under the name Mark Hayes.

I felt physically sick. My husband hadn’t panicked about fatherhood. He hadn’t left because he was scared. He had been paid to leave me.

“You paid him,” I whispered, the betrayal burning the back of my throat. “You paid the father of my child to walk out on us.”

Vivienne looked at me, her eyes filled with cold disdain. “He was surprisingly cheap, Caroline. A few hundred thousand was all it took for him to leave his pregnant wife to scrub floors for a living.”

“But why?” I cried, tears finally spilling over my cheeks. “I don’t even know you!”

“It wasn’t about him,” Dante interrupted, staring at the bank receipts. The pieces were locking together in his mind. He looked at Vivienne, a dangerous realization dawning in his eyes. “You didn’t pay Mark to leave. You paid him to put her in a desperate financial situation.”

Dante looked at me. “How did you find this job, Caroline?”

I wiped my face. “An agency. They called me two days after Mark emptied our accounts. They said they had a private listing that included room and board.”

“Vivienne owns that agency,” Dante said flatly.

The room went dead silent.

Vivienne had orchestrated my entire ruin just to maneuver me into this house as a maid.

“You needed a pregnant woman,” Henry suddenly spoke up, his voice raspy but clear.

We all looked at the old man.

Henry was staring at Vivienne’s diamond bracelet. “The biometric safe requires two fingerprints. Mine, and Dante’s. But if Dante isn’t here, it requires a master override code. A code that changes every month.”

Henry wheeled himself slightly forward. “Margaret set the security parameters before she died. She always loved riddles. The override code is tied to the medical history of the estate’s staff. It was a failsafe to ensure someone was always looking after the people who worked for us.”

Dante’s jaw tightened. “The code this month required the biometric reading of a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy.”

Vivienne smiled, a bitter, triumphant thing. “Your mother was overly sentimental, Dante. It made your vault stupidly vulnerable. I just had to provide the pregnant woman.”

I stared at her, horrified. My broken marriage, my empty bank account, the nights I spent crying myself to sleep wondering what was wrong with me—it was all a calculated chess move by a woman who needed a pregnant fingerprint to steal money.

“Where is the ledger?” Dante demanded, stepping into Vivienne’s personal space.

“Mark has it,” Vivienne said proudly. “He took it to the airport tonight. As soon as he lands in Geneva, he’s handing it over to the Moretti family. They’re wiring me ten million dollars, and I am washing my hands of this entire miserable family.”

Dante didn’t yell. He simply pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number.

“Lock down O’Hare International,” Dante said quietly into the phone. “Private charters, commercial flights, everything. Find Mark Hayes. If he boards a plane, shoot it out of the sky.”

He hung up and looked at Vivienne. “Take her to the basement.”

The guards grabbed Vivienne’s arms. She didn’t fight, but as they dragged her toward the kitchen doors, she turned her head and looked directly at me.

“You think you’re the victim, Caroline?” Vivienne laughed bitterly. “Ask Dante why I picked you. Ask him why out of all the pregnant women in Chicago, I needed Arthur Hayes’s daughter.”

My breath hitched.

The guards pulled her through the doors, her laughter echoing down the hall.

Dante froze. He turned around very slowly, looking at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.

He walked back to the table and picked up Vivienne’s spilled purse. He reached into the inner pocket and pulled out a faded, worn photograph.

He looked at it for a long time. Then, he held it out to me.

My hands shook as I took it.

It was a picture of me when I was six years old. But I wasn’t with my mother. I was sitting on the shoulders of a man wearing a dark, expensive suit.

“That’s my father,” I whispered.

“I know,” Dante said, his voice completely hollow. “Because your father was my uncle.”