Chapter 1 - The Woman Behind the Library Door
Blood was drying on my cuff when I came home at 1:43 a.m., but none of it prepared me for what was happening inside my own penthouse. Before I could reach the lights, my housekeeper stepped from the darkness and whispered, “Don’t make a sound.”
Naomi Wells showed me the library through a narrow opening. Camille Sloane stood above my children, holding the stuffed rabbit my late wife Isabella had sewn for Rosie. Jack stood rigid beside his sister. He was eight years old and already learning to hide his tears from adults.
“Tell me the sentence,” Camille said.
“If Dad sees weakness, he sends it away,” Jack whispered.
Then Camille slapped him.
I would have crossed the room in a heartbeat if Naomi hadn’t gripped my wrist. She showed me eleven weeks of recordings: punishments, threats, lies about Isabella, and messages arranging revised guardianship documents. My attorney Arthur Velez had answered Camille’s texts. Once Moretti signs, the children can be moved quietly.
“Roman,” Naomi said, “this isn’t about marrying you. It’s about what happens to your children after you’re dead.”
I stared at her. Somewhere beyond the windows, Chicago glittered as though nobody inside its towers ever suffered. I had spent fifteen years convincing men to fear me. Somehow I had failed to make my own children feel safe.
“Tell me everything,” I whispered.
Naomi had noticed the change eleven weeks earlier, shortly after Camille began staying overnight. Jack stopped asking to go to baseball practice. Rosie started hiding food in her dresser. Camille insisted the children needed discipline after their mother’s death. She dismissed their longtime nanny and replaced the pediatric therapist with someone recommended by her father.
“I tried to tell you,” Naomi said. “Twice. Arthur intercepted the first message. Camille was standing beside you when I called the second time.”
I remembered that call. I had been negotiating a trucking contract and waved Camille toward the phone. She told me Naomi wanted another vacation day. I had believed her without asking.
“Where are the originals?”
“Not here. I made copies. The originals are somewhere they cannot reach.”
In the library Camille raised her phone. “Patrick, they’re almost ready. Their father will sign tomorrow.”
I heard a man's voice, too distant to identify. Camille smiled, set down the rabbit, and told my children to return to bed. I moved back into the hallway before she could see me. Naomi slipped toward the servants’ stairs. I walked to the front door, opened it loudly, and entered again as if I had just arrived.
Camille emerged wearing a worried expression so perfect it could have belonged to an actress. “Roman. You’re late.”
“Meeting ran long.”
She reached for my bloodstained cuff. I withdrew my arm.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Everything’s fine.”
It was the most difficult lie I had ever told.
She kissed my cheek and mentioned tomorrow’s meeting with Arthur. A few signatures, she said, would protect the children if something happened to me. I asked her to have the papers brought to breakfast. Her smile widened.
Upstairs, I waited until her bedroom door closed. Then I went to Jack’s room. He sat awake on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands.
“Dad?”
I knelt before him. I had never knelt for a rival. I wished I had done it more often for my son.
“I saw what happened tonight,” I said.
His face drained. “I didn’t tell. I promise.”
“You didn't do anything wrong.”
He searched my face for the trick. That hurt worse than any wound I had carried home.
“Camille says you’ll send us away.”
“She lied. You and Rosie are my family. Nothing you say about what happened will make me stop loving you.”
He leaned forward so suddenly I almost lost my balance. His arms wrapped around my neck, tight and trembling. I held him until his breathing steadied. Then I tucked him in and crossed the hall to Rosie. She was asleep with empty hands curled against her chest. I placed Isabella’s rabbit beside her pillow, retrieved from the library when Camille wasn't looking.
My phone vibrated. A message from an unknown number contained a photograph of my SUV outside the penthouse and six words: Sign tomorrow. Or the children disappear.
May you like
I looked at the message until the screen went dark. My enemies knew I was home. They knew the children were upstairs. And they expected me to respond the way I always had—with violence.
For the first time in my life, I chose something harder. I chose patience.
