Chapter 9 - Collision
The rain had turned into a steady, gray deluge by the time Miller’s car pulled up across the street from the Moretti Enterprises tower. The wind whipped the rain across the pavement, blurring the neon signs of the downtown storefronts into smeared streaks of red and green.
Inside the car, the digital clock on the dashboard read 6:42 PM.
My burner phone buzzed violently against my leg. I pulled it out. A text message from an unknown number—not Miller, not Sophia, but a direct line.
Closer than you think, Claire.
Attached was a single photograph, timestamped two minutes ago. It showed Ethan and Lily sitting on the living room floor of the Wisconsin cabin, playing with the board game Marcus had bought them. Standing by the window in the background was a man whose face was half-hidden in shadow, holding a silenced pistol.
The cold panic that flooded my veins was instantaneous, sharp, and paralyzing. But it lasted only a second before turning into a white-hot fury.
"They found the cabin," I whispered, showing the screen to Miller and Sophia.
Sophia pressed a hand to her mouth, a stifled sob escaping her lips. "Noah... they know about Noah too. If they tracked the cabin, they tracked my apartment."
"Vance's team is good, but they aren't syndicate-grade," Miller said, his jaw tightening as he reached for his radio. "I'm calling tactical backup—"
"No time," I interrupted, opening the car door. "By the time tactical backup clears authorization, my children will be dead."
"Claire, you can't just walk into the penthouse—" Miller started, grabbing my arm.
"I'm not walking into the penthouse to talk to Vincent," I said, pulling my arm free and stepping out into the freezing rain. "I'm going there to trade."
Sophia moved instantly, sliding out of her car and following me across the wet pavement toward the tower's private executive entrance. Miller swore under his breath, slammed his car door, and jogged to keep pace with us, his hand resting on his weapon beneath his coat.
We bypassed the main lobby entirely, using the private service elevator that required a high-level executive override code—a code Vincent had given me on our third anniversary, telling me casually that I owned the building just as much as he did. At the time, I had laughed it off as romantic hyperbole. Now, I keyed the numeric sequence into the brass panel with absolute precision.
The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, revealing the private penthouse suite on the forty-second floor.
The space was dark, lit only by the ambient glow of the Chicago skyline through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Rain sheeted down the exterior glass, distorting the city lights into a fractured, weeping mosaic.
Standing by the grand piano in the center of the room, holding a glass of scotch and staring out at the storm, was Vincent.
He didn't turn around immediately when the elevator doors opened. He simply swirled the amber liquid in his glass, his broad shoulders tense beneath his tailored dress shirt.
"I knew you'd come back here, Claire," Vincent said, his voice deep, calm, and utterly devoid of warmth. "You always were too sentimental to stay away for long."
He turned slowly to face us—and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw that I wasn't alone.
May you like
His dark eyes moved from me to Sophia, and finally to Agent Miller, whose service pistol was now drawn and pointed squarely at Vincent’s chest.
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