Chapter 6 - The Wire and the Vow
The phone felt heavy in my hand, the screen glowing with the stark, accusing numbers of a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit that shouldn't have existed.
Vincent didn't move for a long moment. The dark anger that usually made him look dangerous seemed to curdle into something colder, more precise. He stared at the screen over my shoulder, his breath warm against my neck before he stepped back, his expression tight.
"Sophia," I said, the name tasting like ash. "You said she called you to warn you about the audit. You said she wanted to help you find out who was robbing you."
"She was managing the household communication logs when Arthur retired," Vincent said, his voice dropping an octave as his mind raced to connect the threads. "When Arthur stepped down two years ago, he didn't hand the private ledgers back to the corporate office. He handed them to Sophia. She said she was organizing the archives."
"She didn't just organize them," I said, my voice hardening as the pieces of the puzzle slammed together. "She took over the machinery. If Arthur was the one executing the ghost account for the first sixteen years, Sophia discovered it long before last night. She didn't blow the whistle. She kept it running, or she used it as leverage against Arthur—and now that Noah's existence has blown their little arrangement wide open, she's trying to cover her tracks by funneling hush money straight to my son."
Vincent grabbed his coat from the back of the chair, his movements sharp and decisive. "We're going back to the city."
"No," I said, planting my feet on Arthur’s rug. "We are not driving back to Chicago so you can storm into your own house and scream at your wife while I sit in the passenger seat like some relic from your past. I am done being managed by the Moretti family, Vincent. Arthur is gone, but Sophia is sitting in your kitchen right now, and my son is sitting in my living room three hours away."
Vincent stopped, turning back to face me. The raw intensity in his dark eyes softened just a fraction—not into weakness, but into an acknowledgement of reality. "Claire. If Sophia sent that money, she’s trying to buy silence. She knows that if Noah accepts that transfer, it muddies the waters. It makes it look like you and Noah are accepting payoffs from the Moretti estate."
"Then we return it," I said. "And then we have a very public, very clear conversation where we lay out every single lie Sophia has told since the day I walked out of Chicago."
My phone buzzed again in my hand. It wasn't an alert this time. It was a call.
The Caller ID flashed: Noah.
My heart plummeted. I swiped the screen and answered instantly. "Noah? Are you okay? Are you inside?"
"Mom," Noah’s voice came through the speaker, tight and strained. It didn't sound like the calm, brilliant student who had accepted his award yesterday. It sounded like a panicked eighteen-year-old boy. "I'm inside. But... someone's at the front door."
"Who?" I demanded, sharing a sharp, terrified look with Vincent.
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"It's not a stranger," Noah said, his breath hitching slightly. "It's Ethan. He's standing on the porch, Mom. And he says he needs to talk to me about what happened in Cambridge."
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