Chapter 3 - The Frozen Assets and the Desperate Flight from ManhattanThree days later, the financial hurricane hit Manhattan with the force of a tidal wave.
Vincent Moretti was accustomed to controlling judges, corrupt politicians, and rival capos with a flick of his wrist. He was not accustomed to waking up to frozen corporate accounts, seized cargo containers at the Port of Newark, and a federal restraining order blocking him from entering his primary commercial holdings.
According to my sources inside the Moretti organization, Vincent had smashed three crystal decanters in his penthouse office within twenty-four hours of receiving Jonathan Vance’s legal filings.
I was sitting in my lawyer’s downtown Chicago office reviewing the preliminary asset inventory when the heavy oak doors banged open.
Vincent stood in the doorway.
He looked like a man unraveling at the seams. His dark hair was ruffled, his tailored charcoal suit wrinkled from a hasty private flight, and his eyes—usually cold and unyielding—were bloodshot and wild.
“Claire!” he barked, stepping into the room before my attorney could reach the buzzer.
Jonathan stood up, placing himself between Vincent and me, his hand resting near his briefcase. “Mr. Moretti, you are in violation of a restraining order. Step back or I will call security.”
“Shut up,” Vincent snarled, his voice dropping into that terrifying, gravelly register that made street soldiers drop to their knees. He looked past Jonathan, his gaze locking onto mine with desperate intensity. “Claire, what the hell is this? You froze my shipping lines? You locked down our operating capital in three states? Do you have any idea what this is doing to our business?”
I slowly closed the leather portfolio in front of me, raised my chin, and met his frantic gaze without flinching.
“Our business, Vincent?” I asked quietly. “You mean your business with Sophia and Emma?”
Vincent flinched as if struck by a physical blow. He took a step forward, ignoring Jonathan’s warnings, and slammed his palms onto the glass conference table.
“That was a mistake!” he hissed, his voice cracking. “Sophia was a convenience from years ago, before I realized how much I missed you. Emma is just a child whose father walked out! I stepped in because I was trying to do a decent thing, Claire! It meant nothing!”
“You were at her school event the day I was dying in the ICU,” I said, my voice dangerously calm, devoid of any emotional tremor. “You told me you couldn't travel because of a gang war, but you were buying cotton candy for another man’s daughter while your wife bled out on an operating table.”
“I panicked!” he yelled, slamming his hand down again. “The lifestyle I lead... I couldn’t bring you into the open in New York without putting a target on your back! Keeping you in Chicago was meant to keep you safe!”
“No, Vincent,” I stood up, smoothing down my tailored wool skirt, revealing the subtle curve of my eight-week pregnancy beneath. “Keeping me in Chicago was meant to keep me blind. You wanted a queen in your palace back home and a little family on the side in Manhattan, and you thought you were clever enough to balance both forever.”
He stared at my abdomen, his breath catching in his throat as the reality of my words settled into his bones.
“You’re... you’re really pregnant,” he whispered, his hands trembling as he reached out toward me. “Our baby... Claire, we’re having a child. You can’t throw our marriage away over a past mistake.”
“It’s not a past mistake, Vincent,” I replied, stepping around the table and walking toward the door. “It’s your present life. And you can keep it.”
“If you don’t drop these asset freezes by tomorrow morning,” Vincent snapped, the old, ruthless syndicate boss momentarily resurfacing behind his panic, “I will contest this divorce in every court from here to Zurich. I will drag you through a legal bloodbath that will drain every dime your family ever earned.”
I paused at the door, turning back to look at him with a cold, pitying smile.
“Go ahead and try, Vincent,” I said softly. “You used to own Chicago. But you forgot one crucial detail.”
“What?” he snarled.
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“I’m the one who drafted your contracts. I know where every single skeleton is buried.”
I walked out of the office, leaving him standing alone in the center of the room, staring at empty air as his empire began to crumble around his feet.
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