Chapter 2 - The Rising Storm in New York and the Frozen Empire in Chicago
By sunrise the next morning, I was three thousand feet in the air aboard a private chartered jet heading east toward Manhattan, leaving the grey, heavy skies of Chicago far behind. My phone remained powered off, sitting at the bottom of my carry-on bag like a deactivated bomb.
In New York, Alexander Hayes met me at the private airstrip with a warm smile, a steaming cup of artisan coffee, and the keys to a luxurious temporary penthouse overlooking Central Park. He didn't ask awkward questions about my marriage; he simply welcomed me back to the industry where my mind was truly valued, handing me a comprehensive dossier on a multi-billion-dollar skyline development project that needed my absolute focus.
For the first time in five years, my days were filled with blueprints, high-stakes board meetings, structural engineering debates, and the exhilarating rush of building something tangible and enduring. I wasn't waiting by a window for a husband who prioritized his first love. I was designing the future.
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, absolute hell was breaking loose.
Vincent Moretti’s world was violently unraveling at the seams, and the shockwaves were rattling the entire underworld syndicate.
According to encrypted intelligence reports whispered to my new associates by disaffected contacts in the Midwest, Vincent had returned from the hospital late that anniversary night expecting to find me quietly waiting at home with an apology prepared. Instead, he found an empty, echoing penthouse, a stack of formal divorce papers sitting dead center on the mahogany dining table, and my wedding ring resting neatly on top of the documents.
He had lost his mind.
Within hours of discovering I was gone, Vincent’s legendary temper had exploded with catastrophic force. He interrogated his own security detail, tore through my closets, and smashed half the antique furniture in our living room. When he realized I had blocked his number and boarded a private flight out of state, the untouchable Mafia boss did something he had never done in his entire criminal career:
He panicked.
He sent his most trusted enforcers scouring the city, leaning on airport authorities, bribing airline clerks, and tearing through every hotel in downtown Chicago trying to locate my whereabouts. But Alexander Hayes’s legal team had structured my transit with impenetrable corporate shields and privacy trusts that rendered Vincent’s underworld surveillance completely blind.
Worse still, Sophia made the fatal mistake of attempting to leverage my absence.
Three days after my departure, believing she had finally won the war for Vincent’s undivided attention, Sophia showed up uninvited at the Moretti family estate in the upscale suburbs, wearing a silk robe and acting as though she were the new mistress of the house.
Vincent, consumed by obsessive fury over my disappearance, raging headaches, and mounting stress across his criminal enterprises, had snapped. Instead of welcoming her with open arms, he screamed at her to get out of his sight, realizing with sudden, blinding clarity that Sophia’s constant, manipulative dramas were the exact catalyst that had driven his brilliant, loyal wife to pack her bags and walk out forever.
Sophia had burst into tears, playing the victim, but Vincent had already instructed his head of security to cut off her allowance, revoke her apartment lease, and ban her from every property bearing the Moretti name.
Yet, banishing Sophia didn't bring me back.
By the end of the first week, Vincent’s business operations began to suffer severe administrative fractures. Unknown to the public—and largely ignored by Vincent while he was distracted by Sophia—I had been the invisible logistical genius behind the syndicate’s legitimate financial front companies. I laundered the casino earnings through complex real estate portfolios, balanced the shipping ledger books, and managed the diplomatic relations with rival family bosses.
Without my stabilizing presence, discrepancies in the shipping manifests triggered federal scrutiny, rival gangs began testing Moretti territories on the North Side, and the board members of our primary corporate holdings started demanding answers.
Vincent was working twenty hours a day, fueled by black coffee, bourbon, and a cold, burning obsession to track me down. He didn't want a divorce. In the twisted, possessive mind of a Mafia kingpin, what belonged to Vincent Moretti remained his property until his dying breath—and no court, no state lines, and no amount of distance was going to keep me away from him.
Back in Manhattan, sitting in my high-rise corner office on the fortieth floor overlooking a glittering skyline, my executive assistant buzzed through on the intercom.
“Ms. Bennett,” her voice chimed professionally. “There’s a courier downstairs in the lobby holding a heavy delivery addressed directly to you. Refuses to leave without hand-delivering it.”
I paused, my pen hovering over a structural blueprint. “Did he give a name?”
“No, ma’am. But he said it’s from Chicago.”
May you like
A cold shiver danced down my spine, but my jaw set with unyielding steel. I stood up, buttoned my sharp grey blazer, and walked down to the private lobby to face whatever warning my past had sent crashing into my new life.
---
