Chapter 3 - The Cold Truth
The penthouse at the top of the Moretti Tower was pitch black save for the amber glow of a half-empty bottle of Macallan 25 on the mahogany desk.
Vincent sat in the leather chair, his tuxedo jacket discarded on the floor, his shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest. His hands were clasped in front of him, white-knuckled and vibrating with fury and adrenaline.
Across from him stood Damian, his head of security, a man who had served Vincent’s family for twenty years and had never once seen his boss look so completely unravelled.
"Talk to me," Vincent growled into the darkness. "Tell me you found her."
Damian set a thick manila folder on the desk. "Her official name is Victoria Vance. She arrived in the United States six weeks ago on a diplomatic commercial passport issued by the Republic of Singapore. She is the managing partner of Vance Maritime Logistics—an international shipping cartel valued at roughly four billion dollars."
"I don't give a damn about her shell companies!" Vincent slammed his fist onto the desk, rattling the crystal tumbler. "Who is she, Damian?!"
"Biometrically, boss... it’s her." Damian took a slow breath. "I pulled high-resolution scans from the Drake Hotel’s security feeds and ran them against the facial mapping of Anna’s last DMV photo. It’s a 99.8% match. It’s Anna, Vincent. She’s alive."
Vincent closed his eyes. A ragged sob tore from his chest, quickly followed by a dark, manic laugh.
She was alive.
The fire hadn't taken her. The flames that had consumed his soul every night for three long years hadn't burned her to ash. She had breathed. Her heart had beaten. She had carried his child to term.
"And the boy?" Vincent whispered, opening his eyes. His gaze was burning. "Leo?"
"No birth certificate registered in the US or Europe," Damian replied quietly. "The Vance family operates out of private estates in Geneva and maritime islands under special jurisdictional protection. But the age matches. Three years and two months old. If she carried to full term after the crash... the timeline is exact."
Vincent leaned back, running both hands over his face, pressing his palms into his eyes until he saw stars.
"She survived," he whispered. "She survived that hell. How? The jet exploded thirty seconds after I jumped down the slide."
"That's the part that doesn't make sense," Damian said, pulling out a tablet. "The NTSB report three years ago stated the fuel tank in the left wing ruptured upon impact during the belly landing. The blast was instantaneous. But when I reopened the classified salvage report twenty minutes ago... something didn't add up."
Vincent sat bolt upright. "What do you mean?"
"The tail section separated three hundred yards before the final impact point in the marsh," Damian explained, showing the aerial grid on the screen. "There was an emergency auxiliary hatch in the rear lavatory. If someone was thrown back there, or made it back there before the main fuselage ignited... they could have been thrown clear into the water."
Vincent’s mind flashed back to that horrific day in the cabin.
The smoke. The terrifying screech of twisting metal.
He had stood in the aisle, looking at Anna. Her hands had been pressed against her belly, her eyes wide with terror.
*“Vincent, what about me?”*
*“I’m taking Sophia out first.”*
*“I’m your wife. I’m carrying your baby.”*
*“I know. I’ll come back for you. I promise.”*
He had taken Sophia’s hand. He had dragged Sophia to the forward service door, kicked open the slide, and pushed her down. And when he turned back—when he took two steps toward the cabin to get Anna—the plane had erupted into an orange ball of death that threw him fifty yards through the air.
He had promised her. And his promise had been worth less than the air he breathed.
"She didn't just survive," Vincent said, his voice dropping into a deadly, horrifying register. "She hid. She erased herself. She spent three years making sure I thought she was dead."
"And there's one more thing, Vincent," Damian said hesitantly.
"What?"
"Sophia."
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. "What about her?"
"Three years ago, Sophia claimed she heard Anna screaming inside the jet right before it blew up, which convinced the search-and-rescue team to declare her dead without waiting for complete DNA identification. But that’s not all. I looked into Sophia’s phone records from the week of that flight. The flight was delayed three hours before takeoff. Why?"
"Sophia said there was an engine check," Vincent recalled, his brow furrowing.
"No engine check was logged," Damian said grimly. "Sophia met with a private mechanic at the hangar while you were on a conference call. And three days ago... forty-eight hours before Anna reappeared at the Drake... Sophia made an offshore wire transfer of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to an account in the Cayman Islands."
Vincent stood up slowly. The air in the room grew suffocating.
"Why would she wire money to the Caymans three days ago?"
May you like
"Because," Damian said, "the recipient was an investigator who specialized in locating displaced persons in Western Europe. Sophia didn't just find out Anna was alive tonight. Sophia has known for at least a week."
***
