Chapter 7 - The Visitor from the Past
The name Matteo Romano carried a very specific, terrifying weight in the city of Boston.
While Marcus had spent his entire life pretending to be a self-made billionaire through smoke and mirrors, Matteo Romano actually owned the smoke, the mirrors, the buildings they were housed in, and the city block they stood on. Shipping ports, luxury hotels, real estate holdings across three continents—and rumors of deep, historic ties to the underground syndicates that ran the North End.
I hadn't seen Matteo in eight years.
The last time our paths had crossed was in the sterile, harshly lit emergency room of Boston General Hospital. I had been a nineteen-year-old nursing student working a double shift when a terrified teenage girl had been rushed in following a devastating highway collision in the pouring rain. Her blood type was extraordinarily rare—AB-negative—and the hospital blood bank was completely empty.
I had stepped forward, rolled up both sleeves, and donated three pints of my own blood over the next two hours, sitting beside her bed and holding her hand until the crisis passed. I had refused financial compensation, declined to give my full legal name to the intake desk, and slipped out the side door before her family arrived.
I had never expected to see anyone from that night ever again.
And yet, here he was, standing outside my security gate in the pouring rain, staring up at my camera.
I pressed the intercom button connected to the gate.
“Mr. Romano,” my voice echoed clearly through the speaker outside. “You are a long way from the North End. What brings you to my gates?”
Matteo didn't flinch at the sound of my voice. A slow, subtle smile touched the corner of his lips. He stepped closer to the intercom speaker, his deep voice carrying clearly over the patter of the rain.
“Hello, Claire,” Matteo said, his tone smooth, warm, and instantly recognizable. “Or should I say... Abigail?”
My heart skipped a beat.
Abigail.
That was the name I had used at the hospital eight years ago—my middle name, used instinctively when I wanted to disappear from the world. How on earth had he found me?
“I think you have the wrong person, Mr. Romano,” I replied steadily, though my palms suddenly felt damp. “My name is Claire Vance.”
“Is it?” Matteo chuckled softly, a rich, dark sound. “Ten years ago, a terrified nursing student named Abigail saved my little sister Isabella’s life with three pints of rare blood, and then vanished into thin air like a ghost. For eight years, my security team has searched every hospital registry in New England. It turns out, finding a brilliant financial wizard who legally changed her name after inheriting her grandfather’s estate is much easier than finding a runaway nursing student.”
He paused, his grey eyes locking onto the camera lens with burning intensity.
“You destroyed Marcus Vance’s corporate empire in forty-eight hours last month, Claire. That kind of financial brutality has your unique signature all over it. I recognized your handiwork before my investigators even ran the facial recognition on your old university photos.”
I stood frozen in the nursery, holding sleeping Lily against my chest. The walls I had so carefully built around my new life suddenly felt fragile under the weight of this man’s relentless pursuit.
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“What do you want, Matteo?” I asked, my voice dropping its professional warmth, turning cold and guarded. “If you’re here on Marcus’s behalf—”
“Marcus is a pathetic parasite who isn't worth the shoe leather I’m standing in,” Matteo interrupted sharply, his voice cutting off any suggestion of alliance with my ex-husband. “I’m not here for him, Claire. I’m here for you.”
