Chapter 2 - The Ghost of Chicago
The air in the Grand Palmer Ballroom instantly turned to lead. Crystal chandeliers hung overhead, throwing fractured diamond light across four hundred of Chicago’s most ruthless billionaires, politicians, and socialites, but to Vincent Moretti, the room had collapsed into a single, impossible point of focus.
The little boy had thick, jet-black curls, a sharp jawline, and eyes—eyes that Vincent saw in his own mirror every single morning. A piercing, luminous steel-gray.
“Mommy, look!” the boy giggled, clutching a miniature silver toy plane in his hand. “Julian said I could stay up until nine!”
The woman knelt. The movement was fluid, graceful, and familiar enough to rip Vincent’s ribcage open. She wore an emerald-green backless silk gown that clung to her slender frame. The fabric pooled like molten jewels on the marble floor.
“Leo, sweetheart, inside voices,” she whispered softly, her fingers brushing the boy’s curls away from his forehead. “We’re guests tonight, remember?”
That voice.
Vincent took a step forward. His heart slammed against his sternum like a trapped animal trying to shatter its cage. The champagne glass in his right hand trembled, the pale liquid sloshing over the crystal rim and splashing onto his immaculate bespoke tuxedo cuff.
“Vincent?” Sophia’s voice sounded muffled, distant, like she was speaking through ten feet of muddy water. Her manicured hand tightened on his bicep, her crimson nails digging through the Italian wool. “Vincent, what is wrong with you? Who are you staring at?”
He didn't answer. He couldn't.
Three years.
For one thousand and ninety-five days, he had awakened to the phantom smell of jet fuel and burning flesh. He had swallowed handfuls of sleeping pills just to escape the memory of Anna’s terrified brown eyes as the cabin door shut between them. He had watched an emerald coffin lowered into a family crypt in suburban Chicago—an empty coffin, because the federal investigators had told him the explosion left nothing behind to bury.
*Nothing.*
“Anna,” Vincent choked out. The name was a prayer, a confession, a dying man’s last breath.
He violently ripped his arm away from Sophia’s grasp. Sophia gasped, stumbling slightly in her four-inch Christian Louboutins, but Vincent didn't look back. He shoved past a state senator, knocked aside a waiter balancing a silver tray of flutes, and closed the distance.
“Anna!”
The woman froze. Her shoulders went rigid beneath the emerald silk.
Vincent stopped two paces behind her. His breath tore through his throat in ragged, shuddering gasps. “Anna… please. Turn around.”
Slowly, deliberately, the woman stood. She rested one protective hand on the little boy’s shoulder, tucking him subtly behind the drape of her gown. Then she turned to face him.
Vincent felt the ground drop from beneath his feet.
It was her. The high cheekbones. The full, soft lips that used to whisper secrets against his skin in the dead of night. The warm amber-brown eyes that had once looked at him with an adoration so pure it terrified him.
Except the warmth was gone. In its place was a sheet of Antarctic ice.
She looked older, more refined, sharper around the edges. Her chestnut hair was pinned up in an intricate, modern chignon, revealing the long, elegant curve of her neck. And when her eyes met his, there wasn't a flicker of fear, or sorrow, or shock.
There was only lethal, polished indifference.
“May I help you, sir?” she asked, her voice silky, calm, and utterly detached.
Vincent’s vision blurred. Tears he hadn’t shed since the memorial service burned at the corners of his eyes. “Anna… oh God. You’re alive. You’re really alive.” He stepped forward, lifting a shaking hand toward her cheek. “The plane… I thought I lost you. I thought you died in the fire—”
“Take your hand away from me,” she said, her voice dropping to a low, razor-sharp whisper that sliced right through his soul.
Vincent stopped, his fingers hovering an inch from her porcelain skin. “Anna, it’s me. It’s Vincent. Your husband.”
A cold, mocking smile touched her lips. “My husband died three years ago on a private runway in Montana. He suffocated on his own cowardice.”
Before Vincent could speak, a tall man in a navy Tom Ford tuxedo appeared at Anna’s side. He possessed the broad shoulders of an athlete, an aristocratic profile, and a quiet authority that commanded the room. Julian Vance—the billionaire maritime tycoon whose recent expansion into Chicago had sent shockwaves through the financial district.
Julian placed a possessive, natural hand on the small of Anna’s back.
“Is this man bothering you, darling?” Julian asked smoothly, his gaze cutting toward Vincent with unmistakable hostility.
*Darling.*
The word struck Vincent like a physical blow. Behind him, the rapid clicking of heels announced Sophia’s arrival. She grabbed his elbow, her face drained of color as she caught sight of the woman before them.
“Anna?” Sophia squeaked, the pitch of her voice climbing in genuine horror. “No… no, that’s impossible. You were on that plane!”
Anna’s eyes flickered from Vincent to Sophia. The contempt in her gaze could have peeled paint off steel.
“Good evening, Sophia,” Anna said quietly. “You’re looking remarkably well for a woman who ran out of an emergency exit while a pregnant wife was screaming behind you.”
“Anna, wait—listen to me!” Vincent pleaded, his composure disintegrating in front of the city's most influential elites. Whispers were already rippling through the ballroom. People were turning, staring, murmuring. “The boy. Who is he?”
Vincent dropped his gaze to the little boy clinging to Anna’s skirt.
The boy tilted his head up, his gray eyes locking onto Vincent’s. There was no mistaking it. The high arch of his eyebrows, the cowlick at the crown of his dark hair, the exact shade of steel in his irises.
*Three years old.*
“Anna…” Vincent’s voice cracked completely, falling to a ragged whisper. “He’s mine.”
Anna didn't flinch. She bent down, scooped the boy into her arms, and settled him against her hip. The little boy rested his chin on her bare shoulder, staring at Vincent with innocent curiosity.
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“His name is Leo,” Anna said, her gaze steady, cold, and entirely devoid of mercy. “And he doesn't have a father. His father traded his life for a mistress.”
***
