Chapter 2 - The Hand of the Patriarch
The black Mercedes Maybach tore through the wrought-iron gates of the Moretti ancestral estate in Barrington Hills, spraying wet gravel across the manicured lawns.
Alexander didn't wait for his driver. He hurled himself out of the passenger seat, his tie loosened, his face ashen, sprinting up the limestone steps of his parents' three-story Georgian manor. He slammed the double oak doors back against the foyer walls with a thunderous crack that shook the sconces.
"Dad!" Alexander roared, his voice cracking with hysteria. "Dad, where is she?!"
From the formal drawing room, the sound of weeping cut through the cavernous foyer.
Alexander rounded the corner. His mother, Eleanor Moretti, sat curled on a damask settee, clutching a linen handkerchief to her eyes, her shoulders shuddering with grief. Standing beside the marble fireplace, his back turned, was Arthur Moretti. At sixty-eight, the patriarch of the Moretti dynasty still possessed the broad, intimidating frame of the man who had built the empire from steel mills into a multi-billion-dollar global conglomerate.
"Mom," Alexander breathed, stepping forward, his hands outstretched. "Mom, Claire took the baby. She disconnected her phone. The house is completely empty—"
Arthur turned around.
The elder Moretti didn't say a single word. He crossed the Persian rug with the swift, lethal grace of a predator.
CRACK.
The open-handed slap struck Alexander across the left cheek with the force of an oak beam.
The impact snapped Alexander’s head sideways, the sheer velocity knocking his feet out from under him. He hit the polished hardwood floor on his hip, the sting of the blow blooming hot and crimson across his skin. He touched his cheek in stunned, disbelieving horror. His father had never struck him in thirty-two years of life.
"Get off the floor," Arthur said, his voice terrifyingly quiet, colder than an arctic squall.
"Dad..." Alexander choked out, tasting blood inside his lower lip. "What is wrong with you?! My wife has been abducted! Someone took my son!"
"Nobody abducted her, you arrogant, pathetic coward!" Arthur shouted, his voice rattling the leaded-glass windows.
Arthur reached into the breast pocket of his bespoke suit, pulled out a thick legal packet bound in blue ribbon, and hurled it directly at Alexander’s chest. The heavy papers fluttered apart, scattering across Alexander’s knees.
Alexander looked down.
Stamped across the top in red county ink was:
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS - COUNTY DEPARTMENT, DOMESTIC RELATIONS DIVISIONPETITION FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE AND SOLE ALLOCATION OF PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIESPETITIONER: CLAIRE ELIZABETH BENNETT MORETTIRESPONDENT: ALEXANDER MICHAEL MORETTI
Beneath the legal preamble, Claire’s familiar, elegant signature was stamped beside a notary public seal dated three months earlier.
"She filed in August," Alexander whispered, his mind spinning into a dark abyss. "August... that was three weeks after I left for Europe."
"Three weeks after you left to play house in Cannes with that cheap, calculating social climber Sophia Reynolds!" Eleanor cried from the settee, her voice thick with rage and tears. "You paraded that woman across Mediterranean beach clubs! You rented penthouses under corporate aliases! Did you really think your wife was blind, Alexander?! Did you think Claire was an idiot?!"
"How did you know about Sophia?" Alexander stammered, scrambling to his feet, clutching the divorce papers like a shield. "Who told you?"
Arthur stepped into Alexander’s personal space, pointing a blunt, scarred finger between his son’s eyes. "Claire came to this house three months ago. Not to beg. Not to cry. She came here like a true Moretti matriarch—with dignity, with receipts, and with the dignity you stripped from her the moment you lied to her face in your bedroom."
Arthur leaned down, his eyes blazing with a disgust so absolute it made Alexander’s stomach turn to ice.
"Your wife went through twenty-eight hours of unmedicated labor at Prentice, Alexander. Eleanor and I were the ones who stood in that delivery room. I held her hand while she pushed our grandson into the world! I was the one who cut the umbilical cord because the boy's own father was three thousand miles away buying diamond bracelets for another man's ex-wife!"
"Where is my son?!" Alexander screamed, tears finally spilling down his cheeks, his chest heaving with desperate, wild panic. "Dad, tell me where she took him! He carries my blood! He is a Moretti!"
Arthur turned his back, walking back to the hearth, pouring two fingers of single-malt Scotch into a tumbler with steady, unwavering hands.
"He carries the Bennett name on his birth certificate, boy," Arthur replied without looking at him. "And as far as this family is concerned... you don't deserve to breathe the same air as either of them."
"I have rights!" Alexander yelled. "I'm his biological father! I have corporate security teams that can sweep every hotel, every airfield, every bank in the western hemisphere!"
Arthur took a slow sip of his Scotch, then turned his head, casting a chilling, pitying glance over his shoulder.
"Go ahead, Alexander. Call your little security guards. Search every terminal in North America. See what good it does you when you find out who funded her exit."
May you like
Arthur’s lips curved into a dark, grim smile.
"Because the man who helped your wife disappear... is the one man whose name makes you sweat through your shirts."
