Chapter 1 - The Anatomy of a Threat
The air in the east sitting room smelled faintly of lavender and the ozone hum of an emergency medical monitor. Outside, the rain had begun to lash against the tall leaded glass windows, turning the sprawling Lake Forest lawns into a blur of dark emerald and silver.
Ethan Moretti stood beside the doorframe, his thumb rubbing the rough grain of a brass key he had pulled from the lining of Hannah’s ruined wooden box. The note he had found on her pillow felt heavier than lead in his coat pocket.
Stop looking for your brother. Keep asking questions, and your baby will join your husband in the ground.
His thoughts raced back to the medical records he had quietly subpoenaed three days ago. Hannah Reed—legitimately Hannah Moretti by bloodline, though she had spent the last year scrubbing floors under her maiden name to hide from a world that would have eaten her alive—was not just an ordinary employee. She was the widow of Julian Moretti, Ethan’s estranged, presumed-dead younger brother.
Julian hadn't died in a simple car accident two years ago. The wreckage had been staged. And Ethan, consumed by the bloody turf wars of the Chicago waterfront, had swallowed the official police report without digging deeper.
Now, his brother’s wife was carrying his nephew—the true, legitimate blood heir to the Moretti empire—while living under his roof as a maid, terrorized by his own fiancée.
“Ethan.”
He turned. Dr. Porter stood by the sofa, removing his stethoscope. Hannah was drifting in and out of a medicated sleep, her face pale, the jagged chop of hair above her left temple stark against the white pillowcase.
“She’s stable for the moment,” Dr. Porter murmured, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb her. “The contractions have slowed down. But Mr. Moretti, I cannot stress this enough. If she experiences another shock like the one tonight, I won’t be able to stop pre-term labor. She needs absolute peace. And she needs to feel safe.”
“She is safe,” Ethan said, though the words tasted like ash in his mouth.
“Is she?” Dr. Porter raised an eyebrow, glancing toward the hallway. “Downstairs, Vincent Caruso is currently hosting a damage control seminar for his political cronies, and upstairs your fiancée is locked in her suite throwing crystal decanters against the door. That is not a safe environment for an expectant mother.”
Ethan didn’t answer. He walked over to the sofa, looking down at Hannah. In her sleep, she clutched the edge of the blanket, her knuckles white. She looked impossibly young—barely twenty-four, burdened with a secret she had protected with terrifying discipline.
When Julian had vanished, pregnant and penniless, Hannah had sought refuge in the only place she thought she could hide: right under the nose of the man who ran Chicago. She had applied under her mother's maiden name, hoping to earn enough to keep her unborn child alive while searching for her twin brother, Owen, who had disappeared three weeks before Julian’s death.
And now, Owen was connected to this.
“Owen,” she had whispered just before drifting off.
Ethan turned on his heel and walked out into the corridor, shutting the oak door softly behind him.
Mr. Bennett was waiting by the service lift, his face etched with a lifetime of accumulated worry.
“Mr. Ethan,” the old manager said quietly. “The guards on the perimeter sweep found something near the service gates.”
“What?”
“A burner phone. It was left on the hood of the security cart. It rang three minutes ago.” Bennett handed a sleek, black prepaid device across. “The caller ID was blocked. But the voice changer on the other end left a message specifically for you.”
Ethan took the phone. His fingers tightened around the casing until his knuckles popped.
“Play it,” he commanded.
Bennett tapped the speaker button. A distorted, mechanical voice filled the quiet hallway.
“You think you control the lakefront, Ethan? You don’t even control your own bed. Check the security logs for the north wing at 3:14 AM last Tuesday. You’ll see who let Vincent Caruso’s men into your brother’s old files. Tick-tock, Mr. Moretti. The baby comes early if you don’t drop the investigation.”
The line went dead with a sharp click.
Ethan stared at the screen. The north wing. That was where Celeste’s private suite was located. And Vincent Caruso’s men had access only if someone with biometric clearance had bypassed the firewall.
May you like
Someone inside his own house.
Or rather... the woman he was scheduled to marry in six weeks.
