Chapter 1 - The Shedding of Gilded Silk
The master bedroom suite on the third floor of the Moretti estate existed in a state of suspended, subterranean silence. Outside the high arched casements, the October wind drove off Lake Michigan, rattling the leaded panes and sending pale, fragmented ripples of city light across the coffered ceiling. Eighty feet below, in the cavernous marble corridors of the ground floor, the house had finally emptied of the politicians, shipping executives, and syndicate captains who had attended the evening’s private salon. The air up here remained stagnant, thick with the scent of dried jasmine, polished mahogany, and the cold, lingering trace of Vincent’s sandalwood cologne.
Across the vast expanse of the king-sized bed, draped over charcoal-gray Egyptian linen, lay Claire Bennett’s evening gown. It was an exquisite, bias-cut column of champagne-colored silk charmeuse, hand-embroidered with thousands of microscopic glass seed pearls that caught the amber glow of the bedside sconces. Vincent had commissioned it from an atelier in Florence for this exact evening, insisting on the precise hue of aged champagne, the exact square-cut neckline, and the fluid drape that pooled around the ankles. To the three hundred guests downstairs, she had looked like an empress crowned in spun moonlight, moving across the herringbone parquet with the effortless grace expected of the woman who had shared Vincent Moretti’s bed and table for seven years.
Now, the dress lay collapsed on the mattress like a shed skin, hollow and lifeless.
Claire stood two feet from the bed, her bare feet anchored to the plush wool carpet. At twenty-eight, her body carried the lean, delicate athletic grace of someone who had never entirely grown comfortable with the sedentary luxury of the Gold Coast. Her dark, wavy hair, which had been pinned into an intricate, sweeping chignon by Vincent’s personal stylist at four o’clock that afternoon, was coming undone. Several heavy chestnut strands had escaped the tortoiseshell combs, brushing softly against the hollow of her collarbones and the bare skin of her shoulders.
She wore only a simple silk chemise, her skin pebbled by the autumn chill that seeped around the vintage window moldings. She did not shiver. Her breathing was slow, deliberate, and shallow—the rhythmic respiration of someone who had survived an explosive impact and was methodically checking her limbs to see which ones were still attached.
In the downstairs sitting room, barely twenty minutes ago, Vincent had not shouted. Vincent Moretti never raised his voice; men who commanded three shipping terminals, two municipal unions, and eighty armed soldiers had no need for theatrical rage. He had simply leaned his broad, charcoal-suited frame against the carved limestone mantelpiece, his swept-back dark hair silvering at the temples, his tattooed hands resting flat against the stone, and allowed another woman to claim his airspace.
Claire looked down at the champagne dress. For seven years, she had believed that the gown, the jewelry, the private drivers, and the silence were the price of an uncommon, dangerous love. She had believed that Vincent was an austere, wounded king who had built a fortress around her to keep the wolves of Chicago at bay. She had believed that her devotion had softened the brutal edges of his empire.
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She reached out with her right hand. Her fingers brushed the silk of the gown’s bodice, feeling the cold, hard ridges of the seed pearls. The fabric felt foreign, dead, and repulsive against her skin.
With a single, unhurried motion, Claire turned her back on the bed. She did not pick up her jewelry box. She did not touch the three-carat diamond pendant resting on the walnut vanity, nor the matching tennis bracelet Vincent had fastened around her wrist on their fifth anniversary. She walked toward the dressing room doors, her bare soles making no sound against the timber floorboards, ready to excavate the person she had buried seven years ago beneath his mountains of silk.
