Chapter 6 - Recollection: The Drawing Room Below
The memory materialized with terrifying, cinematic clarity.
The downstairs sitting room was paneled in dark English walnut, illuminated by the dying embers of an oak fire and two brass library lamps. Outside the French doors, rain had streaked the glass, blurring the dark garden terrace into an oily smudge of black and emerald.
Claire had walked into the room at ten o’clock, still wearing the champagne silk gown, intending to hand Vincent the guest manifest from the foundation gala. She had expected to find him alone with his Scotch, reviewing shipping manifests as he did every midnight.
Instead, Vincent was not alone.
He stood near the heavy limestone mantelpiece, his towering, athletic frame silhouetted against the dark timber walls. At forty-two, Vincent Moretti was a terrifyingly handsome predator: his dark, wavy hair swept back from a sharp hairline, his trimmed beard accentuating the brutal symmetry of his jaw, his open-collar black shirt revealing the crowned viper tattoo crawling up the left side of his throat. He had removed his black tuxedo jacket, leaving his vest unbuttoned, his muscular forearms exposed where his white cuffs were turned back.
Standing directly beside him—so close that her bare shoulder brushed the wool of his vest—was Sophia Whitmore.
Claire had heard the name whispered in the upper echelons of Chicago society for years, but she had never seen the woman in the flesh. Sophia had left the city eight years ago, vanishing into the private enclaves of Lake Como and Geneva following the sudden, violent death of her father, a maritime magnate whose fleets Vincent had subsequently absorbed into his own syndicate.
Tonight, Sophia had returned.
In Claire’s memory, the visual composition of the room was frozen in amber.
Sophia stood with her left arm looped possessively through Vincent’s broad elbow, her manicured fingers resting casually against the dark fabric of his forearm. She was breathtaking in a way that commanded the room without effort: draped in an asymmetrical, floor-length evening gown of heavy, blood-deep burgundy velvet that clung to her statuesque frame. Her ears were adorned with vintage, teardrop ruby earrings that caught the firelight with every breath—earrings that were the exact historical twin of the set sitting in Claire’s upstairs safe.
Vincent was not pulling away. The man who flinched from casual touch, who maintained a three-foot perimeter of lethal personal space around his body at all times, was leaning down slightly toward Sophia, his dark eyes locked onto her face with an expression of quiet, desperate, and utterly undisguised reverence.
When the sitting room door had clicked open, Vincent had turned his head.
May you like
He had looked at Claire standing in the doorway in her champagne silk gown. He had not looked guilty. He had not dropped his arm. He had simply looked at Claire with a cold, detached indifference that had severed seven years of shared history in a single second—a look that said, without words, that the temporary arrangement had reached its natural, unremarkable conclusion.
And beside him, Sophia had slowly turned her head.
