Chapter 5 - THE SAFE HOUSE
Matteo survived surgery at 3:18 in the morning.
The bullet had entered below his collarbone and missed the major artery by less than an inch. The doctors called him lucky.
Alexander called it unacceptable.
Emily sat in a private waiting room at Northwestern Memorial with a blanket around her shoulders and watched him pace.
He had not raised his voice once.
That somehow made the anger more visible.
Every few minutes one of his men entered, delivered information, and disappeared again.
The black sedan had been stolen.
The shooters had abandoned it twelve blocks away.
Derek had vanished during the confusion.
Vincent Lupo was in police custody under armed guard.
Thomas Moretti was missing.
By four in the morning, Emily understood that the gunmen had not come to rescue Derek.
They had come to kill someone.
Maybe her.
Maybe Alexander.
Maybe Vincent before he could talk.
“Who knew we were in the loading bay?” she asked.
Alexander stopped pacing.
“Too many people.”
“The police call was Derek’s.”
“Yes.”
“The shooters arrived almost immediately.”
“Yes.”
“So either they were already waiting or someone was tracking him.”
Alexander studied her.
“You’re thinking clearly for someone who has not slept.”
“I learned to think during emergencies.”
He understood what she meant.
Emily looked down at her hands.
“I used to plan exits while Derek was yelling. Which room had two doors. Where my phone was. Whether the neighbors were home. I suppose the skill transfers.”
Alexander’s expression hardened with something she could not name.
“Emily.”
She looked up.
“What happened to you was not training.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
She did not answer.
A woman entered carrying two coffees.
Lucia Moretti.
She handed one to Emily and the other to Alexander.
“Matteo’s awake,” she said. “Complaining about hospital coffee, which I assume means he’ll live.”
Alexander’s shoulders loosened slightly.
Lucia sat beside Emily.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For my family.”
Emily almost smiled. “That seems like a large apology.”
“It is.”
Lucia looked at Alexander. “Thomas’s house is empty. His driver is gone. Two council members are suddenly unreachable.”
“Anthony?”
“Still answering.”
“Keep him close.”
Lucia nodded.
Emily listened to them speak in fragments. Names. Warehouses. Accounts. Security teams. The language of an organization that existed beside the ordinary city like a second map hidden beneath the first.
She should have been horrified.
She was horrified.
But she had also spent four years in a respectable penthouse with a man who donated to domestic violence charities and bruised her where evening gowns covered the marks.
Respectability no longer impressed her.
Her phone rang.
Rachel.
Emily stared at the name until Lucia touched her elbow.
“Answer it.”
Emily did.
“Hello?”
There was silence.
Then Rachel Monroe began crying.
“Oh my God. Em.”
Emily’s throat closed.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No, you do not get to apologize. Are you safe?”
“I think so.”
“That is not an answer.”
Emily looked at Alexander.
He turned away, giving her privacy without leaving the room.
“I’m at the hospital. A man was shot.”
“I saw the news.”
Of course.
By then every local station had footage of Alexander covering Emily during the shooting. Social media had turned thirty seconds of chaos into a thousand theories.
Rachel continued. “I saved the video. I sent copies to myself, my lawyer, and my sister. I still have the photos you sent me three years ago.”
Emily stopped breathing.
“What photos?”
“The ones from Milwaukee. Your shoulder. The bruise around your neck.”
Emily had forgotten.
No—she had forced herself to forget.
She had sent Rachel pictures after a conference where Derek shoved her against a hotel wall. The next morning Emily called and said she fell in the shower. Rachel did not believe her. Derek found out they had been talking, accused Rachel of trying to destroy the marriage, and made Emily block her.
“You kept them?”
“Every one.”
Emily covered her mouth.
Alexander glanced back.
Rachel said, “I also kept your voicemail.”
“What voicemail?”
“The one where you said if something happened to you, Derek did it.”
The waiting room disappeared.
Emily remembered.
Two years ago.
The night before her father died.
Derek had come home furious because William Carter refused to approve a refinancing plan. He had thrown Emily’s phone against the wall. Later, while Derek showered, she used an old tablet to call Rachel.
If something happens to me, it was Derek.
The next day her father was dead.
Emily went cold.
“Rachel, what date was that voicemail?”
“November seventeenth.”
Her father died November eighteenth.
Alexander saw her face.
“What?”
Emily put Rachel on speaker.
“Tell him.”
Rachel hesitated. “Who?”
“Alexander Moretti.”
A long pause.
“Jesus, Emily.”
“Please.”
Rachel explained.
Alexander listened without interrupting.
When she finished, he asked one question.
“Do you still have the original file?”
“Yes.”
“Do not send it by email. Do not upload it anywhere. Put the device containing it somewhere secure and tell no one where except Emily.”
Rachel’s tone sharpened. “And why exactly should I trust you?”
“You should not.”
Emily looked at him.
Alexander continued. “Trust her. Do what she asks.”
Rachel was silent.
Then, “Em?”
Emily closed her eyes.
“Please keep it safe.”
“I will.”
When the call ended, Alexander sat across from Emily.
“The night before your father died, Derek was angry about financing.”
“Yes.”
“What exactly did your father refuse?”
“I don’t know.”
“We need his records.”
“They’re at Carter headquarters.”
“Accessible?”
“Derek replaced most of Dad’s staff after the funeral.”
Alexander’s mouth tightened.
“Of course he did.”
Lucia stood. “I can get us inside.”
Emily shook her head. “No.”
Both Morettis looked at her.
“It’s my company.”
Alexander began, “Emily—”
“No.”
He stopped.
She pulled the blanket tighter around herself.
“All night people have moved me from room to room because they say they are protecting me. Derek did that too, in a different way. He handled things. He decided what I could know. He told me business was too complicated. If we go into Carter headquarters, I go.”
Lucia smiled slightly.
Alexander did not.
“It may be dangerous.”
“So is being married to Derek.”
“That is not an argument for additional danger.”
“It is an argument against living the rest of my life in a locked room.”
Alexander looked away.
Emily watched the conflict in him.
He was built to protect by controlling variables.
She was beginning to understand that about him.
Finally he nodded.
“You go.”
“Thank you.”
“But not today.”
She frowned.
“You have not slept. You have been assaulted, abducted, and shot at in the last eight hours. We find you somewhere secure first.”
Emily wanted to argue.
She did not, because he was right.
“Where?”
Alexander and Lucia exchanged a look.
“No Moretti property,” Emily said immediately.
Alexander raised an eyebrow.
“If Thomas has people inside your family, I’m not sleeping in one of your houses.”
Lucia’s smile widened. “I like her.”
Alexander ignored that.
Emily continued, “Not a hotel either. Derek knows every luxury hotel in Chicago.”
Lucia snapped her fingers. “The lake house.”
Alexander’s face darkened. “No.”
“Why?” Emily asked.
Lucia answered before him. “Because it belonged to his mother.”
Alexander looked at his cousin.
“Lucia.”
“What? It’s empty, unlisted, held through a trust Thomas doesn’t control, and there are no staff except the caretaker.”
Emily watched Alexander.
“You don’t want me there.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It’s what your face said.”
Lucia laughed into her coffee.
Alexander gave her a look.
Then he turned back to Emily.
“The house is private.”
“So am I.”
Another silence.
Finally he said, “Fine.”
At dawn they left through the hospital’s underground garage.
The lake house was not on Lake Michigan.
It sat seventy miles north, near a smaller body of water surrounded by bare trees and old stone walls. The house itself was gray cedar, modest by Moretti standards but larger than anything Emily would have called a cottage.
No guards stood at the gate.
That surprised her.
Alexander noticed.
“My mother hated visible security.”
“You listened to her?”
“Sometimes.”
The caretaker, Mrs. Bell, was seventy if she was a day and looked at Alexander like he was still sixteen.
“You’re too thin.”
“I am not.”
“You are. And you brought a woman bleeding.”
Emily touched her lip.
“It looks worse than it is.”
Mrs. Bell gave Alexander a devastating stare. “Did you do that?”
“No.”
“Good. I would hate to bury you after knowing you since diapers.”
Emily laughed before she could stop herself.
Alexander looked offended.
It was the first human expression she had seen on him.
Mrs. Bell led Emily upstairs, found ice for her lip, and produced an old sweatshirt and pajama pants.
“Sleep,” she ordered.
Emily thought she could not.
She was wrong.
She slept for six hours.
When she woke, afternoon light filled the guest room.
For three seconds she did not know where she was.
Then panic hit.
She sat up too fast.
The door was open.
Open.
Not locked.
Emily stared at it until her breathing slowed.
Voices came from downstairs.
She followed them into the kitchen.
Alexander stood at the counter making coffee.
He was alone.
“Where is everyone?”
“Lucia went back to the city. Two security teams are outside the property line. Mrs. Bell is terrorizing a grocery store.”
Emily sat at the table.
Alexander poured her coffee without asking how she took it.
She looked at the cup.
“Cream. No sugar.”
He paused.
“You noticed.”
“You had three cups at the hospital.”
Something about that unnerved her.
Not because it was threatening.
Because being noticed without being monitored felt unfamiliar.
He sat opposite her.
“We found Derek’s car.”
“Where?”
“Near Gary.”
“Was he in it?”
“No.”
“Thomas?”
“No.”
Emily wrapped both hands around the coffee.
“Do you think they’re together?”
“I think Derek is useful to Thomas until he isn’t.”
“And then?”
Alexander did not answer.
She understood.
Her stomach turned.
“I don’t want Derek killed.”
Alexander looked at her carefully.
“That surprises you?”
“A little.”
“I want him convicted. I want him to hear me say what he did in a courtroom where he can’t interrupt me. I want him to lose the company, the condo, the friends who think he is charming. I want him to wake up every day knowing I survived him.”
Alexander’s gaze stayed on her.
“That is not mercy.”
“No.”
A faint expression touched his mouth.
“No,” he agreed.
Emily looked out at the lake.
“Why aren’t you married?”
The question escaped before she could stop it.
Alexander’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“I’m sorry. None of my business.”
“My fiancée died.”
Emily looked back at him.
The answer had come too quickly to be invented.
“I’m sorry.”
“Eight years ago.”
“What happened?”
“A car bomb intended for me.”
The kitchen became very quiet.
Emily understood suddenly why his protection could feel like control.
Everyone he loved had probably become a target.
Alexander stared into his coffee.
“After that, I decided attachment was irresponsible.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It is efficient.”
Emily almost smiled.
“Those are not the same thing.”
His eyes met hers.
For a moment neither looked away.
The air shifted.
Not romance.
Not yet.
Recognition.
Two people who had built different prisons and called them survival.
Alexander’s phone rang.
He answered.
Lucia’s voice came through, sharp and urgent.
“We have a problem.”
Alexander stood.
“What?”
“I’m at Carter headquarters. Someone accessed the archive room at seven this morning.”
Emily’s pulse jumped.
“What did they take?”
Lucia paused.
“Not what. Who.”
Emily frowned.
Lucia continued.
“Your father’s former controller, Martin Shaw. He apparently never left Chicago. He’s been living under another name for eighteen months.”
Emily gripped the table.
“Why would he hide?”
“Because,” Lucia said, “he left a message in the archive safe.”
Alexander’s face went still.
“What message?”
Lucia read it aloud.
“If Emily Carter is asking questions, tell her Derek did not find her father dead.”
May you like
Emily stopped breathing.
“He was there when William was still alive.”
