Chapter 3 - THE MAN IN THE MIRROR
Vincent replayed the final second.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The silver watch remained unmistakable.
He had given Marcus the limited-edition Vacheron for ten years of loyalty.
Grace stepped away from the screen.
“You sent him?”
“No.”
“But he was there.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Vincent.”
“I didn’t.”
She searched his face.
For the first time since their marriage, Vincent realized his wife was deciding whether she believed him.
That hurt more than he expected.
He called Marcus.
“Penthouse. Now.”
Grace caught his wrist.
“Don’t hurt him.”
Vincent looked down at her hand.
Even now.
Humiliated, frightened, betrayed—and still worried about what Vincent might do to someone else.
“I need answers.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
His expression softened by a fraction.
“I won’t hurt him.”
Marcus arrived twenty minutes later.
Vincent had the video waiting on the television.
Marcus watched.
When his reflection appeared, he closed his eyes.
Grace’s stomach dropped.
“You knew.”
Marcus looked at her.
“Yes.”
Vincent moved so quickly the coffee table shifted when his leg struck it.
“You stood there?”
“I arrived near the end.”
“And you said nothing to me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Marcus reached slowly into his coat.
Vincent’s body tightened.
Marcus removed an envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
Grace recognized herself immediately.
She was leaving Miller and Bloom nearly eighteen months earlier.
Someone had drawn a red circle around her.
On the back were four words.
NOT THE WOMAN. THE LEVERAGE.
Vincent read them twice.
“Explain.”
Marcus remained standing.
“About six months after you married Grace, we intercepted photographs of her being passed through one of Anton Vescari’s crews.”
Grace knew the name.
Everyone around Vincent did.
Vescari controlled gambling routes through parts of the Midwest and had spent years trying to force Vincent out of Chicago freight contracts.
“You told me that threat was contained,” Vincent said.
“It was.”
“Apparently not.”
“The men following Grace disappeared.”
Grace flinched at the wording.
Marcus saw it.
“I mean they stopped.”
“Why wasn’t I told?” she asked.
Marcus looked uncomfortable.
“Vincent knew someone had photographed you.”
Grace slowly turned.
Vincent did not deny it.
Something inside her seemed to collapse.
“You knew?”
“Not about the account. Not about the gala.”
“But you knew someone had followed me.”
“Yes.”
“And you decided I didn’t need to know.”
“I increased security.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I wanted you safe.”
Grace laughed bitterly.
“No. You wanted me calm.”
Vincent’s voice lowered.
“I didn’t want you living afraid.”
“So you let me live ignorant instead.”
That accusation he could not dismiss.
Marcus spoke carefully.
“Grace, the threat ended.”
“Then why were those photographs upstairs?”
Nobody answered.
Grace picked up the photograph again.
Eighteen months.
Someone had been collecting images of her for eighteen months.
“Vanessa knew?”
Marcus shook his head.
“I don’t think so.”
“You were outside that suite.”
“I followed Vanessa.”
“Why?”
“Because two days before the gala, she asked one of our employees for copies of Grace’s event schedule.”
Vincent turned.
“She what?”
“She claimed she wanted to hire Miller and Bloom.”
“I haven’t owned Miller and Bloom for almost a year,” Grace said.
Exactly.
Marcus had followed Vanessa upstairs expecting to discover whether she was involved in something larger.
Instead he had heard laughter.
He reached the doorway just as one woman was filming Grace.
“I should have walked in,” Marcus said.
Grace looked at him.
“Yes.”
“I thought if I did, whoever supplied those photographs would disappear.”
“So you watched me be humiliated for evidence.”
Marcus’s face tightened.
“For ninety seconds.”
“Ninety seconds can be very long when you’re the person everyone is laughing at.”
He lowered his eyes.
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.”
Vincent stepped between them—not to protect Marcus, but because he saw Grace shaking.
She backed away.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“I need air.”
“Grace—”
“I need one room in my life where nobody is deciding what I can handle.”
She walked into the bedroom and closed the door.
Vincent did not follow.
Marcus remained by the windows.
“You should have told me,” Vincent said.
“Yes.”
“I should have told her.”
“Yes.”
Vincent looked toward the closed bedroom.
He was accustomed to enemies exploiting weaknesses.
He had never considered that his instinct to protect Grace might itself become one.
“Find the source of the photographs.”
“We already started.”
“Vanessa?”
“Not the source.”
“How certain?”
Marcus took out his phone.
“Because Vanessa sent this to me twenty minutes ago.”
It was an image of a blue velvet jewelry box.
Inside lay a bracelet Grace recognized when she emerged from the bedroom several minutes later.
She stopped in the hallway.
“My mother’s bracelet.”
Vincent turned.
“What?”
Grace came closer.
The bracelet was inexpensive—small freshwater pearls and a silver clasp shaped like a flower.
“My mother gave it to me before she died.”
“Where was it?”
“In my old Milwaukee apartment.”
“You kept the apartment?”
“No. I boxed everything after we married. Some things went into storage.”
Marcus enlarged the photograph.
A handwritten note lay beside the bracelet.
Grace read it.
Her face drained.
Vincent took the phone.
The note said:
ASK YOUR WIFE WHY HER MOTHER WORKED AT THE LAKESHORE HOTEL ON OCTOBER 14, 2004.
Grace shook her head.
“She worked there for years.”
Vincent went completely still.
Grace noticed.
“What?”
He said nothing.
“Vincent.”
Marcus looked at him.
“You remember the date.”
Vincent walked to the window.
October 14, 2004.
He had been twenty-four.
His father, Dominic Cole, had still controlled the organization.
And that night, at the Lakeshore Hotel in Milwaukee, a man named Peter Vescari had been beaten nearly to death after trying to leave Dominic Cole’s network.
Peter had survived.
For three days.
Then he disappeared.
Grace stared at her husband.
“What happened at that hotel?”
Vincent turned slowly.
“Something my father spent twenty-two years making sure nobody talked about.”
Grace’s eyes moved back to the photograph of her mother’s bracelet.
Then she noticed something neither man had seen.
Behind the jewelry box was a corner of another photograph.
Grace enlarged it.
Her mother stood in a hotel corridor.
May you like
Beside her was a much younger Dominic Cole.
And Dominic was handing her something wrapped in a bloodstained white towel.
