Chapter 7 - I STOPPED BEING THE WIFE WHO BELIEVED HIM
By the time Dominic came downstairs, my suitcase was open on the bed.
Not because I intended to flee Chicago.
I had already agreed with Agent Walsh that disappearing would complicate security and make me easier to isolate.
I was moving into the guest wing.
Thirty-seven feet away.
It might as well have been another country.
Dominic stopped in the doorway.
“Elena.”
I folded a sweater.
“Don't.”
His eyes moved toward the suitcase.
“What happened?”
I laughed.
That question.
As if the universe had spontaneously handed me another reason to hate him.
I turned my phone around.
The anniversary photograph filled the screen.
Dominic stopped breathing.
“Six months ago.”
“Elena.”
“You told me two.”
He stepped inside.
“I can explain.”
“You're going to need a new sentence.”
He looked at the photograph.
Then lowered his head.
“We didn't sleep together.”
“I don't care.”
“That matters.”
“Not enough.”
“It should.”
“To you, maybe.”
I picked up another blouse.
“You let me believe three kisses were the whole betrayal. You confessed to the smallest version you thought I could prove.”
His silence confirmed it.
“Six months.”
“It started as conversations.”
“Please don't insult both of us.”
“I was angry.”
“At me?”
“At everything.”
His voice rose, then dropped immediately because Noah was downstairs.
“The company. My mother. My father leaving me an empire full of people waiting for me to fail. You looking at me every night like you could see exactly what I was becoming.”
“So you found someone who didn't?”
“Sloan made it easy not to think.”
“And I made you think.”
“Yes.”
He regretted the word instantly.
I nodded.
“There it is.”
“No. That's not what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant.”
He moved closer.
“I loved that you challenged me.”
“Past tense?”
“I love it.”
“Then why did you punish me for it?”
His face crumpled.
Because that was what he had done.
Maybe not intentionally.
But every late night with Sloan had been an escape from the wife who knew him too well.
Every lie had chosen comfort over honesty.
Every kiss had been punishment handed to someone who didn't even know there was a trial.
“On our anniversary,” I whispered.
He looked away.
“You told me the board meeting ran late.”
“It did.”
“And then?”
He said nothing.
“Say it.”
“I met Sloan.”
“At a hotel.”
“In the lobby bar.”
“And the elevator?”
“She had a suite upstairs.”
My stomach turned.
“You went upstairs.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn't sleep with her.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“We kissed. I stayed maybe twenty minutes. Then I left.”
“Why?”
“I couldn't do it.”
That should have mattered.
Once, it might have.
Now it was simply the difference between one kind of betrayal and another.
“You still went.”
“Yes.”
“You let me sit at home with the dinner Noah helped make.”
“I know.”
“No, Dominic. You keep saying you know. You don't know what it was like because you weren't there.”
He closed his eyes.
“Noah fell asleep on the couch waiting for you. I covered the food. I told him Daddy was working because Daddy takes care of us.”
His face went white.
“And you were in an elevator with her.”
“I hate myself for it.”
“That is no longer my responsibility.”
He looked at the suitcase again.
“What are you saying?”
“I want a divorce.”
The room went completely silent.
Dominic Caruso had faced federal raids.
Rival families.
Labor wars.
His father's death.
Nothing I had ever seen hit him like those four words.
“No.”
I almost smiled.
“No?”
“I mean—”
“You don't get a vote.”
“I know.”
He sat on the edge of a chair as if his knees had failed.
“I'll sign whatever you want.”
That surprised me.
“No fight?”
“Not about that.”
He looked at me.
“I've taken enough from you.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I zipped the suitcase.
“We still protect Noah together.”
“Yes.”
“We still expose whoever is behind this.”
“Yes.”
“But we are not husband and wife while we do it.”
His jaw tightened.
“I understand.”
“You don't touch me.”
A tiny nod.
“You don't use Noah to ask about me.”
Another nod.
“You don't send flowers.”
His mouth twitched painfully.
“I hate flowers.”
“I know. That's why you'd send them.”
He almost laughed.
Neither of us did.
Later that afternoon, Agent Walsh met Mia and me in the library.
Dominic stayed outside until invited.
The evidence was expanding.
The account in my maiden name had been opened using forged identification.
The email server originated through infrastructure linked to a consulting company that had once subcontracted Sloan.
The fake camera access and credential cloning pointed toward someone with senior-level Caruso Atlantic information.
Rafael Moretti had disappeared.
His apartment was empty.
His company phone had been abandoned near O'Hare.
But Sloan had not disappeared.
She went to work.
Boldly.
At her downtown office.
When federal investigators questioned her, she denied involvement.
“She says the relationship with Dominic was personal,” Walsh told me.
“Convenient.”
“She claims Rafael used her name without authorization.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don't believe anyone until evidence makes disbelief inconvenient.”
I liked Walsh.
Dominic entered.
He looked older than he had that morning.
Walsh placed several documents on the table.
“We found the intended buyer for Terminal Nine.”
“Who?” Dominic asked.
“Lakefront Meridian Holdings.”
He swore.
I recognized the name only vaguely.
Mia didn't.
“What is it?”
Dominic sat opposite us.
“A shell controlled by Victor Dane.”
That name I knew.
Victor Dane had been my father-in-law's greatest rival before both men publicly stepped away from the more violent world surrounding Chicago waterfront unions.
“Why does Dane want Terminal Nine?”
Dominic looked at Walsh.
She answered.
“Location. Contracts. Leverage.”
“How much?”
“Enough to destabilize Caruso Atlantic.”
I looked at Dominic.
“So this is a takeover.”
“Partly.”
Walsh slid another paper toward me.
“We believe the transfer fraud was designed to trigger litigation, freeze the trust, and force a distressed sale.”
“And framing me?”
“Pressure on Dominic. Pressure on you. Confusion.”
“Why Sloan?”
Walsh's expression remained neutral.
“That's what we still need.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
Everyone watched me.
Walsh signaled for me to answer.
I did.
“Elena.”
Sloan.
Her voice was smooth.
Calm.
Almost amused.
“You've made this mess unnecessarily dramatic.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“You tracked my child.”
“I didn't.”
“You helped.”
“No.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“Because Dominic is lying to you.”
Across the table, Dominic's eyes hardened.
I put the call on speaker.
Sloan laughed quietly.
“Oh. He's there.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Sloan,” Dominic said.
“Hello, darling.”
My stomach turned.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To give you a piece of advice.”
“I have lawyers.”
“You need a historian.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Dominic didn't come to me because he was tired of marriage.”
Dominic stood.
“Enough.”
Sloan continued.
“He came to me because of what he found in your father's files.”
I froze.
My father had been dead four years.
“What files?”
Dominic's face told me something existed.
I stared at him.
“What files?”
Sloan's voice softened.
“Ask your husband why he believed you were preparing to destroy him.”
I looked at Dominic.
He said nothing.
Sloan laughed again.
“Ask him about the blue folder.”
My heart stopped.
I knew a blue folder.
My father had given it to me six weeks before he died.
I had never opened it.
I had placed it inside a bank safe-deposit box.
Only one person besides me knew it existed.
Dominic.
Sloan whispered one final sentence.
“Then ask him who emptied your safe-deposit box three months ago.”
The call ended.
I looked at my husband.
May you like
And this time, before I even spoke, Dominic said:
“I can explain.”
