Chapter 2 - The Name I Never Expected
“Tell me everything.”
Claire stood beside the folding table with both arms wrapped around herself.
I was still holding the phone.
Damian Cross’s name glowed from the cracked screen like a death sentence.
Claire looked toward the basement window before answering.
That movement bothered me immediately.
Not because she was afraid.
Because she had learned to check windows before speaking.
My wife had never done that before.
“What did Damian tell you?”
Her eyes returned to mine.
“That you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That I was pregnant.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“Claire.”
“You asked me to tell you everything.”
“I’m trying.”
“No.” Her voice sharpened. “You’re trying not to explode.”
She knew me too well.
I put the phone carefully on the table.
“Then tell me what happened.”
Claire remained silent for several seconds.
Finally, she sat down.
“It started three days before I left.”
I remembered those days.
I had been preparing for a fight over three waterfront contracts. Two unions were threatening to walk. A federal auditor had started asking questions about one of our shipping subsidiaries. I had barely slept.
Claire and I had eaten dinner together once that week.
I remembered coming home at two in the morning and finding her asleep on the sofa.
I remembered covering her with a blanket.
I had not remembered asking why she was sleeping downstairs.
That realization cut deeper than I wanted it to.
“I had taken three pregnancy tests,” she said. “I hadn’t told you yet.”
“Why?”
Her mouth tightened.
“Because you were barely speaking to me.”
“I was working.”
“I know.”
“I wasn’t angry with you.”
“I know that now, too.”
There were a lot of things she knew now.
That did nothing to erase what she had believed then.
“Damian came into the kitchen while you were out,” she continued. “He asked whether I was feeling sick.”
I felt my jaw harden.
“He knew?”
“I don’t know how. Maybe he saw the pharmacy receipt. Maybe someone followed me. Maybe he searched our bathroom.”
Damian had access to the entire house.
More access than anyone except me.
Claire rubbed her palms together.
“He told me I needed to see something before I told you.”
“What?”
“He showed me screenshots.”
She picked up the old phone and opened a folder.
My stomach turned.
There were conversations supposedly between me and Damian.
My name.
My photograph.
My phrasing.
At first glance, they looked real.
Claire enlarged one.
ROMAN: If she’s pregnant, handle it before it becomes permanent.
DAMIAN: You sure?
ROMAN: I don’t want an heir used against me.
Another.
ROMAN: Move money where she can’t reach it.
DAMIAN: And Claire?
ROMAN: She’ll understand eventually.
I stared at the words.
“I never wrote these.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“One of the dates.”
She scrolled.
“You were in surgery.”
I looked at her.
My shoulder wound.
Providence.
I had been unconscious for six hours after doctors removed a bullet fragment.
Damian had been in the hospital.
He had been the one standing outside my room when I woke.
“He showed them to you anyway?”
“Not that one. That one appeared later.”
“There were more?”
“A lot more.”
Claire swallowed.
“Damian showed me bank transfers to a private clinic in Connecticut. He said you’d arranged an appointment.”
The room seemed to contract around me.
“What kind of appointment?”
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
A cold rage settled inside my chest.
“He told me you wanted me to end the pregnancy?”
“He never said the words directly.” Her voice cracked. “He didn’t have to.”
I turned away.
There were versions of myself I had spent years trying to bury.
A younger Roman who solved insult with violence.
A Roman who believed fear was faster than trust.
A Roman who built a reputation so dangerous that sometimes all I had to do was walk into a room and people changed their minds.
That reputation had protected me.
It had also made Damian’s lie believable.
That was the part I could not escape.
“If someone told you I wanted my own child dead,” I said, “you believed them.”
Claire stood.
“Don’t you dare make this simple.”
I looked at her.
“You had men outside our bedroom.”
“For security.”
“You tracked my car.”
“For security.”
“You decided which events I could attend when there were threats.”
“To keep you alive.”
“You once changed our vacation without telling me because you decided the original hotel wasn’t secure enough.”
“There was a credible threat.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Her eyes were wet now, but she refused to let the tears fall.
“You spent three years teaching me that when danger existed, Roman decided what happened. Roman chose the route. Roman chose the guards. Roman chose what information I needed. And then your closest friend showed me evidence that you had decided I was the danger.”
I had no answer.
Because some lies only work when they are built around a truth.
And the truth was that I had loved Claire like a man terrified of losing the only good thing he had.
Sometimes terror looks too much like control.
“What happened next?” I asked quietly.
“Damian said I had one chance to leave before you came home.”
“Did he give you money?”
“Six hundred dollars.”
“That’s all?”
“He said taking more would trigger account alerts.”
It would have.
He knew exactly how our fraud controls worked.
“Did he take your phone?”
“Yes. He said you could locate it.”
He had been right about that too.
“I bought this one at a convenience store later.”
“Why keep his messages?”
“Because after a few weeks, things stopped making sense.”
She showed me another message.
DAMIAN: Do not contact Roman. He has people looking for you now.
Another.
DAMIAN: Boston is no longer safe.
Another.
DAMIAN: Change locations tonight.
“How often did he move you?”
“Four times.”
Something in me went still.
“Where?”
“Worcester. Providence. Manchester. Then here.”
“And every time you started settling somewhere—”
“He told me you were close.”
He had not been protecting her from me.
He had been herding her.
Keeping her moving so my investigators stayed one step behind.
“How did you end up back in Boston?”
“I stopped listening.”
That sounded like Claire.
She looked at the crib.
“Two months ago, I noticed something in one of the messages. Damian said you had been seen outside a medical center in Providence looking for me.”
“I was.”
“I checked local news. You were in New York that entire day. There were photographs of you at a charity hearing.”
“Then you started checking everything.”
She nodded.
“I found the message sent while you were in surgery. I found a bank transfer supposedly authorized by you using a security token that had been replaced three months earlier. Then I called a number Damian told me never to call.”
“What number?”
“Our old house line.”
My pulse changed.
“What happened?”
“A man answered.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. He hung up when I said my name.”
Our townhouse landline was routed through my private communications office.
Damian controlled it.
Of course he did.
“Why didn’t you go to police?”
Claire gave me a tired look.
“Damian showed me photographs of you having dinner with the deputy commissioner.”
Fair.
“Why come back here?”
“I wanted proof.”
“Of what?”
“That you were really looking for me.”
She reached beneath the table and pulled out a folded newspaper clipping.
There I was outside a courthouse six weeks earlier.
The headline had nothing to do with Claire.
But the photograph caught me leaving with one of my investigators.
I remembered that day.
I had just learned a woman matching Claire’s description had used a false name at a clinic in New Hampshire.
It hadn't been her.
“You saw that?”
“I recognized the folder in Brennan’s hand.”
Noah Brennan.
The private investigator I had hired the first night Claire disappeared.
“You knew what it meant.”
“I hoped.”
Her voice softened.
“I came back to Boston three weeks ago. I was going to find Brennan.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because somebody found me first.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“Who?”
“I never saw him.”
“What happened?”
“I came home and the door was open. Nothing was stolen. But the prenatal vitamins had been moved. The crib blanket was folded differently.”
I looked around the tiny apartment.
“You stayed here?”
“I changed the lock.”
“Claire.”
“I had twenty-three dollars this morning, Roman.”
That shut me up.
She looked toward the box on the floor.
“I was at the pawnshop because I was going to sell my earrings.”
Not the wedding ring.
The earrings.
I noticed that.
I think she noticed me noticing.
Before either of us could speak, something cracked outside.
Not loud.
Sharp.
Familiar.
I moved before thought arrived.
“Down.”
Claire froze.
The basement window exploded inward.
Glass sprayed across the room.
I crossed the distance between us and pulled her behind the concrete support wall as a second shot punched through the plaster where she had been standing.
Someone screamed outside.
My men.
I reached beneath my jacket.
Claire grabbed my wrist.
“No.”
“We’re leaving.”
Another shot.
A picture frame shattered.
I looked toward the narrow rear hallway.
There was a service exit behind the building.
“Can you run?”
“I’m thirty-five weeks pregnant.”
“Can you move fast?”
“Yes.”
That was enough.
I pulled out my phone.
No signal.
Jammer.
Professional.
Of course.
I took Claire’s hand.
She almost pulled away.
Then another bullet hit the wall.
Her fingers closed around mine.
We moved.
The back stairs were narrow and damp. I stayed between her and the door as we climbed.
One of my men, Eric, appeared at the top.
“Car’s around back.”
“Casualties?”
“Davis is hit. Shoulder. He’s conscious.”
“Shooter?”
“Gone.”
Too clean.
Too fast.
Exactly the kind of hit Damian trained my people to expect.
Exactly the kind of hit Damian knew how to perform.
We made it into the alley.
A black SUV slid toward us.
For half a second, every instinct told me not to trust it.
Then Theo Grant leaned across and shoved the passenger door open.
Theo had worked for me six years.
He was not based at the townhouse.
Damian had never recruited him.
For the moment, that was good enough.
I put Claire in the back.
Then the old phone inside my coat vibrated.
I stopped.
Claire looked at me.
“What?”
The phone should not have been active.
It had no service plan.
No registered account.
Still, the screen had lit up.
One new message.
Unknown number.
Five words.
You never could let go.
I didn’t need a name.
Claire saw my face.
“Damian?”
I looked toward the mouth of the alley.
The shooter was gone.
The apartment was compromised.
My wife had been back in my life for less than an hour, and someone had already tried to put a bullet through her.
Then another message appeared.
This one made my blood turn cold.
May you like
Nice to know she still takes your hand.
Whoever sent it was watching us right now.
