Chapter 3 - Shattered Glass
The Presidential Suite at the Charles Hotel smelled of imported lilies and cold champagne, but inside its soundproofed walls, the atmosphere was suffocating.
Vincent stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass looking down at the red-brick expanse of Harvard Yard. His tie had been ripped off and lay discarded on the Persian rug. His hands were buried in his trouser pockets, clenched into fists so tight that the fabric strained against his knuckles.
Behind him, Sophia sat on the edge of a velvet armchair, her hands gripping her gold clutch like a shield. Ethan stood near the bar, uncomfortably sipping a soda, his eyes darting between his parents.
“Dad?” Ethan ventured, his voice cracking slightly. “Who was that guy? Why did he look like... why did you call him your son?”
“Go to your room, Ethan,” Vincent said. His voice was dangerously low, the quiet rumble before an avalanche.
“Vincent, he’s eighteen, he deserves to—”
“I said,” Vincent turned, his gray eyes burning with a terrifying, feral fury, “go to your room. Now.”
Ethan swallowed hard, looked at his mother’s pale, trembling face, and hurried down the hallway, closing the heavy oak door behind him.
The click of the latch was the signal.
Vincent walked over to the glass coffee table, picked up a crystal tumbler of Scotch, and slammed it down onto the marble counter. The glass shattered into a thousand gleaming teeth. Liquor and blood from his palm pooled together on the polished stone.
Sophia gasped, pressing herself back into the sofa. “Vincent! You’re bleeding!”
“Eighteen years,” he whispered, stepping toward her. “Eighteen years, Sophia.”
“I don't know what you're talking about!” she cried, tears finally breaking past her mascara. “Claire was always unstable! You know she hated me! She probably slept with someone else right after she left Chicago just to spite you, to make a child that looked like—”
A roar tore from Vincent’s chest as his hand struck the armrest next to her head. The wood groaned under the impact.
“Do not insult my intelligence!” he snarled, his face inches from hers, his blood dripping onto the cream upholstery. “He has my jaw. He has my eyes. He has my grandfather’s hairline. And he was born eight months and twelve days after she signed the preliminary separation papers! He is my son!”
Sophia wept into her hands. “Even if he is, she hid him! She chose to run! She stole him from you, Vincent, not me! I gave you Ethan! I stood by you while she ran away like a coward!”
Vincent’s breathing was ragged. He straightened up, pulling a white linen handkerchief from his pocket and wrapping it carelessly around his bleeding hand.
“Call Marcus,” Vincent ordered.
Sophia froze. “Marcus? Why Marcus? Vincent, it’s ten o'clock at night—”
“Call my chief of security. Tell him to bring the financial audit files for the Bennett Trust. Now. Or by sunrise, I will have the police escort you out of my house in Lake Forest with nothing but the clothes on your back.”
The mention of the Bennett Trust sucked all the air out of the room. Sophia’s jaw slacked, her pupils dilating into black pits of pure panic.
“Vincent... no, please...”
“You told me she cashed them,” Vincent said, his voice dropping into a chilling monotone. “Every year when the tax returns were finalized, you handed me the ledger. You told me the offshore account in Delaware was active. You told me Claire took the fifteen thousand dollars a month. You told me she was living in luxury in Oregon, that she refused to speak to me, but she took my money.”
“She... she did!” Sophia lied, but the hitch in her breath gave her away.
Vincent walked to the suite’s landline, punched an international direct-line extension, and put the receiver to his ear.
“Marcus,” Vincent said the moment the line connected. “Pull every transaction log on Account 409-B since September eighteen years ago. I want the receiving routing numbers, the IP addresses of the wire withdrawals, and the notarized signatures. I want them on my desk in this suite within two hours. If you find a single irregularity... bring a forensics team.”
He slammed the phone down.
Sophia was on her knees now, crawling toward him across the Persian rug, clutching at the cuffs of his trousers.
“Vincent, listen to me! I did it for us! I did it for Ethan! If she had your child, if she took your name, Ethan would always be the bastard! You would have gone back to her! You loved her more than you ever loved me!”
Vincent looked down at her. The disgust in his eyes was absolute, a cold, clinical void.
“Where did the money go, Sophia?”
“It was just sitting there... we didn't need it...”
“Where did the money go?!”
“A shell corporation!” she sobbed, breaking completely. “My sister’s gallery in Paris! We used it to buy the summer estate in Martha's Vineyard! Vincent, she left you! She walked away! Why should she have been rewarded with your millions while I had to endure the whisperings of Chicago society?”
Vincent pulled his leg away from her grasp as if she were a leper. He stared down at his wrapped, bloody hand, his mind violently reconstructing the scene in the theater.
Claire’s shoes. He remembered them now. The heels were worn down at the edges. Her dress was unbranded, neat but tired. She had no rings. Her hands bore the rough texture of physical labor.
*‘My mother raised me alone on seventy-hour work weeks and cold tea.’*
Noah’s words rang in Vincent’s ears like church bells tolling for a funeral.
He had believed she was living in comfort. He had believed she had taken his three million dollars and built a quiet, opulent life, choosing pride over reconciliation. Instead, his wife—the only woman he had ever truly revered—had been scrubbing floors and calculating grocery bills in the dark, while the mistress who destroyed his home bought French artwork with his child’s bread.
“Get out of my sight,” Vincent whispered.
“Vincent—”
“Get out of this suite before I forget that you are Ethan’s mother.”
May you like
Sophia scrambled to her feet, weeping hysterically, and fled into the guest wing. Vincent stood alone in the dark room, watching the Boston fog roll over the river, his heart disintegrating in his chest.
***
