Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Fifth Avenue
Within an hour, Adrien was in the back of his chauffeured Maybach, screaming into his phone as the car barreled down Fifth Avenue toward Evelyn’s old apartment.
"Find her!" he roared at his private head of security. "Track her credit cards! Check the private terminals at JFK, LaGuardia, and Teterboro! I don't care what it costs, I want every camera in the tri-state area reviewed! She cannot leave the city!"
"Mr. Vance, her personal accounts are dark," his security director answered anxiously. "She hasn't swiped a single card since six this morning. Her phone signal went dead near Chelsea thirty minutes ago. She bought a burner phone with cash."
Adrien slammed his phone onto the leather seat. For the first time in his thirty-four years of life, the immense wealth and power he commanded felt entirely useless. He had built a global hedge fund that manipulated currencies and broke foreign banks, but he couldn't keep his own wife from vanishing into the fog.
The car screeched to a halt outside the Hudson Street building. Adrien leaped out before the driver could open the door, taking the stairs two at a time up to the third floor. He hammered on the door of unit 3B with his fist, the wood rattling against its frame.
"Evelyn! Open the damn door! Evelyn!"
The lock clicked, but when the door swung open, it wasn't Evelyn.
Patricia Cross stood in the doorway, blocking the threshold with her arms crossed, her eyes freezing him in place.
"Where is she, Patricia?" Adrien demanded, trying to step past her. "I know she was here. Her car is parked around the corner."
"Step back, Adrien," Patricia said firmly, her tone commanding and icy. "You take one step into this apartment and I will call the NYPD for domestic harassment. You have no legal right to enter this property."
"She’s my wife!" he yelled, his composure shattering completely. "She's carrying my child, isn't she? Tell me the truth, Patricia! Is she pregnant?"
Patricia looked at him for a long, silent moment, her gaze stripping away every ounce of his arrogance. "If she were pregnant, Adrien, do you honestly think you deserve to know? After parading Clare Bennett across every newspaper in this country on your wedding anniversary?"
"The necklace was a mistake!" he cried, grabbing his hair in sheer desperation. "I didn't think—I wasn't thinking! Clare needed—"
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"Clare is a grown woman who had fifty lawyers handling her divorce," Patricia cut in, her voice slicing through his excuses like a razor. "Evelyn was a fragile mother carrying a high-risk pregnancy who needed her husband to hold her hand. And you chose the woman who tossed you aside six years ago. Evelyn is gone, Adrien. And she made me swear that if you ever tried to find her, I would remind you of what you said on that terrace: 'Congratulations. You're finally free.' Well, congratulations, Mr. Vance. You're free now, too."
Patricia slammed the door in his face, the deadbolt turning with an echoing thud that sounded like a gunshot in the empty hallway.
