Chapter 5 - The Glass Fortress Crumbles
For three weeks, Las Vegas watched the untouchable casino mogul Vincent Moretti unravel in plain sight.
He missed high-stakes executive board meetings, canceled multi-million dollar casino acquisitions, and fired two public relations managers who tried to handle the press leaks. Private investigators stood in his office every morning, trembling as they reported that Clara had vanished into thin air without using a single shared credit card.
"Vincent, you have to let her cool off," Victoria said softly, walking into his top-floor executive suite unannounced.
She was dressed in a tailored cream suit, looking radiant and completely oblivious to the wreckage she had helped orchestrate. She placed a slender hand on his tense shoulder, her perfume immediately hitting his nostrils with sickening familiarity.
Vincent flinched away as if she were carrying a burning iron.
"Don't touch me," he growled, staring up at her with bloodshot, hollow eyes that held none of their former warmth.
"Excuse me?" Victoria blinked, stepping back with wounded offense painted across her features. "I came here to support you during this dramatic episode Clara is putting you through. She is using that child to punish you for being a good friend to me."
"A dramatic episode?" Vincent stood up slowly, towering over his desk, his fists clenched until his knuckles turned paper-white. "My wife almost bled out on an operating table while I held your hand through a panic attack caused by your own bad investments."
"You made your choice, Vincent," she scoffed, crossing her arms defensively. "You loved me first. You were always going to come back to me."
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"I never loved you," Vincent whispered, the bitter truth tasting like ash in his mouth. "I was addicted to feeling needed by someone who destroyed me, and I traded the only real family I had in the world for a ghost."
"Get out of my building," he said coldly. "And if you ever come within a mile of my wife or my son, I will use every dollar I have to erase you from this city forever."
