Chapter 5 - The Stalker in the Harbor
Down on the street level, parked directly across from the State Street Financial Tower, sat Matteo’s black Maybach.
Clare stood motionless by the window, watching the tiny silhouette of a man leaning against the hood in the freezing cold. Matteo wasn't wearing an overcoat. He stood with his hands jammed into his trouser pockets, staring up at the tower, heedless of the snow falling onto his dark hair.
For three years, Clare had found that obsessive intensity romantic. She had believed that a man who commanded hundreds of workers, who moved cargo across oceans with a whisper, was only vulnerable when he looked at her. Now, she recognized it for what it truly was: an insatiable need for control. To Matteo, Clare was not a partner; she was his crowning conquest, the spotless, untouchable Bennett heiress whose integrity cleansed the Duca family’s shadowy reputation. Losing her was not an emotional heartbreak—it was a public defeat.
Her phone rang again. She answered it.
""You didn't take the pearls,"" Matteo said. His voice was rough, gravelly from lack of sleep and cold air.
""I told your mother to keep them.""
""Natalia is gone, Clare. She has no claim on me, no claim on my family. I canceled the debt relief. I left her father’s estate to bankruptcy court. Is that what you wanted? Blood?""
""I didn't want blood, Matteo. I wanted a partner,"" Clare said, watching him look up toward her floor. ""The fact that you think destroying Natalia proves your love for me shows you still understand nothing. You discard people the second they become inconvenient. Yesterday it was me. Today it’s her. Tomorrow it will be whoever gets in your way.""
""I built an empire for us!"" Matteo snarled, his composure finally breaking over the phone line. ""Everything I locked down on this coast was supposed to be our children’s legacy! You think Arthur Vance and those northern brokers care about you? They will bleed Bennett Maritime dry the moment my back is turned!""
""Then I'll fight them myself,"" Clare said. ""At least with them, the battle is on the ledger. With you, the knife comes from the man sleeping beside me.""
""Clare, don't hang up—""
She ended the call, blocked the number, and immediately dialed building security. Within ten minutes, two Boston police cruisers pulled up behind the Maybach, politely informing the waterfront titan that he was blocking an active commercial loading zone. Clare watched Matteo climb slowly into the back of his car and disappear into the Boston traffic.
That evening, Clare moved her personal belongings out of the Beacon Hill townhouse. She took only what was hers: her clothes, her books, and her grandmother’s silver tea set. She left behind the diamond Cartier watches, the designer handbags he had gifted her after every late-night argument, and every piece of jewelry bearing the Duca family crest.
On the dining room table, she left her house key next to a copy of the official court injunction freezing his terminal expansion.
May you like
As she stepped into her new apartment overlooking the Charles River, a space she had leased under her own name without a single bodyguard at the door, her laptop chimed. An email from an unknown address had landed in her inbox. Attached was an audio recording.
The sender was Natalia Russo.
