Chapter 2 - The Echoes of a Hollow Home
Four days earlier, Alexander Moretti had landed his private Gulfstream at Chicago Executive Airport, basking in the glow of what he believed was an untouchable life.
He had spent four glorious months lounging in private overwater bungalows in Tahiti and luxury villas along the French Riviera with Sophia Reynolds, a seductive twenty-four-year-old fashion model who stroked his vanity with endless compliments. He had turned off his primary cell phone, telling his executive assistant that he was in deep, uninterrupted negotiations with foreign sovereign funds.
In reality, he had spent over three million dollars on diamond necklaces, designer yachts, and champagne parties for Sophia, completely forgetting about the pregnant wife he had abandoned back in Lake Forest.
"Claire will be fine," he had laughed to Sophia over vintage wine in Monaco. "She’s quiet, she’s obedient, and she knows where her luxurious lifestyle comes from. She’ll be waiting by the door with a hot meal when I walk in."
When his black Maybach pulled up the winding driveway of the sixty-room Moretti estate in Lake Forest, he expected to see the warm yellow glow of lanterns illuminating the grand brick facade.
Instead, the estate was plunged into pitch-black darkness, surrounded by an eerie, suffocating silence.
Alexander frowned, unlocking the front door with his personal keycard. "Claire? Sweetheart, I'm home! The negotiations went exceptionally well!"
His voice bounced off the cold limestone tiles and the sweeping marble staircase. There was no warm smell of roasted chicken, no fragrant jasmine candles burning in the foyer, and no gentle music floating from the living room.
He walked into the vast kitchen. The granite countertops were cleared down to the bone, devoid of appliances, mugs, or fruit bowls.
He took the stairs two at a time, his heart fluttering with an unfamiliar, annoying twinge of anxiety. He pushed open the double doors of the master bedroom suite.
The massive walk-in closet was stripped completely clean. Every single dress, pair of shoes, coat, and piece of jewelry he had ever bought for her was gone.
Even worse, the nursery down the hallway—the room he had promised to help paint before his "urgent business trip"—was completely vacant, stripped bare down to the hardwood floorboards, with only a solitary white baby rattle sitting in the exact center of the room.
Beside the rattle lay a heavy white legal envelope stamped with the seal of Chicago’s most lethal family law firm.
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Inside were divorce documents signed with firm, elegant ink in his wife's handwriting, demanding nothing less than sole legal custody of their child and the total forfeiture of Alexander’s parental claims on the grounds of gross desertion and marital fraud.
Alexander had fallen to his knees on the cold nursery floor, dialing her number like a madman, only to hear the monotone operator recording: The number you are trying to reach has been permanently disconnected.
