Chapter 2 - THE WIFE WHO OWNED THE EMPIRE
Dante called twenty-three times that night.
Amara answered none of them.
She spent her first night away from her husband in a furnished apartment thirty-two floors above downtown Chicago.
The apartment belonged to a limited-liability company her attorney had established four months earlier when Amara first began noticing numbers that did not make sense.
Not numbers in Dante’s businesses.
Numbers in her marriage.
Hotel charges during supposed meetings.
Flowers she had never received.
A second cell phone.
A jeweler’s receipt for a bracelet now resting on Selena’s wrist.
Amara had not wanted to become the suspicious wife who checked everything.
Eventually, she understood that refusing to look at evidence did not make her dignified.
It made her easier to deceive.
At 6:12 the next morning, she woke to pounding rain and thirty-seven unread messages.
Dante.
Her father-in-law Vittorio.
Two of Dante’s attorneys.
Three numbers she did not recognize.
And one from Selena.
I hope eventually we can speak like adults.
Amara deleted it.
Then someone knocked.
Caleb’s voice came through the door.
“Your attorney is here.”
Rachel Levin entered carrying coffee and enough legal folders to terrify a small corporation.
She was forty-three, sharp-eyed and famously difficult to intimidate.
Amara had chosen her for precisely that reason.
“You slept?” Rachel asked.
“Three hours.”
“Excellent. That’s three more than your husband.”
Amara looked up.
Rachel placed her phone on the table.
A photograph showed Dante leaving his mansion shortly before five that morning.
“Where did he go?”
“His office.”
Amara frowned.
“On a Monday?”
“Apparently betrayal has improved his work ethic.”
Despite herself, Amara laughed.
It hurt.
Rachel’s expression softened.
“Ready?”
“No.”
“Good. People who think they’re ready for divorce from powerful men usually aren’t.”
She opened the first folder.
“Dante’s counsel contacted me at 2:41 a.m.”
“He already knows?”
“You served him yesterday afternoon.”
“I thought those papers were being delivered today.”
“They were.”
Rachel smiled.
“I changed the schedule.”
Amara blinked.
“Why?”
“Because men like Dante Moretti spend their lives controlling timing. I wanted him to experience uncertainty.”
For the first time in days, Amara felt something almost resembling relief.
“What did his lawyer say?”
“He wants mediation before filing.”
“No.”
“He wants you to return to the marital home during negotiations.”
“No.”
“He also wants confirmation that you do not intend to interfere with his business interests.”
Amara stared at her.
Rachel slid the second folder across the table.
“There it is.”
The share certificate sat inside.
MORETTI WATERFRONT HOLDINGS.
51 percent.
AMARA ELENA MORETTI.
Amara touched the paper.
“Is it actually enforceable?”
“Oh, it’s enforceable.”
“Dante told me it was basically administrative.”
Rachel’s mouth curved.
“Dante lied.”
That word still hurt.
Amara looked toward the windows.
“Why would he leave something this valuable in my name?”
“At the time? Because he needed distance between himself and certain assets.”
“Federal investigation.”
“Yes.”
“He said the company was barely worth anything.”
“It was.”
Rachel opened another document.
“Then it acquired three waterfront warehouses, two logistics terminals, a construction subsidiary, minority stakes in four hotels and a commercial property portfolio.”
Amara stared at the valuation.
$187,400,000.
Her throat went dry.
“I own half of that?”
“You control it.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“It is when you own fifty-one percent.”
Amara leaned back.
All those years she had sat quietly at charity events while people called her lucky.
Dante’s wife.
Mrs. Moretti.
The woman married to money.
Nobody had ever mentioned that part of his legitimate empire legally belonged to her.
“Can he take it back?”
“Not without proving the original transfer was fraudulent. And if he does that…”
Rachel smiled.
“He has to explain under oath why he made it.”
Amara looked at her.
“Which he won’t.”
“Correct.”
The apartment door opened.
Caleb entered.
“Problem.”
Amara immediately straightened.
“What?”
“Media.”
Rachel’s expression sharpened.
“What kind?”
“Local gossip accounts. Two newspapers are calling. Someone leaked that Mrs. Moretti left the marital residence last night.”
Amara picked up her phone.
The story had already appeared.
MORETTI MARRIAGE IN CRISIS? CHICAGO POWER COUPLE LIVING APART
Another headline was uglier.
PREGNANT SOCIALITE ABANDONS HUSBAND AFTER DOMESTIC DISPUTE
Amara’s stomach twisted.
“Abandons?”
Rachel’s face darkened.
“That’s deliberate.”
Then another article refreshed.
Sources close to the Moretti family claim Amara has suffered ‘emotional instability’ during pregnancy.
Amara went cold.
Rachel whispered something unprintable.
Caleb asked, “Who knew about the apartment?”
“No one,” Rachel said.
Amara reread the phrase.
Sources close to the family.
Then she remembered the photograph from the SUV.
Everyone gets to choose a side.
“Selena.”
Rachel looked at her.
“You think the mistress leaked it?”
“I think someone wants me to look unstable before the divorce becomes public.”
Rachel stood.
“Then we move first.”
Amara hesitated.
“I don’t want a public war.”
“You’re already in one.”
Her phone rang.
Dante.
For the twenty-fourth time.
Amara stared at it.
Then answered.
Silence.
She heard him breathe.
“Where are you?”
His voice was low.
Exhausted.
“You know I’m not telling you.”
“I know you’re downtown.”
Amara’s eyes went to Caleb.
He shook his head.
Dante continued.
“I know Rhodes is with you. I know Rachel Levin is representing you. I know someone followed your car yesterday, and I know it wasn’t one of mine.”
“You seem informed.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“You could have tried keeping your vows.”
Silence.
It landed.
“Amara.”
“No. You don’t get to skip that part because something else is happening.”
“I didn’t leak those stories.”
“Did Selena?”
“I asked her.”
Amara laughed without humor.
“You asked your mistress if she was lying?”
His voice sharpened.
“I’m handling it.”
“That sentence used to comfort me.”
Another silence.
Then Dante said, “Come home.”
“No.”
“For the baby.”
“Don’t use her.”
“I am her father.”
“And yesterday you told her mother to leave.”
“I made a mistake.”
Amara froze.
Dante Moretti did not say those words.
Ever.
She closed her eyes.
“A mistake is forgetting an anniversary.”
“Amara—”
“A mistake is saying something cruel once in anger.”
Her voice trembled.
“You carried on a relationship for years.”
He said nothing.
“You brought her into our home.”
Nothing.
“You sat her in my chair.”
His breathing changed.
“And then you asked me to participate in my own humiliation because telling her no was apparently harder than destroying me.”
“Stop.”
“No.”
“I said stop.”
“And I don’t work for you.”
That silenced him.
Amara looked at Rachel.
Her attorney nodded once.
Amara continued.
“You’ll receive formal notice this morning concerning Moretti Waterfront Holdings.”
Dante went completely quiet.
Then:
“What did you do?”
There he was.
The businessman.
The boss.
The man who finally sounded afraid.
“Nothing yet.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m exercising my rights as majority shareholder.”
“That company belongs to my family.”
“No.”
Amara looked down at the certificate.
“Legally, it belongs to me.”
“Amara.”
“You should have read your own paperwork.”
“Do not touch my company.”
She almost smiled.
“Our company?”
“Don’t play games.”
“I’m not.”
Her voice became calm.
“You told me I had everything I could ever need, Dante.”
She looked around the quiet apartment.
“You were right.”
Then she ended the call.
Three seconds later, Rachel’s phone rang.
She answered.
“Yes?”
Her eyebrows rose.
“When?”
Amara watched her.
Rachel slowly sat down.
“Thank you.”
She hung up.
“What happened?”
Rachel looked stunned.
“Dante just called an emergency board meeting.”
“So?”
“He’s trying to remove you before your notice arrives.”
“Can he?”
“No.”
Rachel’s expression changed.
“Because he doesn’t control the board.”
Amara frowned.
“Who does?”
Rachel turned the certificate over.
There was a handwritten amendment attached to the original shareholder agreement.
Seven years old.
Amara recognized Dante’s signature.
Rachel pointed to one line.
In the event of marital dissolution, voting authority remains exclusively with the named majority shareholder until final settlement.
Amara stared.
“He did this?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Probably because seven years ago he trusted you more than anyone else alive.”
The words hurt worse than cruelty.
Then Caleb’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen.
His expression hardened.
“Amara.”
“What?”
“You have a visitor downstairs.”
“Who?”
He turned the phone toward her.
A security-camera image showed an elderly man standing in the lobby with silver hair, a black overcoat and two bodyguards.
Vittorio Moretti.
Dante’s father.
And in his hand was a photograph.
Not of Dante.
Not of Selena.
Of Amara.
Taken yesterday.
Inside the car.
Vittorio looked directly into the lobby camera.
Then lifted the photograph.
May you like
On the back, someone had written three words in red ink.
GIVE US DANTE.
