Chapter 3 - The Reconstruction of a Crime
Ten minutes later, Luca sat at my small pine kitchen table, wearing a dry grey hoodie I had retrieved from an old box of his forgotten gym clothes. A steaming mug of black tea sat untouched between his hands.
He looked around the small apartment—taking in the frame with my mother’s portrait on the sideboard, the stacks of baby books on the coffee table, and the half-assembled crib in the corner of the living room.
His eyes lingered on the crib, filled with a profound, agonized grief.
“I missed everything,” he whispered, staring at his knuckles. “The first flutter... the ultrasounds... the nursery setup.”
“You missed it because you didn't ask questions,” I said, sitting across from him with a cup of warm milk. “You trusted a woman who wanted your name more than you trusted the woman who had it.”
Luca didn't offer an excuse. He bowed his head, accepting the blade of my words without defense.
“She’s been scheming this for eighteen months,” Luca said softly, his tone turning dangerously dark. “When I got back to my office an hour ago, I had my chief technology officer run a full forensic audit on Vanessa’s firm laptop and private server access.”
“And?”
“She hired a private investigator named Marcus Vance—no relation to my partner—back in August of last year,” Luca revealed, pulling a thick stack of printed emails from his leather briefcase and laying them on the table. “She paid him through a shell LLC registered under her sister’s name. She had you followed for three weeks.”
My blood ran cold. “She had me followed?”
“Everywhere,” Luca’s jaw tightened into a hard, rigid line. “To the grocery store, to your mother’s hospital visits, to Sloan Kettering. When you met Dr. Croft at the Mercer Hotel lounge, her investigator took fifty photos from different angles across the lobby.”
Luca pulled a glossy black-and-white photograph from the pile and slid it across the table.
I looked at it.
The camera angle was positioned behind a high decorative pillar in the Mercer lounge. From that angle, it looked as though Dr. Croft and I were standing close together near the elevator bank. In reality, we had been standing four feet apart near the reception desk while he checked his coat. The framing was a masterclass in manipulation.
“She cropped out Dr. Croft’s wife, who was sitting in the armchair right next to us,” I said, staring at the photo in sheer disbelief.
“I know,” Luca whispered, a tear finally escaping his eye and tracing a line down his pale cheek. “I received three cropped photos in my safe. Along with a fake hotel receipt showing a suite booked under your maiden name.”
I looked up at him. “A fake receipt?”
“She forged your signature using a digital scan from your charity gala consent forms,” Luca said. “She created a complete, airtight crime scene of infidelity. And then she made sure she was the one sitting in my office when the envelope arrived, pretending to be the shoulder I could cry on.”
I leaned back against my chair, feeling sickened by the cold, calculated malice of it all.
“She knew I was pregnant, Luca,” I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. “When she stood at the bottom of the stairs that night... she knew. I had left my prenatal vitamins on the bathroom counter.”
Luca’s eyes snapped up, blazing with a fury so intense it terrified me.
“She knew?” he breathed.
“Yes,” I said. “She looked right at my bag. She knew why I was sick in the mornings. She made sure I left before I could tell you.”
Luca stood up so fast his chair screeched against the floorboards. He walked over to the bay window, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, his chest heaving as he stared out into the dark Brooklyn night.
“She destroyed my family,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet vow. “She took seven months of my daughter’s life from me. She left my wife alone while her mother was dying.”
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He turned back around to face me, his dark eyes filled with an absolute, terrifying resolve.
“She thinks she’s going to resign quietly from the firm and walk away,” Luca said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “She thinks this is just a failed personal affair. She has no idea what I am about to do to her.”
