Chapter 2 - The Divorce Built From a Lie
The forged transfer order came from an account belonging to Malcolm Price, the attorney who had delivered my divorce papers.
Six months earlier, Malcolm sat across from me inside a windowless conference room and explained that Adrian considered our marriage an unacceptable security risk.
He never said Adrian no longer loved me.
He said something colder.
“Mr. Moretti has determined that emotional attachment interferes with clear leadership.”
The sentence sounded exactly like something Adrian might believe.
That was why it worked.
Now Adrian stood beside my hospital bed reading Malcolm’s name on a document that could have carried me and our unborn daughter into a private clinic controlled by his family.
“I want him found,” Adrian told Rafael.
“Alive?” Rafael asked.
I stared at them.
Adrian exhaled slowly.
“Find him and inform federal investigators.”
Rafael’s eyebrows lifted.
“Federal?”
“Yes.”
That decision told me Adrian understood the threat was larger than a private family betrayal.
Dr. Sloan increased the fetal monitoring and ordered complete bed rest. Our daughter’s heartbeat had stabilized, but the placental bleeding remained dangerous.
I was not allowed to leave the room.
Neither, apparently, was Adrian.
He pulled a chair beside my bed and opened the divorce file on his tablet.
“You signed those papers,” I said.
“Yes.”
“So do not look at Malcolm as though he divorced me by himself.”
Adrian’s face tightened.
“I signed because I believed you had provided my travel schedule to the Bellucci organization.”
I remembered the night everything ended.
A Moretti warehouse had been attacked hours after Adrian left for a private meeting. Two guards were seriously injured. Security logs appeared to show my phone sending his itinerary to an anonymous number.
Adrian never accused me directly.
He simply became silent.
Three days later, Malcolm arrived.
“You thought I betrayed you,” I whispered.
“I was shown messages, call records, and a bank transfer.”
“Did you ask me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Lorenzo said confronting you would warn whoever you were working with.”
His uncle again.
“What did the bank transfer show?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars deposited into an account under your maiden name.”
I almost laughed.
“I had forty-three dollars in my checking account when I left the penthouse.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Rafael reopened the security investigation after seeing the forged transfer order. The account never belonged to you. Your identity was attached to it after the deposit.”
The evidence that destroyed our marriage had been manufactured.
But Adrian still chose to trust it.
“You sent a lawyer because facing me might have complicated your certainty,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You were afraid I would convince you.”
“Yes.”
The honesty angered me more than an excuse would have.
“You loved me enough to doubt the evidence but not enough to ask for the truth.”
His gaze lowered.
“I loved you in every way that allowed me to remain in control.”
“That isn’t love.”
“No.”
I had waited six months to hear him admit it.
The words brought no satisfaction.
A nurse entered carrying a sealed evidence bag. Inside was the bottle of prenatal supplements.
“The hospital laboratory confirmed the capsules were altered,” she said. “The manufacturer’s original product does not contain the compound found in yours.”
“Could someone have replaced them after delivery?” Adrian asked.
“The seal was professionally reproduced.”
The nurse also revealed that my neighborhood clinic had registered me for the foundation program without my knowledge. I thought the supplements were part of a general maternal-health service.
Someone had specifically placed my name into a system controlled by Lorenzo Moretti.
Adrian called the Moretti Foundation’s executive director.
She denied authorizing the shipment.
When he asked who had accessed my record, the line disconnected.
Minutes later, every employee account at the foundation went offline.
“They’re destroying evidence,” Rafael said.
Adrian looked toward me.
“I need to leave for an hour.”
“No.”
His expression sharpened.
I pointed toward the monitors.
“You spent six months solving problems without asking what your decisions cost me. You do not disappear now and return with another version of the truth.”
“What do you want?”
The question was still new in his mouth.
“I want to know where you are going.”
“To the foundation office. Lorenzo is holding an emergency board meeting.”
“Why?”
“Because my daughter changes the Moretti trust.”
I stared at him.
“What trust?”
Adrian’s grandmother created a holding structure for the family’s legitimate companies. Adrian controlled the voting shares, but if he died without a direct heir, temporary authority transferred to Lorenzo.
Once a child of Adrian’s was born, Lorenzo’s succession rights disappeared permanently.
“So your uncle needed you childless.”
“Yes.”
“He arranged the divorce before anyone knew I was pregnant.”
“He may have expected you to disappear from our lives. Once he discovered the pregnancy, his plan changed.”
“How did he discover it?”
Only four people knew: Dr. Sloan, my friend Camille, my bookstore manager, and the clinic.
Then I remembered the man who visited the bookstore two months earlier.
He claimed to be conducting an insurance survey. He asked whether I needed maternity leave and whether anyone helped me financially.
At the time, I thought he was intrusive.
Now I understood he had been looking for Adrian’s heir.
“I saw one of Lorenzo’s men,” I said. “At the bookstore.”
Adrian’s hand curled into a fist.
“Describe him.”
Before I could answer, the fetal monitor sounded.
Our daughter’s heart rate fell and did not recover immediately.
Nurses rushed into the room. Dr. Sloan followed, her expression focused and urgent.
“Elena, the bleeding has increased.”
“Is she all right?”
“We need to prepare for delivery.”
“I’m only thirty-four weeks.”
“The neonatal team is ready. Waiting may be more dangerous than delivering.”
Fear emptied my lungs.
Adrian moved toward me, then stopped.
“May I touch you?”
I held out my hand.
He took it.
The surgical team moved quickly. Consent forms appeared. An anesthesiologist explained the procedure while another nurse prepared medication.
Adrian signed nothing.
He offered no orders.
He stood beside me and listened.
As they rolled me toward surgery, Dr. Sloan said Adrian could remain outside unless an emergency required full anesthesia.
He bent near my bed.
“She has no name,” I whispered.
“We will choose one when you wake.”
“What if I don’t?”
His face changed.
“Do not ask me that.”
“I need you to hear me. If something happens, her name is Lucia.”
“My mother’s name.”
“You once told me she was the only person who made your childhood feel safe.”
Adrian’s eyes filled, though he refused to let the tears fall.
“Lucia Elena Moretti,” he whispered.
“Harper.”
A painful almost-smile touched his mouth.
“Lucia Elena Harper-Moretti.”
The operating-room doors opened.
Then Rafael ran down the corridor.
“Adrian!”
He held up his phone.
Malcolm Price had been found unconscious inside a parking garage. Before losing consciousness, he sent Rafael one file.
It contained the original divorce instructions.
Adrian’s signature appeared beneath a request for temporary legal separation—not a final divorce.
Someone had replaced the final pages after he signed.
Our marriage had been legally dissolved through fraud.
More importantly, the file contained a handwritten note from Lorenzo.
Once Elena is isolated, remove every route leading back to Adrian.
Adrian stared at the words as nurses pushed me through the doors.
May you like
The man he trusted as family had not merely ended our marriage.
He had designed my disappearance.
