Chapter 4
Rebecca Shaw met me at her Midtown office later that night, with Eli, her forensic accountant, already working at the conference table. I gave him the phone and told them about Tessa, the pregnancy, the transfers, and the recording.
"Divorce him now," Rebecca said after I finished. She wanted to use the affair and family spending to take everything a court would award me, but I shook my head.
"I don't want half," I told her, watching Eli connect the phone to his computer.
"I want to know what Dante is hiding before he realizes I found it," I added.
Eli uncovered an invoice from Hawthorne & Vale, private trust counsel, dated six weeks earlier. Its description read SUCCESSION AMENDMENT REVIEW, and a redacted attachment stated that review had been triggered by the absence of lawful issue from the current controlling descendant.
"Lawful issue means a biological child," Rebecca explained, and my hand moved to my stomach. Dante did not know about my baby, but the words on the screen suggested that he was trying to change who would inherit his family's power.
Eli could not find the trust itself. Rebecca knew someone who might still understand it: Arthur Vale, the former Moretti trust lawyer who had represented Dante's father until Dante pushed him out six years earlier.
Arthur would meet me at six the following morning, but Rebecca warned that he would not release privileged copies. He required a confidentiality agreement, and he wanted a favor he refused to describe.
Rebecca watched me sign the agreement before I had seen the location of the meeting. I asked whether Arthur was the kind of man who offered answers in exchange for debt, and she said he had survived Moretti lawyers by never confusing a promise with payment.
"That's a blank check," Eli said, closing his laptop halfway. I thought of the five hundred thousand dollars Dante had already spent on Tessa and told Rebecca I would go.
I studied the legal summary again. Tessa was eighteen weeks pregnant, Dante was preparing a place for her child inside the Moretti world, and he had chosen Switzerland just as counsel reviewed the succession terms.
Yet Tessa was not his wife. I was, and the child inside me had arrived before Dante could rewrite whatever rule he was afraid of.
Rebecca noticed my hand against my stomach before I remembered that the gesture had answered a question I had not meant to reveal.
"How far along are you?" Rebecca asked, suddenly abandoning her measured legal tone.
"Eleven weeks," I told her. Eli looked between us, but Rebecca read the phrase lawful issue again before she answered him.
"You need to meet Arthur before Dante knows," Rebecca said, reaching for her phone. She would not guess without the trust, though for the first time since I had known her, she looked frightened for me.
I asked what she thought we had found. Rebecca glanced from the redacted sentence to my stomach and said Dante's affair might be the least important secret on that phone.
"Dante thinks Tessa is carrying his future," Rebecca said quietly, letting the implication settle between us.
"He may be wrong," Rebecca added.
Eli asked what those three words on the screen could possibly change. Rebecca did not answer him; she looked at my stomach, then at the trust summary, as though naming the possibility before Arthur confirmed it might make Dante hear us from across the city.
Seven years of marriage had taught me that Dante controlled the house, the money, and the rules. Tonight I had found one rule he had hidden carefully enough to fear.
I pulled on my coat and told Rebecca to confirm the meeting. She warned me not to reveal the pregnancy until we understood the trust, and I closed my hand around my ultrasound.
"What did we find?" I asked once more, stopping at the door because Rebecca had gone pale.
"I will not guess without Arthur's trust," Rebecca said, looking from the summary to my stomach.
"But he may tell you that the most dangerous thing Dante ever put inside his empire is his own wife," Rebecca added.