Chapter 4: What Serena Built
Gabriel didn't answer it.
He watched the phone buzz twice more, then go still.
Then he picked it up, turned it face-down, and looked at me.
"I'm not speaking to her until I know what I'm dealing with."
"That's the first sensible thing you've said tonight."
The corner of his mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
"Fair."
He called someone else instead — a man named Dov, who I gathered was some combination of head of security and chief investigator, and who arrived at the door of the small room within four minutes carrying a laptop and the expression of a man who had been waiting for exactly this call.
"The photograph," Gabriel said.
"Rome.
Five years ago.
I need to know who took it, who commissioned it, and whether the man standing next to my ex-wife is actually connected to Vitelli."
Dov took the photograph, glanced at it once, and looked at me.
"Ma'am."
"Claire," I said.
"Claire." He sat down, opened the laptop, and began typing.
I went to check on the boys.
Eli had fallen asleep across two chairs with the tablet on his chest.
Noah was still awake, carefully stacking sugar cubes he had found somewhere into a small tower.
Marcus was at the door when I opened it, as though he had been standing there waiting.
"Is everything okay?" he asked.
"Everything is fine." I crouched down.
"Dad and I are just talking."
He absorbed this.
"Is he nice?"
I thought about how to answer that honestly.
"He's trying to be."
Marcus nodded slowly.
"Okay." Then he went back to his chair and picked up a strawberry.
When I returned to the room, Dov had already pulled up something on his screen.
"The photograph was taken by a private investigator named Harlan Bates," Dov said.
"He's based in London.
He's been contracted by Serena Vale's family office at least four times in the past six years."
Gabriel's expression didn't change.
"And the man in the photograph?"
"His name is Peter Ashworth.
He's a British cardiologist.
He was a keynote speaker at the Rome conference that week." Dov turned the laptop so we could both see.
"No connection to Vitelli.
No connection to anything.
He's a doctor."
The room was very quiet.
"She fabricated the entire thing," I said.
"She fabricated the entire thing," Dov confirmed.
He said it without inflection, the way people do when the fact is bad enough on its own.
Gabriel stood up slowly.
He walked to the window again.
This time he stayed there longer.
"She told me Claire was compromising my operations," he said, to no one in particular.
"She said if I didn't end the marriage immediately, I was looking at federal exposure.
She said she had sources confirming it."
"Did you verify those sources?" Dov asked.
A long pause.
"No."
Dov typed something.
Didn't comment.
"I trusted her," Gabriel said.
It came out flat.
Like a man reading a charge against himself.
"She knew exactly how to use that," I said.
I wasn't trying to wound him.
It was simply true.
He turned around.
"How long had she been planning it, do you think?"
"Long enough to hire a private investigator.
Long enough to have a photograph ready.
Long enough to know exactly what accusation would make you act without asking questions." I looked at him steadily.
"She knew you.
She knew what would work."
Gabriel crossed back to the table.
He picked up the photograph and looked at it for a long moment.
Then he set it down with a precision that told me he was working very hard to stay controlled.
"There's more," Dov said.
We both looked at him.
"The surveillance she commissioned on Claire after the divorce — it ran for fourteen months.
The reports were sent to a private email account registered to a shell company.
But the billing address on the shell company—" He turned the laptop again.
"—is the same address as the Vale family foundation."
"She wasn't just watching me," I said slowly.
"She was keeping a file."
"A file, and what looks like a contingency plan." Dov pulled up another document.
"There are wire transfers here.
Small amounts.
Routed through three different accounts.
The destination is a law firm in Connecticut."
Gabriel leaned forward.
"Which firm?"
Dov said the name.
Gabriel went very still.
"That's the firm that handled our divorce," he said.
The lamp hummed.
Down the corridor, faintly, I heard Noah's tower of sugar cubes collapse and his small, philosophical sigh at the wreckage.
"She paid them," I said.
"It looks that way." Dov closed the laptop.
"I'll need another few hours to confirm the full chain.
But what I have right now is enough to—"
The door opened.
Not Dov's doing.
Not Gabriel's.
Serena walked in.
She had composed herself since the gala floor.
Her expression was smooth, her posture straight, her voice when she spoke was almost calm.
May you like
"I thought you'd find it eventually," she said.
"I just didn't expect it to be tonight."
