Chapter 4 - Sunrise over Manhattan
Dominic Caruso arrived home at 5:00 AM, his mind heavy with alcohol and mounting irritation. Vanessa had spent two hours demanding he fire the venue staff, and the press was already leaking footage of the incident at the gala.
He walked into the master bedroom expecting to find Nora crying in bed or waiting to demand an apology.
The room was empty.
The closet doors hung open. Half of her clothes were gone. Her jewelry box sat open on the vanity, holding only the expensive pieces Dominic had bought her. The simple silver ring her grandmother had given her was missing.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced Dominic’s chest. He turned and ran down the hall to Eli’s room.
The bed was made. The dinosaur nightlight was off. Eli was gone.
"Nora!" Dominic shouted, his voice echoing through the hollow halls. "Teresa!"
His mother stepped out into the hallway, her expression cold and disappointed. "She left three hours ago, Dominic."
"Why didn't you stop her?" Dominic demanded, his fists clenching. "She took my son!"
"She took her son from a man who struck her in front of two hundred people," Teresa said coldly. "You became your father tonight, Dominic. And Nora is smarter than I ever was. She won't come back."
Dominic rushed to his office to check the safe, intending to track her credit cards and phone location. But when he opened the steel door, he froze.
The hard drive was gone. The patents were gone. The ledgers were gone.
On the desk sat a single white envelope addressed to him in Nora's clean handwriting. Inside was a divorce petition and a thumb drive containing a single video file.
May you like
Dominic plugged the thumb drive into his computer. Nora’s face appeared on the screen, serene, pale, and entirely devoid of the warmth she had given him for five years.
"By the time you watch this, the patent office and every major fashion press outlet in North America will have received proof that the winter bridal line belongs to me," Nora said smoothly on the recording. "You built your empire on my silence, Dominic. That silence ends today."
