Chapter 2 - Take Her Instead
Harper Sinclair believed Santorini looked exactly like the advertisements.
White walls.
Blue water.
Expensive wine.
Sunlight designed for photographs.
She stretched beside the infinity pool in a white bikini while a waiter quietly placed another drink beside her chair.
“Perfect,” she said.
Matteo barely heard her.
He stood inside the villa, staring at his phone.
No messages.
Norah had not called once.
At first, Matteo had enjoyed the silence.
It proved his theory.
She was sulking.
By the second day, silence became irritating.
By the fourth, it became distracting.
He called home.
Arthur Bell, his head of security, answered.
“Everything normal?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Norah?”
“Mrs. Rossi said she wasn’t feeling well yesterday.”
Matteo frowned.
“You saw her?”
A pause.
Arthur had worked for him twelve years.
He knew better than to hesitate.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“She asked staff not to disturb her.”
Matteo looked through the glass doors toward Harper.
“When did you last physically see my wife?”
“Thursday morning.”
Matteo’s fingers tightened around the phone.
That had been the day he left.
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“Because nobody thought anything was wrong.”
Matteo disconnected.
He immediately called Norah.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
He sent a message.
Call me.
Nothing.
Another.
Now.
Nothing.
Harper entered the bedroom.
“You’re doing it again.”
Matteo looked at her.
“Doing what?”
“Thinking about your wife.”
“My pregnant wife isn’t answering.”
Harper rolled her eyes.
“She wants attention.”
Matteo’s expression changed.
Harper noticed immediately.
“What?”
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
The hypocrisy was so obvious that even Harper laughed.
“Seriously?”
Matteo said nothing.
“You brought me on your honeymoon.”
“Our trip.”
“No, Matteo. Your honeymoon.”
She stepped closer.
“You don’t get to suddenly become Husband of the Year because she won’t answer a phone.”
Matteo walked past her.
Outside, the Aegean glittered beneath the afternoon sun.
It should have felt peaceful.
Instead, every instinct he possessed warned him something was wrong.
Four thousand miles away, Norah sat behind Matteo’s mahogany desk.
His study was the only room in the penthouse he had ever told her not to enter without him.
She had obeyed for almost three years.
That morning, she unlocked the door.
Her father had been an accountant.
Not the kind whose name appeared on office signs.
Samuel Mercer had spent twenty-three years managing books for men who solved financial disagreements with threats.
He survived because he understood numbers.
When Norah was sixteen, he told her, “Violence makes noise. Money doesn’t. If you want to know what a powerful man fears, follow what he hides.”
Matteo thought Norah remembered nothing.
She remembered everything.
She inserted the flash drive.
Over the previous year, she had quietly copied the information she might need if she ever had to disappear.
Not operational details.
Not lists of men.
Not anything she wanted to use against Matteo unless absolutely necessary.
Only access to emergency funds Matteo had repeatedly described as “family protection.”
That was the cruel irony.
He had created them for the possibility that his empire collapsed.
Norah intended to use a portion to protect the family he had forgotten to value.
She moved twenty percent.
Not everything.
Not even close.
Enough.
Enough for doctors.
Enough for a modest property purchased through attorneys.
Enough to begin somewhere else.
Enough that her daughter would never be trapped because her mother had no money.
When the final confirmation appeared, Norah removed the drive.
Her hands were shaking.
Not from guilt.
From finality.
She opened the desk drawer.
A photograph rested inside.
Their wedding day.
Matteo had looked younger.
So had she.
They were standing outside a small chapel in Rhode Island because federal attention had forced them to cancel the extravagant ceremony Matteo originally planned.
His hand rested against her waist.
His forehead touched hers.
For one moment in that photograph, Matteo Rossi looked like an ordinary man.
Norah almost hated that version of him most.
Because she had loved him.
Deeply.
Honestly.
Enough to spend years waiting for that man to return.
She placed the photograph face down.
Then her prepaid phone buzzed.
A message from the only person outside Boston who knew she was leaving.
Everything ready. Car arrives at 5.
Norah looked around Matteo’s study.
“Goodbye,” she whispered.
She did not know whether she was speaking to the room, the marriage, or the woman she had been.
At five in the evening, Norah walked out through the service entrance.
No dramatic confrontation.
No chase.
No army of guards.
She had planned carefully.
The exterior security shift changed at 4:55.
The temporary replacement guard had been told by the household manager that Mrs. Rossi had a private medical appointment.
Nobody questioned a heavily pregnant woman carrying one suitcase.
A black sedan waited two blocks away.
Norah climbed inside.
The driver did not ask her name.
Thirty minutes later, she was no longer in Boston.
By midnight, the prepaid phone had been switched off.
Back in Santorini, Matteo sat on the edge of the bed.
Arthur called.
His voice was different this time.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We have a problem.”
Matteo stood.
“Norah?”
“She’s gone.”
The world became completely still.
“What did you say?”
“Mrs. Rossi isn’t in the house.”
Matteo’s chest tightened.
“Find her.”
“We’re trying.”
“You don’t try.”
His voice lowered.
“You find my wife.”
Arthur remained silent.
Matteo could hear men moving behind him.
Then Arthur spoke.
“Her closet is mostly untouched.”
“So?”
“One suitcase is missing.”
Matteo closed his eyes.
“What else?”
“Passport.”
Another silence.
“And the study was accessed.”
Matteo opened his eyes.
“By who?”
“We checked internal footage.”
Arthur hesitated.
“Norah.”
Matteo stopped breathing for a second.
“Get into my computer.”
“We already did.”
“And?”
“There were transfers.”
Matteo crossed the room.
“How much?”
“Twenty percent from four reserve accounts.”
Harper appeared in the doorway.
Matteo did not see her.
Arthur continued.
“She didn’t wipe anything. She didn’t touch business operating money.”
Matteo understood immediately.
It was not theft.
It was preparation.
Norah had taken exactly enough to leave.
Nothing more.
The precision hurt in a way rage could not.
Matteo sat slowly.
“Sir?”
“When?”
“The transfers cleared yesterday.”
Matteo looked toward the ocean.
He remembered Norah sliding the tickets across the counter.
Take her.
He had thought she was surrendering.
Now he understood.
She had been saying goodbye.
“When was she last seen?”
“Five yesterday afternoon.”
Matteo stood.
“Prepare the plane.”
Harper stared at him.
“What’s happening?”
He walked toward his suitcase.
“Matteo?”
“I’m going home.”
She laughed nervously.
“We’ve been here four days.”
“My wife disappeared.”
“Your wife left you.”
Matteo stopped.
Harper immediately realized she had said the wrong thing.
He turned slowly.
For years, men had described Matteo Rossi’s stare as one of the last things a person wanted directed toward them.
But this was different.
There was no threat.
Only devastation beginning to break through arrogance.
Harper folded her arms.
“You knew this could happen.”
“No.”
Matteo’s voice was almost inaudible.
“I didn’t.”
And that was the terrible truth.
He had never seriously considered that Norah could leave him.
He had believed her love was permanent.
He had mistaken forgiveness for weakness.
Her patience for permission.
Her dependence for devotion.
He packed without another word.
Harper followed him through the villa.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
Matteo stopped beside the door.
For the first time since arriving, he truly looked at her.
The beautiful woman who had seemed exciting in Boston now appeared almost unfamiliar.
She had cost him nothing he had not willingly offered.
That realization mattered.
Harper had not betrayed his marriage vows.
He had.
“Stay,” Matteo said.
“What?”
“You wanted Santorini.”
He opened the door.
“Enjoy it.”
Then he walked out alone.
As Matteo’s plane crossed the Atlantic, he made seventeen calls.
Security.
Private investigators.
Doctors.
Hospitals.
Airports.
Every person in Boston who might have seen his wife.
None produced an answer.
At 6:41 the following morning, Matteo entered his penthouse.
Silence greeted him.
He walked directly to the kitchen.
The glass Norah had used was gone.
The tickets were gone.
Everything had been cleaned.
Then he saw something on the counter.
A white envelope.
His name was written across the front.
Matteo opened it.
Inside was the ultrasound photograph from Norah’s twenty-week appointment.
Behind it rested her wedding ring.
No letter.
No accusation.
No explanation.
Only the ring.
Matteo stared at it for a long time.
Then Arthur entered quietly.
“We found something.”
Matteo turned.
Arthur held a tablet.
“A car picked her up two blocks from the residence.”
“License?”
“Rental.”
“Driver?”
“Contract service. Paid cash.”
“Destination?”
Arthur looked uncomfortable.
“She switched vehicles.”
Matteo’s jaw hardened.
“How many times?”
“Three.”
For the first time, Arthur saw genuine fear on his employer’s face.
Norah had not run emotionally.
She had executed an exit.
Matteo looked again at the ring.
“Who taught her to disappear like this?”
Arthur did not answer.
Matteo already knew.
Norah had grown up around men like him.
She had spent years watching him.
Listening.
Learning.
May you like
And while Matteo believed she was merely enduring his world, she had been studying exactly how to escape it.
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