Chapter 8 - THE DINNER LUKE FINALLY LEFT
Luke did not ask permission to be frightened. He moved. Within three minutes, phones were ringing across the city. Police received Jenna’s vehicle information. Bennett Studio sent her last known location.
Maya contacted the investigator already tracking Daniel Reeve. Vanessa called Russell Group security and demanded access to Charles’s company vehicles.
I stood in the Morgan foyer watching an entire machine activate around one missing woman. For once, I was grateful for Luke’s world. Jenna’s car was found in a parking structure near River North.
Her phone lay beneath the driver’s seat. There was no blood, no sign of a struggle, and no certainty that she had been taken by force.
At 7:18 p.m., Maya received a message from an unknown number. TELL SOPHIA TO SIGN THE TRUST WAIVER. MIDNIGHT. NO POLICE. A document followed.
The waiver would surrender my temporary voting rights during the divorce and authorize a restructuring favorable to Russell Group.
Luke read it once and handed the phone back. “He doesn’t get midnight.” Maya frowned. “Meaning?” “Meaning Charles thinks he has time. He doesn’t.” “Luke,” I said sharply. He looked at me.
“No illegal violence. No disappearing people.” A flicker of anger crossed his face, but it was not directed at me.
“You think I’m going to kill him.” “I think everyone else in Chicago thinks you might.” Luke exhaled slowly. “Then everyone can be disappointed.” That answer would have been impossible three weeks earlier. The first real break came from Vanessa.
One of the Russell vehicles had used a company fuel card near an old banquet hall in Cicero, a property Charles had tried to sell for months. Police moved first.
Luke and I followed in separate cars because I refused to remain behind.
The banquet hall was dark except for emergency lights. Rain struck the roof in hard waves. Officers entered through two doors while we waited across the street behind a barricade.
Ten minutes felt like an hour. Then a police radio cracked. Female located. Conscious. My knees nearly gave out.
Jenna emerged wrapped in a gray blanket, furious more than frightened. She had been tricked, not violently abducted.
Daniel Reeve had posed as a courier, claimed I needed her at another project site, then locked her in an office when she became suspicious.
“He kept saying nobody was supposed to get hurt,” Jenna told police. “He said this was only pressure.” Daniel was arrested trying to leave through a rear service corridor. Charles Russell disappeared before police could question him again.
By morning, federal investigators were involved because the flash drive contained evidence of wire fraud, corporate espionage, bribery, and financial manipulation across state lines. Vanessa agreed to cooperate. The threat against me was no longer family gossip. It was a criminal case.
Three days later, Luke was supposed to attend a dinner with lenders whose support mattered to Morgan Holdings. Instead, he sat in the waiting room outside my hospital room while doctors monitored another episode of cramping.
I found out because Isabella came to see me.
She entered quietly, without pearls, assistants, or authority. She looked like a mother who had not slept. “Luke missed the dinner,” she said. I shifted against the pillows. “He didn’t need to.” “No.
He did.” I looked at her. Isabella sat beside the window.
“For years I taught him that leaving a business table meant losing power. Tonight he stood up halfway through the first course because Elena called.” Something tightened in my chest.
“He could have sent someone else.” “He did. To the dinner.” The old Isabella would have been furious.
This one looked almost proud. “I was wrong about you,” she said. I did not make it easy for her. “That’s a large category.” A faint smile touched her mouth, then vanished.
“I thought independence meant disloyalty. You had your own money, your own work, your own friends.
Vanessa understood family obligation. I assumed that made her safer.” “And now?” “Now I understand that anyone who requires you to become smaller in order to belong is not offering you a family.” I stared at her.
The apology was not perfect. Real apologies rarely are.
But it was a beginning. When Isabella left, Luke entered ten minutes later. He looked exhausted. His white shirt sleeves were rolled to his forearms, tie gone, hair disordered by rain.
He did not ask whether I wanted him there. He simply stopped at the doorway and waited. I nodded.
He sat in the chair beside the bed. “Everything stable?” “Yes.” “The baby?” “Annoyed, apparently.” His mouth almost smiled. We sat in silence for several minutes.
Then I said, “Why did you marry me?” Luke looked surprised. “You never asked before.” “I thought I knew.” He leaned back.
“The first time I saw you, you were yelling at a contractor twice your size because he wanted to remove a load-bearing wall from a restaurant renovation.” I remembered.
“He was an idiot.” “He was terrified of you.” “So were you?” “No.” A pause. “I was interested.” I waited.
“You were the only person in the room who didn’t care who I was. You cared that the ceiling might collapse.” I laughed softly. Luke looked at his hands.
“I married you because being around you felt quiet. Not empty. Quiet.” My throat tightened.
“Then why did you stop seeing me?” He took a long time to answer. “Because once I had something I couldn’t replace, I became afraid of needing it.” There it was.
Not an excuse. An explanation. “I thought if I handled the house, the money, the security, the problems, I was loving you.
I thought asking how you felt was something people did when they had no solution.” “Sometimes there is no solution.” “I know that now.” I studied his face.
“Do you?” Luke nodded toward the monitors beside me. “I’ve been sitting in that waiting room for three hours.
I couldn’t fix anything. I hated every second.” Despite myself, I smiled. He continued, “But I stayed.” “Yes.” “I can do that again.” The words were small. They mattered.
I reached for the water glass. Luke moved instinctively to help, then stopped before touching it. “May I?” he asked.
That nearly undid me. “Yes.” He handed me the glass. At midnight, Maya called. Charles Russell had been located at O’Hare trying to board a flight to Montreal. Police arrested him before he reached security.
The worst immediate danger was over. But the next morning, Maya arrived carrying a different folder.
May you like
“Your divorce hearing is in nine days,” she said. Luke was standing by the window. Neither of us spoke. Maya placed the folder on my blanket.
“You still have to decide whether you want to finish what you started.” I looked at Luke. He did not ask me to stay. For the first time, that made the decision harder.
