Chapter 4 - The Vipers Awaken
By nine o'clock the following morning, the storm I had ignited began to spread.
I hadn't slept a wink. I had showered, changed into a plain black sweater and dark trousers—deliberately leaving behind the bespoke three-piece suits and diamond cufflinks—and was preparing to return to the flower shop when the double doors of my penthouse burst open.
Sophia marched in, smelling of expensive tuberose perfume, her heels clicking aggressively against the herringbone floors. She was dressed in a tailored cream Chanel suit, a designer handbag dangling from her forearm.
"Alexander!" she barked, her eyes flashing with indignant rage. "What is the meaning of this? Jean-Luc canceled our tasting, the gala committee is in an uproar, and your assistant told me you canceled your entire schedule for the next two weeks!"
I didn't turn around immediately. I finished pouring black coffee into a simple mug, my back to her.
"I told you last night, Sophia. I am busy."
"Busy doing what?" she demanded, storming into the dining room. "You are Alexander Moretti! You don't just 'take two weeks off' without consulting me! We have public appearances. The acquisition of the Reynolds shipping lanes depends entirely on the public perception of our impending engagement!"
There it was.
The cold, transactional reality of Sophia Reynolds.
I slowly turned around and met her gaze. She froze, taken aback by what she saw. I hadn't shaved. My eyes were bloodshot, hollowed out by grief and remorse.
"The engagement is off," I said evenly.
Sophia blinked, letting out a nervous, high-pitched laugh. "What? Darling, that isn't funny. If this is about the jewelry—"
"There is no engagement, Sophia. There never was. Pack your things from the guest suite. I want your belongings out of this building by noon."
The color drained from her cheeks, quickly replaced by a flush of mottled crimson. "Are you insane? You threw away seven years of marriage to that plain, pathetic mouse for me! You gave her a hundred and fifty million dollars to make room for me in your life!"
"I threw away a queen for a viper," I said, my voice dangerously low. "And Claire returned every single cent of that money."
Sophia sneered, her composure breaking completely. "Oh, please! So that's what this is about? Did you run into your little martyr? Did she cry on your shoulder about how poor she is? Let me guess—she showed you the bastards she had with some low-life mechanic to try and make you jealous?"
The air in the room dropped ten degrees.
I moved with a speed that startled her, closing the distance between us until I was towering over her. The lethal authority that had built my empire rolled off me in suffocating waves.
"What did you just say?" I whispered.
Sophia flinched, stepping backward until her spine hit the marble wall. "I... I..."
"How do you know about the children, Sophia?"
Her eyes darted frantically toward the doorway. A bead of sweat broke through her flawless foundation. "I don't know what you're talking about—"
"I never mentioned children," I snarled, slamming my palm against the wall right beside her head. The thunderous crack echoed through the high ceilings. "I said she returned the money. I never said a word about children. How do you know she had babies?"
Sophia’s chest heaved. Trapped, the venom finally broke through her porcelain mask. A cruel, vicious sneer twisted her lips.
"Because I made sure she wouldn't have them in a private hospital!" she spat.
The world stopped spinning.
"What did you do?" I breathed, the blood roaring in my ears like a freight train.
"Three years ago, when you were agonizing over divorcing her, Claire came to my apartment," Sophia hissed, all pretense of gentility stripped away. "She had that pathetic little sonogram in her hand. She thought I was her friend! She begged me to tell her if you and I were really sleeping together, because she was pregnant with your twins! She wanted to save your marriage!"
My lungs collapsed. I couldn't breathe.
"And do you know what I told her, Alexander?" Sophia laughed, a jagged, ugly sound. "I told her that you already knew. I told her that you had laughed when I told you, that you called her pregnancy a cheap, desperate trap, and that you were paying your doctor to ensure she miscarried! I told her you loved me, that you were taking me to Paris, and that if she ever showed those babies to the world, you would use your lawyers to take them from her, declare her mentally unfit, and lock her in an asylum!"
"You..." My vision tinged red. Pure, unadulterated murderous rage flooded my veins. My fingers twitched, aching to close around her throat. "You did that?"
"She was nothing!" Sophia screamed, entirely unhinged. "A boring, middle-class nobody who didn't deserve your name! I was born to be Mrs. Moretti! And what did she do? She ran! Like the pathetic coward she is! She ran into the gutter where she belonged!"
"Get out," I said.
My voice wasn't loud. It was a subterranean tremor, vibrating with a wrath so absolute that Sophia instantly snapped her mouth shut, genuine terror finally dawning in her blue eyes.
"Alexander—"
"If you are not out of this building in ten minutes," I whispered, leaning in until my lips were inches from her ear, "I will systematically dismantle the Reynolds family. I will short your father's stock into nonexistence. I will call in the forty-million-dollar credit line my bank holds on your brother's shipping firm. By tomorrow morning, your family will be bankrupt, disgraced, and picking through garbage. Get out of my sight before I forget my own humanity."
Sophia didn't say another word. She grabbed her handbag, turned on her heels, and sprinted toward the elevator as fast as her designer shoes could carry her.
When the doors closed, I sank to the floor, my back against the wall.
Claire hadn't just walked away because I wanted a divorce.
She had walked away because she believed I wanted to kill her unborn babies. She believed that I, their father, was a monster who would rip them from her arms and destroy her mind.
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And for three years, she had lived in terror that one day, the devil in the bespoke suit would find her.
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