Chapter 3 - The Search for a Ghost
"Find her," Adrian snarled into the phone, his voice shaking with a fury that terrified even his most seasoned killers. "I want every port, every airport, every private airstrip, and every bus station in the tristate area locked down within the hour. No one leaves New York without my explicit approval."
"Boss," Victor cautioned softly over the line. "If Mrs. Moretti wanted to vanish, she wouldn't use commercial airlines or public transit. She’s an extraordinarily smart woman. She’s had months to plan this."
Adrian slammed his fist against the bedroom wall, leaving a deep, splintered dent in the custom mahogany paneling. "She is pregnant, Victor! She is carrying my child! Find her!"
He disconnected the call and paced the penthouse like a caged beast. His mind raced back through the past few months, searching desperately for clues, warning signs, anything he had carelessly brushed aside.
There was the afternoon she sat by the living room window for three hours without turning on the lights. There was the quiet evening she packed a single box of architectural sketches and drove them to a public storage locker in Queens under a maiden name. There was the look in her hazel eyes last Sunday night—not anger, not sadness, but a terrifying, hollow emptiness.
She hadn't been angry anymore. And in Adrian's brutal world, anger meant someone still cared enough to fight. Silence meant they had already let go.
Within two hours, Adrian’s entire criminal network was mobilized. Dozens of loyal soldiers swept through Manhattan, checking hospitals, abandoned properties belonging to shell companies, and the homes of her old college friends. Every lead turned up dead. Vivian had vanished as completely as smoke in a hurricane.
Frustrated beyond measure, Adrian ordered his driver to take him to her old architectural firm in Soho—V. Foster & Associates, a firm she had abandoned years ago under his strict orders. The office now belonged to an upscale boutique design agency, but the elderly building superintendent still remembered her vividly.
"Mrs. Moretti?" the old man asked, wiping his grease-stained hands on a rag as Adrian towered over him in the dim basement hallway. "Haven't seen her in ages. Wait... that's not true. She was here about three weeks ago."
Adrian’s breath hitched. "What did she want?"
"She didn't want anything built, Mr. Moretti," the superintendent said, looking nervously at the two armed guards standing behind Adrian. "She asked if I still had the master blue-print files from her old commercial renovations—specifically the old brick industrial loft building down on Washington Street in Hoboken. The one she designed back in 2018 before she got married."
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Adrian’s blood ran cold. Hoboken. Across the river in New Jersey. Right outside his primary operational territory, yet hidden enough to slip through the cracks of his massive empire.
"Give me the address," Adrian commanded, pulling a thick roll of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and shoving them into the old man's chest.
