The Wife He Left Behind While He Built a World for Another Woman Chapter 05

The Wife He Left Behind While He Built a World for Another Woman Chapter 05

As the fire turned the sky red, Vincent was with Celeste on a top-floor terrace beneath the enclave’s artificial stars.

The simulated night sky above them was always brilliant. Celeste rested her head on his shoulder and softly recounted Bible stories she had heard at church as a child. Vincent looked into her clear, innocent eyes and brushed his fingertips over the soft ends of her hair, feeling completely at peace.

The illusion shattered when Graham Ward, his longtime bodyguard and head of security, called, his voice breathless and urgent.

“Don, the abandoned warehouse in the hills caught fire. The flames were too intense for the firefighters to save the structure. They found a charred ring in the ruins and… a badly burned woman’s body. A preliminary DNA comparison came back as a ninety-nine percent match to Mrs. Rinaldi.”

Vincent’s fingers tightened around the phone until his knuckles turned white.

The artificial starlight fell across his face, but it could not penetrate the chill that had suddenly settled in his eyes.

He instinctively looked at his left hand. He had once worn a wedding band that matched Evelyn’s, but after Celeste said the sight of it bothered her, he had taken it off and put it in a drawer in his study.

“That’s impossible.” His voice came out raw and rasping. “She loves causing scenes. How could she actually be dead? This has to be another stunt to force me to give in.”

Celeste took his hand at exactly the right moment. Her fingers were slightly cold, and her voice carried precisely the right amount of concern.

“Vincent, don’t panic. Ms. Hart is a survivor. This could still be a misunderstanding.”

She paused and lowered her eyes, her long lashes casting shadows over her cheeks.

“I had a bad feeling about this from the beginning. She took things so far this time that I started wondering whether something had really happened to her.”

“This is all my fault. If I hadn’t insisted on saving the parish church and the land it stands on, the two of you would never have ended up like this.”

Vincent closed his hand around hers and forced down the unease rising inside him.

“This isn’t your fault. She was the one being unreasonable.”

Even so, he immediately stood, grabbed his coat, and headed for the exit.

Celeste hurried after him, speaking softly to reassure him the entire way. Deep in her eyes, however, a flicker of satisfaction appeared and vanished.

By the time they reached the fire scene, dawn was beginning to break.

Black smoke still rose from the wreckage, and the air reeked of smoke and char. Firefighters were moving through the ruins and clearing the site.

Graham approached with a clear evidence bag in his hand.

Inside was a warped platinum wedding band. The initials “V & E” engraved inside the band had been blurred by the heat, but seeing them still made Vincent’s eyes burn.

“Don, the medical examiner’s preliminary assessment indicates the victim was a woman around twenty-five years old. There was evidence that she had been pregnant.”

“She appears to have died about a week before the fire. The preliminary cause of death is hemorrhagic shock resulting from multiple soft-tissue injuries. The body was burned after death.”

Graham’s voice dropped lower with every sentence. He could not bring himself to meet Vincent’s eyes.

“We also found this at the scene.”