The Last Goodbye

PART 2 — THE WOMAN HE COULDN’T FIND

For the next forty-eight hours, Vincent Moretti turned Chicago upside down.

He sent men to airports, hotels, private residences, and every property Claire had ever visited. He even contacted people who owed him favors.

But Claire had disappeared completely.

No credit card transactions. No phone activity. No security footage that could lead him anywhere.

It was as if his wife had vanished from the world.

“Find her!” Vincent shouted at Marcus inside his private office. “I don’t care how much it costs. I want to know where my wife is!”

Marcus stood silently before answering.

“Boss, perhaps Mrs. Moretti doesn’t want to be found.”

Vincent slammed his fist against the desk.

“She is my wife!”

Marcus looked at him carefully.

“Respectfully, sir, she was your wife. You signed enough divorce papers to understand what that means.”

Vincent’s eyes turned cold.

“Get out.”

After Marcus left, Vincent stared at the wedding photograph on his desk.

Claire was smiling in it, wearing the white wedding dress he had personally chosen for her. He remembered how she had looked at him that day.

“You’re my forever, Vincent.”

He had promised her the same thing.

And then he had spent seven years breaking that promise.

That evening, Vincent finally opened the folders on Claire’s USB drive.

He had seen the photographs already, but this time he noticed something else.

There were dates, hotel bills, private messages, and screenshots of conversations with his mistresses.

At the bottom was a folder labeled The Last Chances.

Inside were seven short recordings.

One for each year of their marriage.

He clicked the first.

Claire appeared on the screen, sitting in their old kitchen. Her eyes were red.

“Today is our first anniversary. Vincent forgot about dinner again. He promised he’d be home by seven, but it’s almost midnight. I hope tomorrow will be different.”

The second recording showed her crying in their bedroom.

The third showed her sitting alone at a restaurant, staring at an untouched birthday cake.

By the seventh recording, she wasn’t crying anymore.

She simply looked into the camera and whispered:

“I don’t think I love the man he has become. And I’m beginning to realize that the man I keep waiting for may never have existed.”

Vincent closed the laptop.

For the first time in his adult life, he couldn’t breathe properly.

Meanwhile, three hundred miles away, Claire was sitting on the porch of a beautiful little house overlooking the ocean.

She had rented the house in a quiet coastal town and started working with a local charity that helped women rebuild their lives.

For the first time, she woke up without wondering where Vincent was.

She bought her own groceries, made her own coffee, and spent evenings watching the sunset.

One afternoon, her new neighbor, an elderly woman named Margaret, asked her a question.

“Are you waiting for someone, dear?”

Claire smiled.

“No. I’m finally waiting for myself.”

She didn’t know that Vincent had already discovered the recordings.

And she certainly didn’t know that he had booked a flight to find her.