“I’m not a buyer,” I whispered.
The secretary spun her chair to face away from me. “Sure thing, Anna.” She hung up and spun back around. “She agreed to see you, for who knows what reason.” She pointed down a long hallway then hooked her finger to the left. “Last door. Don’t make me run you out of here. Miss Bianchi has enough on her plate.”
I skittered away from the front desk, eager to leave the overprotective secretary behind, and followed the directions down the hallway. At the end, I found a frosted glass door with The Bianchi Group printed across the front in the same lettering as the motto on the website. I knocked softly.
“Come in.”
The office was smaller than I expected, but the magnificent sweeping view of downtown Chicago made up for the lack of space. A single desk and chair occupied the center of the room. The walls bore no decoration or personal touches, as if Miss Bianchi wanted no reminders of her personal life in this room.
A woman in blue pinstripe slacks and a matching jacket stood at the window with her back to me. She clasped her hands tightly behind her, as if trying to keep herself from moving them. The skin on her fingers was red, rough, and scarred. Severe eczema, if I had to guess.
“I’m surprised,” she said in a high, even voice. “Buyers have been dropping out lately. I didn’t expect new ones to continue showing up.”
“I’m not a buyer,” I replied. “I’m investigating the recent murders at the Saint Angel. Are you acquainted with Wolf Godfrey?”
The woman looked over her shoulder, piercing me with a sharp gaze. “Of course I’m acquainted with him. He’s my ex-husband.”
16
“I’m Anna Bianchi.” She left the window to shake hands with me, exhibiting a loose grip with little commitment. “You look shocked.”
“You own the Saint Angel?” I asked. “I don’t understand. Wolf said he didn’t know anything about the Bianchi Group.”
“You’ll find my ex-husband is an excellent liar.”
“So I’ve heard,” I muttered.
Anna sat in her office chair and crossed one long, thin leg over the other. She incessantly scratched the raw skin on her hands. “You said murders, as in plural. Has more than one body been discovered? I haven’t been keeping up with the news.”
I shifted anxiously from one foot to the other. “If Wolf is your ex-husband, is Jonathan Godfrey your son?”
“He was,” she said bitterly. “I disinherited him when he turned nineteen. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he turned up dead.”
So she did know he had died. All these new details gave me whiplash. Since Anna didn’t have another chair in her office, I leaned against her desk. “Do you mind starting at the beginning for me? Tell me everything about Wolf and Jonathan, if you feel comfortable speaking about it.”
Anna reclined in her chair, far enough to lift the front wheels from the floor. She balanced precariously but remained in control. “Certainly. When I was twenty, I met a man at college. He was a med student—handsome, stoic, and bold. When I first saw him, I was certain we’d spend the rest of our lives together. For a while, that seemed to be the case. We married and had a beautiful baby boy, and my husband became a renowned surgeon.” Anna’s upper lip arched as she went on. “Little did I know, he was deep in debt. Not only did he have mountains of student loans to pay off, but he spent most of his salary gambling. My family comes from money. My great-grandfather built an empire with FRI, investing in the world’s finest hotels. Wolf, I came to learn, knew of my family’s fortune before he even met me. He singled me out for the sole purpose of seducing me and marrying into my family.
“I had no idea,” she continued, as her fingernails scraped against the skin on the back of her hand. “I believed he was in love with me, not with my family’s money. When I learned of his money troubles, our relationship began to fail. It reflected poorly on Jonathan, who listened to us argue for most of his life. Jonathan was a troubled boy, as a result. We often received calls from his schools detailing his faults. He was expelled from multiple establishments until we finally agreed to have him study with a private tutor. He went through twenty teachers in a single year but managed to secure his GED. I was utterly shocked when he told me he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps as a medical expert.”
Surreptitiously, I reached into my pocket and clicked on my phone’s voice recorder app. Anna, absorbed with the details of her story, hardly noticed my movements.
“I made the mistake of giving Jonathan everything he wanted from a young age,” she admitted sourly. “I spoiled him because I felt I had failed him as a parent. I never disciplined him, and I blamed the schools for his continued issues. It made him an entitled brat. He spent my family’s money with reckless abandon. Expensive cars, designer clothes, luxury hotel stays, and private planes. My father warned me that he would ruin my business. This business” —she gestured to the empty office around her— “that had been gifted to me. I had worked tirelessly to prove to my father I could handle a branch of the company on my own, but I was blind to my son’s flaws. He somehow gained access to company funds and nearly bankrupted us with his spending sprees.”
“That doesn’t sound like Jonathan.”
“Oh, you met him?” She smiled coldly. “I’m sure he put on quite the show for you. He always loved beautiful women. He could have had a career in painting them, but because I pushed him to pursue it, he never did.”
“I don’t
