Chapter 2 - The Mask Falls
The silence that followed was suffocating.
I stared at the sterile white ceiling tiles, unable to blink. For ten years, I had believed that if I just worked a little harder, designed a few more award-winning commercial plazas, and handed over enough dividend checks, my father would finally look at me with the warmth he reserved for Chloe.
When Chloe wrecked her second Porsche in college, I paid the settlement. When my father’s real estate firm was thirty days away from bankruptcy five years ago, I mortgaged my own design patents to secure a six-million-dollar lifeline for Vance Enterprises. I lived in a modest townhouse, drove a four-year-old sedan, and poured millions into the family coffer.
And in return, Richard Vance had just tried to kill my daughter to pay for imported caviar.
"Where is the paperwork now?" I asked. My voice didn't sound like my own anymore. It was devoid of tears, hollowed out, cold as packed ice.
David stepped forward, placing a warm, heavy hand over mine. "It’s gone. I ran into Richard and Julian in the administrative hall right after Sarah warned me. Richard had the audacity to shove the authorization form in my face and tell me that Maya was an 'unsalvageable investment,' and that as a man, I needed to learn how to cut family losses."
"And your knuckles?" I asked, looking at his split skin.
"Julian tried to grab my collar when I tore the papers in half," David said chillingly. "He’s currently sitting in the emergency lobby having his nose reset. And Richard is back in Suite 412, threatening to sue the hospital unless the board of directors personally bows to him."
"They don't know who you are, do they?" I murmured.
When I married David three years ago, he was introduced to my family as an independent logistics consultant. My father had sneered at him, calling him a "common laborer" who had trapped his eldest cash cow. What Richard Vance never bothered to investigate—because he never cared about anything I did—was that David wasn't just a consultant.
David Sterling was the principal director of Sterling & Croft Global, one of the most ruthless commercial restructuring and private equity conglomerates in North America. He had kept his public footprint microscopic, choosing a quiet life with me because we both despised the venomous vanity of high society.
"They have no idea," David said softly. "To Richard, I'm just the penniless husband he can push around. But that ends tonight."
Nurse Sarah cleared her throat, pulling another document from the folder. "Mrs. Sterling... there is one more thing. When I pulled the family medical history to confirm the blood-typing protocol for Maya's emergency plasma transfusion, I noticed a severe anomaly in the laboratory database. Chloe’s baby was typed an hour ago."
I frowned, struggling through the haze of pain medication. "Oliver?"
"Yes," Sarah said. "Chloe's husband, Julian, has Type O-negative blood. Chloe is Type A-positive. Baby Oliver was logged as Type B-positive. Biologically, genetically... it is impossible for Julian to be that child's father."
A dry, bitter laugh escaped my throat. Julian had spent the entire pregnancy parading around town, bragging about planting the "next great Vance patriarch" in Chloe's womb.
"Does Julian know?" I asked.
"Not yet," Sarah replied. "The attending OB-GYN hasn't finalized the chart review. But that's not all. The donor blood cross-match request in the system... it came back with a secondary flagged match. A private genetic sample registered in our research annex three months ago."
"Whose sample?" David asked, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.
Sarah hesitated, lowering her voice until it was almost imperceptible. "Marcus Sterling. Your estranged cousin... and the primary financial backer of Richard Vance's newest commercial development."
David went entirely still. The air in the room dropped ten degrees.
Marcus Sterling was the disgraced former vice-president of Sterling & Croft, ousted two years ago for corporate embezzlement. If Marcus was the father of Chloe's child, then Chloe and my father hadn't just been partying down the hall. They had been actively conspiring with the man who had tried to destroy my husband.
"David," I whispered, reaching out to clutch his sleeve. "They didn't just abandon us today. They set a trap."
David pulled out his phone. His screen was already glowing with encrypted messages from his legal and intelligence teams in Manhattan.
"They thought they were setting a trap for sheep," David said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "They forgot that some wolves don't bark before they tear your throat out."
He tapped a contact on his screen and brought the phone to his ear.
May you like
"Arthur," David spoke into the receiver. "Initiate Project Obsidian. Freeze every liquidity line connected to Vance Enterprises. Notify the municipal audit committee regarding the forged structural permits on the Grandview Tower project. And Arthur? Call the chief of security at St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital. I want Suite 412 locked down within the hour."
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