Chapter 10 - THE WIFE HE SHOULD NEVER HAVE PUT ON PAPER
We froze Victor's companies within forty-eight hours.
Not through Elias.
Through court.
My attorney filed fraud evidence, medical records, financial abuse claims, and emergency marital-property requests.
Victor's accounts locked.
His attorneys stopped getting paid from corporate funds.
His confidence cracked.
Then he called me.
First time since the overpass.
“Ava.”
My body remembered fear before my mind did.
Elias stood across the room.
Didn't take the phone.
My call.
My choice.
“What?”
Victor sounded almost amused.
“You've gotten brave.”
“No.”
I looked at Emma sleeping against my chest.
“I've gotten witnesses.”
Silence.
“You think Vance cares about you?”
“This isn't about him.”
“It will be.”
“Everything is about men to you.”
That landed.
Victor's voice hardened.
“Those children are mine.”
“No.”
“Legally.”
“Not for long.”
“I am your husband.”
“Also temporary.”
He laughed.
Then:
“You still haven't figured out why I chose you.”
“I know about my mother.”
“Not enough.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“You weren't random because of Rose.”
Then he hung up.
Another secret.
We searched my father's history.
His name was Jonathan Miller.
Or so I knew.
Birth records showed Jonathan Miller had changed his name at twenty-two.
Original:
Jonathan Vance.
Elias went still.
My father had been a Vance.
Distant branch.
Malcolm's second cousin.
That meant I carried Vance blood too.
Emma and Lucy were not merely Vance descendants through Julian.
They were Vance descendants through me.
Noah too.
Victor had chosen me because any child I bore with Julian's genetic material doubled the bloodline connection and made trust challenges nearly impossible.
I felt violated all over again.
My marriage had been engineered around ancestry.
Then Elias found an old photograph of Jonathan.
He recognized him.
“My father talked about him.”
Jonathan had left the Vance family before I was born.
Wanted no part of criminal business.
Changed his name.
Married Rose.
Raised me quietly.
Then died in what I believed was a workplace accident.
Warehouse collapse.
Except Malcolm's old security report called it sabotage.
Suspect:
Victor's father, Henry Miller.
The Miller family had been attacking the Vance line for two generations.
Victor didn't marry me by accident.
His father may have killed mine.
Then one more report.
Jonathan's warehouse collapse had one survivor.
May you like
A young man named Elias Vance.
Elias had been there when my father died.
