Chapter 2 - The Investigation
The interior of the Maybach felt like a suffocating tomb as Vance ordered his driver to speed back to the Callahan Biotech headquarters.
Lila complained the entire ride about her ruined designer heels and their missed dinner reservations at a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Vance ignored her completely, his mind entirely consumed by the image of his gray-eyed daughter and dimpled son.
As soon as he reached his glass-walled penthouse office, he kicked Lila out and locked the massive oak doors.
He immediately called Marcus, his ruthless head of private security, and demanded a comprehensive background check on Maddie Rowan.
Vance paced the floor in front of his floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out at the Manhattan skyline while drinking a glass of scotch he could not even taste.
He had spent three long years convincing himself that leaving Maddie was a necessary sacrifice for his business.
He had built a narrative where she was simply too emotional, too fragile, and too demanding of his precious time.
But seeing those children shattered the carefully constructed lie he had lived in.
At three in the morning, the heavy doors of his office clicked open, and Marcus walked in holding a thick, ominous manila folder.
Marcus looked deeply uncomfortable as he placed the dossier onto the polished mahogany desk.
Vance tore the folder open, immediately pulling out the birth certificates of Leo and Maya Rowan.
The space designated for the father’s name was completely blank.
Vance felt a sickening wave of guilt wash over him as he read the attached hospital records.
Maddie had suffered severe preeclampsia and was forced into an emergency C-section a month premature.
She had nearly died on the operating table, bleeding out while Vance was halfway across the world negotiating a corporate merger.
The twins had spent five agonizing weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Maddie had no health insurance because Vance’s legal team had terminated her corporate coverage the exact day the divorce papers were filed.
She had been forced to pawn her late grandmother’s wedding ring just to pay for her babies' life-saving medical equipment.
Vance threw the papers at the wall, a raw, animalistic scream of agony tearing from his throat.
He asked Marcus why Maddie had never called to tell him she was pregnant.
Marcus hesitated for a long time before pulling out a printed transcript of digital phone logs.
Marcus quietly explained that Maddie had actually called Vance’s private cell phone forty-two times during her terrifying pregnancy.
Every single call and text message had been manually intercepted and deleted by someone who had full access to Vance’s devices.
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Vance stared at the logs, his blood turning into ice as he recognized the secondary phone number that had authorized the block.
The person who had erased his children from his life was Lila Crane.
