Chapter 5 - THE MIDNIGHT SUMMONS
-5-
Saturday night descended upon Manhattan with a rare autumn thunderstorm. Rain lashed violently against the glass windows of our brownstone, casting distorted, watery reflections of streetlights across the living room floor.
The triplets were fast asleep upstairs, exhausted after a full day of building elaborate Lego castles in the den. I was sitting at the kitchen island, nursing a cup of chamomile tea, when my phone buzzed violently against the marble countertop.
It wasn't a text message. It was a video call request from an unrecognized, heavily encrypted number.
I knew instantly who it was.
I swiped to accept the call. The screen flickered for a second before resolving into the face of Marcus Vance. But Marcus wasn't alone. Sitting beside him in his private study was a man who looked older, exhausted, and desperately broken: Julian Vance Sr.—or rather, Julian Jr., as he was formally known in the family registry, though everyone just called him Julian.
Julian looked straight into the camera lens, his eyes bloodshot, dark shadows bruising the skin beneath them.
“Clara,” Julian’s voice was raspy, breaking slightly over the encrypted audio feed. “Don't hang up. Please. Marcus gave me access to... he showed me the file, Clara.”
I took a slow sip of my tea, keeping my expression entirely neutral. “If you’re calling to beg for mercy on Victoria’s behalf, save your breath. She made her bed.”
“I’m not calling about Victoria,” Julian said fiercely, leaning so close to his camera that his face filled the entire screen. “I fired her attorney twenty minutes ago. I threw her out of my apartment downtown an hour after that. She’s gone, Clara. Finished. Her PR firm is locked out of every corporate account we control.”
Marcus leaned into the frame from the side, a sardonic smirk playing on his lips. “I confirmed it myself, sis. Little bro finally grew a backbone—right after I handed him the financial audit proving Victoria was systematically embezzling from his personal foundation to fund her mother’s offshore accounts.”
I looked back at Julian. “It’s a bit late for housekeeping, Julian. Five years late, to be exact.”
“I know,” Julian whispered, his voice cracking with genuine anguish. “I know I was a blind, arrogant fool. My mother... she lied to my face, Clara. She told me you took a three-million-dollar cash payout to disappear and abort the pregnancy. She showed me forged bank statements with your signature.”
“And you believed her,” I said coldly. “Because it was easier than believing your own wife loved you enough to stay through a crisis.”
“I didn't want to believe it,” Julian said, a tear finally breaking free and tracking down his cheek. “Every single day for five years, I walked through that empty penthouse thinking you hated my guts. Thinking you traded our life for a clean break. And all this time... my children were growing up just blocks away from me.”
“Well, now you know,” I replied, my voice softening just a fraction, though the armor remained firmly in place. “You know they exist. You know what your family and your former fiancée tried to do. But knowing doesn't change the past, Julian. And it doesn't give you parental rights by default.”
“I don't want rights by default, Clara,” Julian pleaded, his hands coming up to grip the edges of his desk on the other end of the feed. “I want to earn them. I want to fix this. Whatever it takes. Tuesday morning at the Luxe Hotels pitch—I’m sitting on the executive review board. I want to award Purely Petals the global contract, and then, in front of the entire board, I’m going to publicly announce who you are, who my children are, and tear my mother’s empire down for what they did to you.”
I narrowed my eyes, studying his face. There was no corporate polish left in him. Just raw, desperate redemption.
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“If you do that on Tuesday,” I said slowly, “you won't just be breaking with your mother. You’ll be declaring all-out civil war on the entire Vance dynasty.”
Julian let out a dark, humorless laugh. “Let them come. They took five years of my life with my children. It’s time they paid the price.”
