Chapter 3 - The Bloodline Revealed
The silence in the Plaza Hotel ballroom became absolute.
Constance Sterling’s jaw dropped open. Isabella Thorne’s face drained of every drop of color, her manicured fingers clutching her stained crimson dress as if trying to hide behind Liam’s shadow.
"Your... your daughter?" Liam stammered, his eyes widening in total, unadulterated horror. "Olivia? Olivia... the public library archivist?"
"Olivia Vance Sterling," Kane said softly, stepping up onto the first riser of the dais. The movement was so deliberate, so predatory, that Liam instinctively took a step back. "My only child. The woman who asked me five years ago to keep her surname hidden because she wanted to be loved for who she was, not for the fifty billion dollars waiting for her in my trust funds."
Liam felt the blood drain entirely from his head. His vision blurred at the edges.
Fifty billion dollars.
The woman he had relegated to a tiny, two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, the woman he had refused to buy a proper winter coat for, the woman whose art restoration career he had mocked as a waste of time—was the sole heiress to the Vance Global empire.
"No..." Constance gasped, her voice trembling violently as she tried to step forward, her hands hovering in the air. "Mr. Vance... surely there has been a mistake! Olivia never mentioned... she never said a word about being related to the Chicago Vances!"
Kane Vance slowly turned his terrifying gaze onto Constance.
"She didn't mention it because she is a woman of grace, Mrs. Sterling," Kane said, each word landing like a iron hammer. "A quality that seems as foreign to this room as basic human decency."
Kane turned his head slightly toward Viktor Volkov, who stood two paces behind him holding a sleek black encrypted tablet. "Viktor."
"Yes, Sir," Volkov said, his voice flat, Russian, and merciless.
"Where is she now?"
"The private medical transport I dispatched has secured Miss Vance outside," Volkov reported crisply. "Dr. Aris is currently evaluating her in the mobile intensive care unit. Her core body temperature had dropped to ninety-four degrees due to exposure in the storm, and she is experiencing severe abdominal cramping caused by physical and psychological distress."
"The baby?" Kane asked, his voice cracking with a rare, terrifying fracture of paternal agony.
"Dr. Aris is performing an ultrasound now," Volkov replied. "They are stabilizing her."
When the word baby echoed through the space, Liam felt as though a lightning bolt had struck him through the spine.
"A... a baby?" Liam gasped, his eyes darting back and forth between Kane and Volkov. "Olivia is pregnant?"
Kane Vance turned back to Liam. He didn't yell. He didn't throw a punch. He simply looked at the young man with a look of such utter, absolute disgust that Liam felt smaller than a speck of dust on the marble floor.
"You didn't even know," Kane said softly. "My daughter has been carrying your child for sixteen weeks, and you were too busy buying diamond necklaces for a third-rate social climber to notice."
Isabella gasped, taking another step backward, her heel catching on the hem of her gown. "Mr. Vance, I... I had no idea! It was an accident! I spilled the wine by mistake!"
Sir Arthur Pendelton, the legendary attorney standing beside Kane, opened his leather briefcase with a crisp snap. He pulled out a sleek, transparent glass tablet and tapped the screen.
Instantly, the grand seventy-foot high-definition screens surrounding the ballroom—which had been displaying the glowing golden logo of the Sterling Group’s upcoming IPO—flickered, went black, and then illuminated with crystal-clear high-definition video footage.
It was the security feed from the Plaza Hotel's main hall, captured ten minutes prior.
The audio played clearly through the ballroom's surrounding sound system.
On the massive screens, five hundred guests watched in high-definition as Isabella Thorne deliberately adjusted her grip on her goblet of red wine, looked directly at Constance Sterling, who gave her a subtle, nodding signal, and then viciously drove the glass downward into Olivia’s pregnant stomach.
The audio captured Isabella’s voice, clear as ice: "Oops. My hand slipped."
Then Constance’s voice echoed through the speakers: "Oh, dear. Look at you. You always did have a talent for making yourself look unfortunate... use the back exit."
And finally, Liam’s voice, harsh and dismissive: "Go clean yourself up, Olivia. You’re ruining the party."
The ballroom went deathly quiet once again.
The board members of the Sterling Group looked up at the screens, then down at Liam and Constance with expressions of sheer horror and revulsion. The lead underwriter from Goldman Sachs silently pulled out his satellite phone, stepped into the shadow of a pillar, and began typing a rapid series of messages.
Liam’s mother looked as though she were about to faint. "That... that feed is a fabrication! It’s edited!"
"That feed is secured from the hotel's central server, which my firm purchased eight minutes ago," Sir Arthur Pendelton said smoothly, closing his briefcase. "Along with the Plaza Hotel itself."
Kane Vance stepped until he was standing six inches from Liam. He was taller than Liam, broader, and carried the terrifying gravity of a man who had survived knife fights in corporate boardrooms before Liam was born.
"Twelve minutes ago," Kane whispered, his voice vibrating through Liam’s chest, "you told my daughter that she was ruining your party."
May you like
Kane reached out, his thick, scarred fingers reaching for the lapels of Liam’s Tom Ford tuxedo. Liam flinched, terrified he was about to be struck, but Kane simply straightened the young man’s bow tie with slow, terrifying care.
"Now," Kane said gently, "I am going to ruin your life."
