Chapter 3 - THE DEEPENING BLEED
At 10:15 AM, while Daniel and Victoria were in a black town car speeding toward the Vance Group skyscraper in Midtown, my hospital room felt suffocatingly quiet.
The IV drip chimed rhythmically—click, hum, click.
Dr. Thorne stood at the foot of my bed, performing a bedside transvaginal ultrasound scan. The room was dimmed, the faint blue light of the monitor illuminating her focused, serious face.
“The hematoma hasn't expanded,” Dr. Thorne noted, pointing to the screen. “That’s good. But your heart rate is 115. Emily, you are reacting to every sound in the hallway. I can give you a mild sedative, but we need to keep your physiological stress levels completely flat.”
“I can't sleep, Dr. Thorne,” I whispered, staring at the monitor. “If I close my eyes, I feel myself falling into that glass table again. I hear his palm striking my face.”
“I understand,” Dr. Thorne said gently, wiping the clear gel from my stomach and pulling the blanket back over me. “Trauma isn't just emotional; it’s cellular. Your body is trying to protect itself by remaining in a state of hyper-arousal. But right now, that hyper-arousal is sending adrenaline straight through the umbilical cord.”
A soft knock sounded at the door.
My body stiffened instantly. “Who is it?”
The door pushed open slowly. A woman stepped into the room.
She was in her early sixties, wearing a simple gray cashmere sweater, no jewelry, and no makeup. Her silver hair was drawn back into a simple knot at the nape of her neck. She carried a small canvas bag.
It was Eleanor Vance—Richard’s ex-wife, Daniel and Victoria’s mother, who had divorced Richard twenty years ago and vanished into a quiet life as an art restorer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, completely severing her ties with the Vance family fortune.
I had only met Eleanor once, at our modest courthouse wedding five years ago—a wedding Richard had refused to attend.
“Eleanor?” I gasped, trying to sit up, but Dr. Thorne gently pressed her hands against my shoulders to keep me flat.
“Stay down, my dear,” Eleanor said, her voice soft, rich, and instantly comforting. She closed the door firmly behind her, pulled a wooden chair up to the side of my bed, and sat down.
She reached out and took my hand. Her skin was warm, slightly rough from clay and turpentine, a stark contrast to the cold, manicured hands of the women who populated Richard’s world.
“I caught the six o'clock flight from Albuquerque the moment Victoria called me last night,” Eleanor said, her eyes shining with deep, ancient grief as she looked at the dark purple bruise blooming across my jawline. “Oh, Emily... I am so, so sorry you had to taste his poison.”
Tears welled in my eyes. “He... he called me a barren liability, Eleanor. In front of everyone.”
“He called me a decorative placeholder when I failed to produce a second son thirty years ago,” Eleanor said quietly, her thumb gently stroking the back of my hand. “Richard Vance is a man who views the world entirely through the lens of acquisitions and liquidations. When I left him, I left behind eighty million dollars in trust settlements because I knew that every dollar from Richard came with an invisible chain attached to your neck.”
She reached into her canvas bag and pulled out a small, worn leather journal bound with a dark string.
“What is that?” I asked.
“This is Richard’s past,” Eleanor said, setting the journal gently onto my lap. “When we were married in the early nineties, Richard was expanding the Vance Group into commercial real estate development in New Jersey. He had a partner—a young architect named David Chen. David discovered that Richard was using sub-standard concrete foundations on a three-hundred-unit residential complex to pocket twelve million dollars in construction margins.”
My breath hitched. “What happened to David?”
“David threatened to go to the state attorney general,” Eleanor said, her voice dropping into a somber whisper. “Three days later, David was framed for corporate embezzlement, his license was revoked, and he died by suicide six months later. Richard bought out his share of the company for pennies on the dollar from David’s grieving widow.”
I stared at the leather journal. “You kept his records?”
“I kept my personal diaries from that era,” Eleanor corrected. “With dates, bank account transfers, and private conversation notes. I kept them because I knew one day, Richard’s arrogance would drive him to commit an atrocity so severe that the world would finally see him without his polished mask. Yesterday was that day, Emily.”
May you like
She looked toward the window, where the rain was beginning to clear over the city skyline.
“Daniel and Victoria are fighting him in the boardroom today,” Eleanor said. “But corporate boardrooms are built on money, and Richard knows how to maneuver money better than anyone. If you want to stop him permanently, you don't cut off his branches. You dig up his roots.”
