Chapter 2 - The Fortress in Lake Forest
Forty-eight hours after Julian and his mother were processed at the central lockup, I was discharged from the hospital.
The spinal hematoma was still severe, but the swelling had begun to recede slightly. I couldn't walk, but the chief neurologist assured me that with intensive, daily physical therapy, there was a ninety-percent chance I would regain full mobility within six months.
I didn't go back to the penthouse in downtown Chicago where Julian and I had lived.
Instead, a private medical transport van drove me and Hazel to my family's ancestral estate in Lake Forest—a gated, sixty-acre compound surrounded by ten-foot wrought-iron fences, mature oak trees, and state-of-the-art security systems.
The estate had been built by my grandfather, expanded by my father, and held securely in the Vance Family Trust. Julian had never owned a single brick of it.
Sarah Thorne was waiting for me on the limestone front porch when the wheelchair van ramp lowered. Beside her stood Mrs. Gable, my father's former chief of security, a woman who looked like she could snap an oak board with her bare hands.
"Welcome home, Genevieve," Sarah said, stepping forward to take Hazel’s car seat while Mrs. Gable gently assisted the paramedics in wheeling my chair inside.
The grand foyer was bright, warm, and filled with the scent of fresh lilies. A team of three private night nurses, hired directly by Sarah, stood ready in the East Wing, which had been converted into a fully equipped medical recovery suite.
Once Hazel was settled in her nursery and I was propped up in a comfortable leather recliner in my father's former library, Sarah poured two glasses of sparkling water and set a thick black binder on the desk.
"Where are they?" I asked, my voice steady.
"Julian and Eleanor were released on two-million-dollar bail early this morning," Sarah reported, sitting down across from me. "Eleanor put up her brownstone as collateral. But their freedom is a illusion, Genevieve. Their passports have been surrendered, and they are under twenty-four-hour electronic monitoring."
"And Victoria?"
"Victoria’s father is a senior partner at Sterling & Partners," Sarah replied with a grim smile. "He paid her bail instantly, but he was so humiliated by the arrest report that he publicly removed her from the firm's payroll and cut off her trust fund. She is currently staying in a cheap motel near the airport, hiding from the press."
I leaned back against the plush leather pillows. "How bad is the financial damage to Vance Development?"
Sarah opened the binder, flipping to a tab marked Audits.
"Julian was sloppy," Sarah said. "Because he believed you would be permanently incapacitated or dead from complications, he spent the last six months setting up shell companies in Delaware. He diverted nearly 3.2 million dollars from our commercial construction accounts into an account named Vanguard Operations."
"Which was managed by Victoria," I deduced immediately.
"Exactly," Sarah agreed. "He thought he was being clever. But because you never granted him power of attorney over the main trust, every single transfer required your digital key. He forged your signature on four wire transfers last month."
A cold smile touched my lips. "Bank fraud. Federal wire fraud. Forgery."
"Each count carries a mandatory five-to-ten-year sentence in a federal penitentiary," Sarah confirmed. "The U.S. Attorney’s Office is already preparing a formal indictment. But Genevieve... Julian isn't going down quietly. His lawyer, Arthur Vance—his uncle—just filed an emergency motion in family court."
I narrowed my eyes. "What kind of motion?"
"Emergency temporary custody of Hazel," Sarah said softly. "Claiming that your lower-body paralysis and postpartum depression render you physically incapable of caring for a newborn."
My blood ran cold, then boiled into white-hot fury.
Julian didn't care about Hazel. He had never even touched her in the hospital room. He wanted custody because as Hazel’s legal guardian, he could petition the court for temporary access to her trust funds—the multi-million-dollar estate reserved for my daughter.
"He wants her money," I spat, my hands gripping the armrests of my wheelchair so tightly my knuckles turned white.
"He does," Sarah nodded. "The emergency hearing is scheduled for Thursday morning at nine o'clock."
I looked out the high arched window toward the snow-dusted grounds of the estate. Then I looked at the physical therapy bars set up in the corner of the library.
"Sarah," I said quietly, turning back to my lawyer. "Call Dr. Ross. Tell him I want to start intensive physical therapy today. Four hours a morning, four hours an afternoon."
May you like
Sarah blinked. "Genevieve, the doctor said you need rest—"
"I will rest when my daughter is safe and my husband is in a orange jumpsuit," I stated, my voice echoing with an absolute authority that made Sarah smile. "Let's get to work."
