Chapter 2 - The Paper Trail of Blood
By midnight, the thirty-second floor of the St. Gabriel Medical Tower was lit up like a command bunker in a war zone.
Down in the streets, news vans were parked bumper-to-bumper outside the building's main entrance. The viral clip of Mariana’s raw, screaming accusation had already racked up twelve million views across social media platforms. The headline on every major news network was identical: The Foundation of Lies: Billionaire Philanthropist’s Secret Under the Bridge.
Inside Alexander’s corner office, the air was thick with tension and discarded coffee cups.
Evelyn Price was pacing back and forth in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, her phone glued to her ear.
"I don't care if it's midnight, Arthur!" she yelled into the receiver. "Draft a non-disclosure agreement and get our legal team down to the district precinct! We need an injunction against the footage taken by the local affiliates!"
"Put the phone down, Evelyn," Alexander said.
He was sitting behind his massive mahogany desk. His tie was undone, his collar unbuttoned, and a glass of scotch sat untouched beside a thick, manila folder.
Across from him sat Marcus Vance, a retired homicide detective turned high-end private investigator. Marcus was a broad, grey-haired man who had worked for the Grant family for two decades.
"I found the trail, Alex," Marcus said softly, pushing a set of printouts across the desk. "It wasn't easy. Someone worked very hard to bury this."
Alexander’s hands shook as he opened the folder.
"After Mariana signed the divorce papers in 2011," Marcus began, pointing to a hospital record from Detroit, "she moved to Michigan. She took a job as an archivist at a local university. She was living frugally, using her maiden name, Alden."
"And the baby?" Alexander’s voice was barely a whisper.
Marcus hesitated, looking over at Evelyn, who had finally lowered her phone.
"Seven months after the divorce was finalized, she gave birth at St. Jude’s Memorial in Detroit," Marcus said. "A boy. She named him Leo."
Alexander swallowed hard, his throat tight, his vision blurring as he looked at the birth certificate printed on the page.
Father: Unlisted. Mother: Mariana Alden.
"Where is he?" Alexander demanded, looking up at Marcus. "Where is my son?"
Marcus took a deep breath. His face hardened.
"That's where the story turns dark, Alex," Marcus said. "In 2016, when the boy was five years old, Mariana was involved in a severe car accident on Interstate 94. A heavy delivery truck crossed the center line and crushed her sedan."
Alexander felt the air leave his lungs. "The leg..."
"She lost her right leg below the knee in the crash," Marcus confirmed. "She spent three months in intensive care. But that wasn't the worst of it. The truck company was a shell corporation—an assetless entity that went bankrupt three weeks after the crash. She got zero settlement. Her medical bills wiped out her savings."
"And Leo?" Alexander’s heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Was he in the car?"
"He survived with minor injuries," Marcus said. "But while Mariana was in a medically induced coma following her amputation... social services stepped in. Because she was deemed financially unfit and physically incapacitated, a emergency custody order was filed."
Alexander stood up so fast his heavy leather chair slammed into the wall behind him.
"Who filed the order?" he roared. "Who took my son?!"
Marcus pulled a single, red-stamped court document from the bottom of the pile and slid it across the mahogany wood.
"The petition for permanent surrender of parental rights was submitted by a legal firm right here in Chicago," Marcus said quietly. "The client funding the legal action was a subsidiary of Grant Global Logistics."
Alexander froze. His entire body turned to ice.
"Grant Global?" Alexander rasped. "That's... that's my father’s company."
"Your father didn't just know about the baby, Alex," Marcus said, his tone heavy with grim reality. "Arthur Grant engineered the whole thing. He paid for Mariana’s legal team to advise her to surrender the boy while she was heavily medicated. He threatened to have her committed to a state psychiatric facility if she fought it. He bought the boy out from under her."
Alexander felt the room spin. His father, Arthur Grant Senior—the towering patriarch who had died three years ago, the man whose portrait hung in the main lobby of St. Gabriel—had ripped his child away from a crippled, grieving mother.
"Where is Leo now?" Alexander demanded, gripping the edge of the desk until his knuckles turned white. "Tell me where he is!"
"He’s fourteen years old, Alex," Marcus said softly. "And according to state foster records... he’s currently residing at the St. Jude Youth Facility on 47th Street. He’s been in the state system for eight years."
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Alexander stared at Marcus, the horror of the realization crashing down on him with the force of a tidal wave.
His son—a Grant heir—had been living in a state-run group home five miles from Alexander’s penthouse, while Alexander donated millions to build shiny new hospital wings named after his own ego.
