Chapter 2 - The Mask Comes Off"Damen, darling?" Elena’s sweet, breathy voice purred through the speaker the second I pressed the phone to my ear. "Where are you? I’ve been waiting at the Greenwich estate for hours. The decorator is here to review the nursery wall colors, and your assistant Bernard said you were taking care of some minor legal loose ends."
I sat on the bare hospital mattress, staring at the empty IV pole where my wife’s medicine had hung for six days.
The cold, calculating CEO who had built a multi-billion-dollar empire returned to my blood—not with ambition, but with a dark, terrifying fury that made my hands go completely still.
"Where are you, Elena?" I asked. My voice was eerily calm, smooth as ice.
"I told you, silly, I'm at the Greenwich house!" she laughed softly. "I had the locks re-keyed yesterday just like we discussed. Oh, and Damen, Bernard mentioned Meline finally vacated her hospital room. Has she signed the quiet separation agreement yet? My father’s legal team wants everything wrapped up before the quarterly press summit on Friday."
The quiet separation agreement.
Every word out of her mouth was a confession masked in silk.
For eight months, I had allowed this woman to insinuate herself into my life, my company, and my home. I had convinced myself she was an asset—the brilliant daughter of Arthur Courtland, the billionaire hedge fund titan whose backing Vance Medical needed for our international expansion. I had let her call my wife paranoid, jealous, and unstable.
And while Meline was picking out baby clothes in silence, Elena and my chief assistant, Bernard, had been orchestrating my wife's complete erasure.
"I'm on my way, Elena," I said quietly.
"Wonderful! Bring that vintage Cabernet from the UES cellar—"
I hung up without another word.
I stood up, carefully placing the tiny blue knitted hat inside my breast pocket, directly over my heart. I folded the police report and the incident photo, sliding them into my coat.
I walked out of the hospital room and down the long corridor toward the executive elevators. My head of private security, Marcus—a broad-shouldered former intelligence officer who had served my father for twenty years—was standing near the entrance, his face tight with concern.
"Mr. Vance," Marcus said, stepping forward. "I just received the precinct alert regarding your apartment's incident report. I didn't know—Bernard explicitly instructed security detail to stand down on the Upper East Side six nights ago."
"Bernard works for Elena now, Marcus," I said, my baritone dropping into a deadly register. "Where is Meline?"
Marcus pulled an encrypted tablet from his jacket. "We ran her credit cards and private transit passes ten minutes ago, sir. Nothing has been swiped. But my operative at the Manhattan Probate Court alerted me that two hours ago, a legal representative filed an emergency petition on behalf of Mrs. Meline Vance."
"What petition?"
"An immediate petition for the dissolution of marriage, an emergency restraining order, and the formal forfeiture of her marital property rights." Marcus looked up, his eyes grave. "She didn't ask for a single dollar of your fortune, Mr. Vance. She asked the judge to strip her name from Vance Medical Innovations and requested the immediate release of our son's remains from the city mortuary."
My heart squeezed until I could barely draw breath. "Where are they taking my son?"
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"Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn," Marcus whispered. "The burial is scheduled for tomorrow morning at eight o'clock. Private. No media. No family listed except Meline."
"Get the car," I ordered, my eyes turning to stone. "First, we go to Greenwich. Then, Brooklyn."
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