Chapter 2 - The Sanctuary of St. Jude’sThe sirens of the ambulance Julian had frantically summoned wailed in the distance, but Claire never left the secure, steady circle of his arms. Seated in the back of his heated town car, Julian kept one arm firmly around her shaking waist while pressing his phone to his ear, his voice slicing through the air with corporate lethality.
“This is Julian Vance,” he spoke into the device, every syllable sharp enough to cut glass. “I am dispatching my private medical transport team to intercept the downtown crosstown bus at Fifth and 74th. Have the top maternal-fetal surgical unit at St. Jude’s Hospital prepped, sterilized, and waiting. If I arrive and find a single delay, the board of trustees will answer to me personally.”
Claire stared at him through a haze of pain and exhaustion. The name Vance echoed in her clouded mind. Julian Vance—the reclusive billionaire real estate magnate and shipping titan who notoriously avoided society galas and tabloid spotlights. Why was he here? Why was he expending his immense power and influence on a woman he had never met?
“You don’t have to do this,” Claire gasped, clutching his sleeve as a fresh contraction wracked her small frame. “I’m... I’m nobody. My husband—my ex—he...”
“He’s an idiot who deserves to lose everything,” Julian interrupted fiercely, his stormy gray eyes softening as he looked down at her pale, sweat-slicked face. He gently brushed a strand of damp brown hair away from her forehead. “Hold on to me, Claire. Just focus on breathing. I didn’t happen to look through that bus window tonight by accident. Let me take care of you.”
Within minutes, the car was intercepted by a specialized mobile neonatal unit, and Claire was transferred with practiced, lightning-fast precision. Julian rode beside her in the back of the ambulance, never releasing her hand. Every time the pain threatened to pull her under into darkness, his thumb tracing the back of her knuckles anchored her to the world.
By the time they reached St. Jude’s, a team of twenty specialists was waiting at the emergency bay doors. As they wheeled Claire frantically toward the operating theater for an emergency Cesarean section, she clung desperately to Julian’s coat.
“Don’t leave,” she whispered, tears spilling over her lashes.
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“I’m not going anywhere,” Julian promised, kissing the back of her hand before the swinging double doors parted and swallowed her up into the glaring white light of the surgical suite.
Julian stood alone in the quiet corridor, his dark coat still dripping rainwater onto the pristine linoleum. He pulled out his phone, dialed his private investigator, and spoke with quiet, chilling venom. “Find out everything about Ethan Mercer. Every bank account, every asset, every dark corporate secret. And find out why he left his wife bleeding on a city bus tonight. By morning, I want him completely dismantled.”
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