Chapter 3 - Shadows of the PastThe silence that followed Julian’s confession felt heavier than the hospital room walls.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered, pulling the thin hospital blanket tighter around my shoulders. “I’ve never met you before last night. I don't work in your sector, I don't run in your social circles, and Ethan never mentioned a Julian Vance.”
“Ethan Mercer wouldn't know my name if it bit him on the throat,” Julian replied coldly, walking over to the window to stare out at the river. “Your husband’s corporate firm only exists because my venture capital fund quietly underwrote their first three major real estate acquisitions five years ago. He thinks he’s a titan of Manhattan. He’s just a pawn sitting on a board I own.”
I stared at the back of his broad shoulders, a cold knot forming in my stomach. “Why? Why are you tracking my husband’s business? Why were you watching my apartment?”
Julian turned around, his expression carved from dark, unyielding stone. He walked back to the bedside and placed the thick leather dossier down on my lap.
“Open it,” he instructed.
With trembling fingers, I flipped open the cover.
Inside weren't corporate financial statements. They were photographs. Hundreds of them, printed on high-gloss paper, meticulously organized by date.
Photos of me sitting on a bench in Central Park reading a book. Photos of me walking out of a doctor’s office holding a fertility clinic pamphlet. Photos of me standing on the balcony of Ethan’s apartment, looking out at the city skyline with a hollow, lonely expression on my face.
Some of the photos dated back four years—long before I had even met Ethan at a charity gala.
A surge of violated terror shot through my chest. I shoved the dossier off my lap, sending glossy pictures scattering across the linoleum floor.
“Are you a stalker?!” I gasped, scrambling backward against the pillows, my heart monitor spiking wildly. “You’ve been spying on me for years?! Who the hell do you think you are?!”
“I am the man who loved you before Ethan Mercer ever learned how to spell your name,” Julian said, his voice completely calm, though his jaw muscles clenched violently.
I stopped breathing.
“What did you say?”
“Seven years ago, before your father’s medical company was hostilely liquidated by Hart Meridian, you worked as an intern at an art gallery in SoHo,” Julian said quietly, stepping closer. “I walked in to buy a painting. You looked up from behind the counter, smiled at me, and spent twenty minutes explaining the history of an obscure impressionist landscape. You didn't care who I was. You just saw a human being.”
He pointed down at the scattered photographs on the floor.
“The next day, I came back to ask you out to dinner. But when I arrived, men from your father’s creditors were threatening you in the alley behind the building. I stepped in to clear them out, but by the time I circled back, your father had already bundled you into a car and whisked you away to Europe to hide from the financial fallout.”
Tears prickled behind my eyelids, my mind racing backward through the fog of memory.
“I… I remember running away to London with my dad,” I whispered, the pieces slowly clicking into place. “I thought we were just traveling.”
“And when you came back two years later,” Julian continued, his voice thick with suppressed pain, “you were already engaged to Ethan Mercer. He had inherited a mid-level construction firm, cleaned himself up, and cornered you at a high-society fundraiser while you were vulnerable and alone. I watched him isolate you, control you, and turn you into a decorative accessory for his corporate portfolio.”
“So you just… watched?” I choked out, tears spilling over my lashes. “You watched him cheat on me, abuse me psychologically, and throw me out into the rain while I was pregnant with triplets?”
“I watched because you made a vow,” Julian said harshly. “And I respected your boundaries. But the moment he locked you out into a freezing Manhattan storm while carrying three children… the contract was broken.”
May you like
He knelt down beside the bed, picking up one of the scattered photographs—a picture of me smiling awkwardly at a charity dinner while Ethan talked to a board member.
“Your husband is currently in Los Angeles celebrating his new life with Sabrina Vale,” Julian said, his eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying, predatory promise. “By the time he flies back to Manhattan tomorrow morning, he won't have a company, an apartment, a bank account, or a shred of reputation left. Because I am going to strip him down to the bone—starting with the divorce papers he handed you.”
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