Chapter 3 - Colliding Worlds
The pediatric floor fell into a stunned silence as the clerk swiped my card without asking another question.
Grace grabbed my forearm with astonishing strength for someone so visibly malnourished.
“You cannot do this, Ryan!” she hissed, pulling me toward an empty family consultation room down the corridor.
She ushered the two little girls inside and set the boy down on a vinyl couch.
The little boy curled up immediately, clutching a worn stuffed rabbit to his chest.
Grace turned around, shut the door firmly, and stood with her back pressed against the wood.
“I did not ask for your charity!” she snapped, her chest heaving with exhaustion and anger.
“Charity?” I repeated, running both hands through my wet hair.
“Grace, that boy has my face, my name, and my blood running through his veins!”
“Why in God’s name did you run away three years ago with three children inside you?”
Grace let out a bitter, hollow laugh that held no humor at all.
“I ran away?” she asked, her eyes narrowing into cold slits.
“You think I chose to raise three infants alone in a two-room basement apartment in Rogers Park?”
“You think I wanted to work twelve-hour shifts washing commercial laundry while my son was dying of bone marrow failure?”
“Then why didn’t you call me?” I shouted, stepping closer.
“Why didn’t you knock on my door, or come to the office, or hire an attorney?”
“I did come to your office, Ryan!” she yelled back, her voice cracking with pure anguish.
The two little girls on the couch flinched at the sound of her raised voice.
Grace immediately lowered her tone, glancing toward her daughters with protective guilt before turning back to me.
“I came to Vance Tower three weeks after our divorce was finalized,” she whispered, every word coated in acid.
“I had three positive pregnancy tests and an ultrasound confirmation in my purse.”
“I thought you deserved to know.”
“I thought that despite how cold you had become, you would never turn your back on your own children.”
My stomach turned into a pit of lead.
“I never saw you at the tower, Grace.”
“I never received a single message from you.”
“Of course you didn't,” she replied, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Because I never made it past the executive lobby.”
“Your mother intercepted me before I could even press the button for the thirty-fifth floor.”
The image of Eleanor Vance rose in my mind, cold, aristocratic, and ruthless in her pursuit of social supremacy.
“What did she do?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
“She took me into a private security office in the basement of your building,” Grace said, her voice dead and flat.
“She told me that I was a peasant who had tricked her ambitious son into an embarrassing starter marriage.”
“She told me that if I dared to claim you were the father of those babies, she would hire the best medical experts in Illinois to declare me mentally unfit.”
“She promised she would take the children the day they were born, lock them away in boarding schools, and ensure I spent the rest of my life behind bars for fraud.”
“She had two corporate security officers standing behind her chair holding non-disclosure agreements.”
“She threw five thousand dollars in cash at my feet and told me that if I ever contacted you again, she would make sure I disappeared permanently.”
A cold sweat broke out across my forehead.
My mother had always been fiercely protective of the family legacy, but this was monstrous.
“Grace... I didn't know,” I stammered, feeling the entire foundation of my adult life crumbling beneath my feet.
“I swear on my father's grave, I never knew she did that.”
“It didn't matter whether you knew or not,” Grace said softly, looking down at her scuffed boots.
“You allowed her to dictate every rule in our marriage.”
“You chose her board meetings over our home every single weekend.”
“You made it very clear whose voice mattered in your life, Ryan, and it was never mine.”
Before I could answer, the door to the consultation room flew open with a violent click.
Standing in the doorway was Amelia Brooks.
She was wearing a floor-length emerald silk evening gown partially covered by a tailored mink coat.
Her diamond earrings caught the harsh fluorescent lighting of the hospital corridor.
Right behind her, looking immaculate in gray wool and pearls, stood my mother, Eleanor Vance.
Amelia took one look at Grace, then looked at the three children on the couch, and finally glared at me with absolute fury.
“I had our private security team trace your vehicle locator after you deserted forty people at the Hancock Center, Ryan,” Amelia said, her voice dripping with venom.
“I thought you were lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“Instead, I find you hiding in a pediatric ward with your pathetic, discarded little ex-wife.”
Eleanor stepped into the room, her cold gray eyes surveying the scene with calculated disgust.
Her gaze landed on the little boy resting on the couch.
For a fraction of a second, I saw Eleanor’s jaw tighten as she recognized the unmistakable Vance features in the child’s face.
Then her mask of aristocratic contempt settled right back into place.
“Ryan, gather your coat and leave this room immediately,” Eleanor commanded in the same tone she used with junior board members.
“Amelia’s father is threatening to pull the fifty-million-dollar mezzanine loan for our riverfront project if you are not at that dining table in twenty minutes.”
“Do not let this woman manipulate you with a fabricated crisis on the most important night of your professional career.”
I stood between my mother and Grace, looking back and forth between the two women who represented the lie I had lived and the truth I had abandoned.
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“She didn’t fabricate anything, Mother,” I said, my voice dangerously calm.
“And you knew about them all along, didn’t you?”
