Chapter 3 - Five Years of Silence
Grace was taken to the hospital under police supervision rather than arrested immediately.
Nathan insisted Lily remain with her.
Victoria protested.
Nathan ignored her.
For the first time in eight years, Nathan rode in the back of an ambulance.
He sat opposite Grace while Lily slept against her uninjured side.
Nobody spoke for several minutes.
Finally Nathan asked the question that had burned inside him since the kitchen.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Grace looked through the ambulance window.
“Because I tried.”
Nathan stared at her.
Grace slowly continued.
“When I discovered I was pregnant, you were in Singapore negotiating the Harrington acquisition.”
Nathan remembered.
He had been gone seventeen days.
“I went to your father.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“Why?”
“I thought he could tell me how to reach you.”
Grace laughed bitterly.
“I was naive enough to think he might be happy.”
She looked down at Lily.
“He already knew.”
Nathan felt cold.
“How?”
“Victoria’s father told him.”
Nathan frowned.
“Richard Vale?”
Grace nodded.
“Your father and Richard had already agreed you would eventually marry Victoria.”
Nathan shook his head.
“I barely knew Victoria then.”
“That didn’t matter.”
Grace’s voice hardened.
“The Coles had the company.”
“The Vales had political connections and enough cash to rescue Cole Industries from a debt crisis nobody outside the board knew existed.”
Nathan remembered his father suddenly refinancing several major properties that year.
At the time, he had assumed business was improving.
Grace continued.
“Your father offered me three million dollars to disappear.”
Nathan stared at her.
“I refused.”
“So he threatened you?”
“He did more than threaten me.”
Grace closed her eyes.
“He had my mother fired from the hospital.”
“He had my brother investigated for tax fraud.”
“He had my apartment lease canceled.”
“He froze my bank account through a lawsuit I had never heard of.”
Nathan felt sick.
“And when I still refused, he told me that after Lily was born, his attorneys would prove I was unstable and take her from me.”
The psychiatric report suddenly made sense.
Grace looked at him.
“He showed me paperwork already prepared.”
Nathan whispered.
“My father was building the same case five years ago.”
“Yes.”
Nathan looked away.
Grace continued.
“Then Victoria visited me.”
Nathan turned back.
“She knew?”
Grace’s eyes sharpened.
“She gave me the message you supposedly wrote.”
“What message?”
Grace reached beneath Lily’s jacket and pulled out a worn folded sheet of paper.
Nathan unfolded it.
His signature was at the bottom.
The letter said Grace had become an embarrassment.
It said he wanted nothing to do with her pregnancy.
It offered money in exchange for silence.
Nathan’s hands began shaking.
“I never wrote this.”
“I know that now.”
Grace’s tears finally fell.
“But I was twenty-six, pregnant, terrified, and surrounded by people who could destroy everyone I loved.”
Nathan lowered his head.
For almost five years, he had believed Grace abandoned him.
For almost five years, Grace had believed Nathan abandoned his daughter.
A nurse opened the ambulance doors as they reached the hospital.
Before Grace could be moved, Nathan’s phone rang.
His attorney, Marcus Hale, was calling.
Nathan answered.
Marcus did not bother saying hello.
“Do not take Victoria’s calls.”
Nathan glanced toward the hospital entrance.
“Why?”
“Because your father left a sealed instruction in my firm’s private vault.”
Nathan went silent.
May you like
Marcus continued.
“It says I’m only allowed to open it if Grace Bennett ever returns to your life.”
