Chapter 5 - THE SHADOW IN THE SHADOWS
For two months, peace seemed to return to my life.
Liam and Chloe were finally discharged from Saint Aurelia Medical Center. Bringing them home to my grandfather’s estate—a sprawling, highly secured oceanfront compound—was the happiest day of my life. Their nursery was filled with sunshine, gentle music, and the finest medical staff monitoring their progress round the clock.
Dominic’s world, meanwhile, had completely imploded.
With no money, no assets, and his reputation completely destroyed by the press, he was forced to sell his luxury clothes just to pay his legal defense fees. Natalie, realizing Dominic was completely broke, had abandoned him, taking what little cash she could scrape together—or so Dominic thought.
I was sitting in the library of the estate, feeding Chloe, when my grandfather walked in, his expression unusually grim.
"Grandfather?" I asked, looking up. "What's wrong? Is there an issue with the custody hearing?"
"The custody hearing is fine, Audrey. Dominic doesn't have the legal standing or the money to fight it," Arthur said, taking a seat across from me. "It’s about Natalie."
I paused, setting Chloe gently against my shoulder. "What about her?"
"We ran a deeper background check on Natalie Davis," Arthur said, holding up a file. "When she first appeared in Dominic’s life eighteen months ago, we assumed she was just a opportunistic gold-digger. But Julian’s investigators dug into her financial records prior to meeting Dominic."
Arthur opened the file, revealing a series of photos.
"Natalie Davis isn't her real name. Her real name is Natalie Vance. She is Dominic’s ex-wife from a secret marriage in Las Vegas six years ago—one he never legally dissolved."
I gasped. "What?! Dominic was a bigamist?!"
"It gets worse," Arthur continued, his voice cold. "Natalie didn't randomly stumble into Dominic’s life to steal him from you. She was placed there. She was working with Blackwood Pharmaceuticals—our primary corporate rival."
The pieces suddenly began clicking together in my head like a terrifying puzzle. Blackwood Pharmaceuticals had been trying to break into Vanguard Health’s hospital supply network for a decade, but my grandfather had repeatedly shut them out.
"Blackwood knew Dominic was married to you," I realized, my heart racing. "They knew about the Sterling family trust!"
"Exactly," Arthur confirmed. "They used Natalie to seduce Dominic, feed his ego, and manipulate him into embezzling your money and attempting to take over your adaptive maternity patents. Blackwood wanted those patents because they contain a proprietary biomaterial technology that revolutionizes medical-grade compression fabrics—a technology worth hundreds of millions."
Just then, the security alarm on the estate grounds didn't sound—but my phone vibrated sharply.
It was a video call from an encrypted number.
I hit accept. The screen lit up, showing a dark, dimly lit warehouse.
Dominic was tied to a wooden chair in the center of the room, his face bruised and swollen, blood dripping from his lip. Standing behind him was Natalie, holding a sleek black laptop, accompanied by a tall man in an expensive Italian suit—Victor Blackwood, the CEO of Blackwood Pharmaceuticals.
"Hello, Audrey," Victor’s smooth, icy voice echoed through the speaker. "Or should I say, the heiress to the Sterling empire."
My hand tightened around the phone. "Victor. What is this?"
"It’s very simple," Victor said, pulling a gun from his coat pocket and resting the barrel against Dominic’s temple. Dominic let out a muffled scream through the duct tape over his mouth, his eyes wide with sheer horror.
"Dominic was a useful idiot," Victor sneered. "He thought he was playing us, but he was just our key to getting inside your life. Now, he owes my company thirty million dollars for failed corporate espionage. And since he has nothing left... you are going to pay his debt."
"I don't owe you a single cent, Victor," I said, keeping my voice utterly steady. "And Dominic means nothing to me."
"He might mean nothing to you," Victor smiled cruelly, shifting the camera slightly to reveal a second monitor on the table. "But the biometric data files for Aura Couture’s patents do. If you don't transfer the master tech files to my server within one hour, I won't just kill your ex-husband. I will broadcast every piece of private medical data regarding your premature twins to every dark-web medical broker in the world."
My breath hitched. They had breached the hospital’s remote patient database during the twins' stay.
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"You have sixty minutes, Audrey," Victor whispered. "Don't test me."
The screen went black.
