Chapter 2 - The Ghost on the Line
The phone vibrated against Ethan’s thigh like a trapped wasp.
He stared at the screen. Victoria was dead. He had attended her closed-casket memorial. He had watched her brother, Julian Vance, weep dry tears while eyeing Ethan’s share of the Vance-Blackwood real estate portfolio.
He slid the screen to answer. He didn't say hello. He waited.
"I always loved the sound of your silence, Ethan," a voice purred. It was low, smoky, and instantly recognizable. It was Victoria. But there was a strange, rhythmic clicking in the background—the sound of medical equipment. A ventilator.
"Victoria," Ethan said, his voice dropping an octave as he glanced at the two boys, who were now watching him with wide, terrified eyes. "This is a sick joke. Julian is behind this. If he’s using voice-cloning technology to screw with my stock price—"
"Julian is a fool who thinks he inherited the world," Victoria’s voice cut in, followed by a wet, rattling cough. "He doesn't know about the boys. No one does. Except the clinic. And now, you."
"Where are you?" Ethan demanded, stepping out of the kitchen and into his expansive glass living room, his bare feet cold against the stone.
"I’m in a room where the air smells like ozone and death, darling. Much like your soul," she laughed, a sound that degenerated into a hacking fit. "You thought you were infertile, Ethan. That’s what I let you believe. That’s what my family’s doctors told you when we got married. Do you know how easy it is to falsify a sperm analysis when you own the laboratory?"
Ethan’s hand clenched around the phone so hard the glass casing groaned. "Why?"
"Because a man who thinks he can’t have children is a man who builds an empire for no one. You worked yourself to the bone, creating a dynasty of paper and gold, thinking you were the end of your line. But I kept your samples from your medical school days. I used them. Not for myself—oh no, I didn't want your middle-class DNA ruining my pedigree. I sold them to an experimental surrogate program run by Vance Labs."
"You used surrogates?" Ethan looked back through the glass partition at the boys. Tyler was currently trying to dry his brother’s wet hair with a paper towel.
"A surrogate," Victoria corrected. "A sweet, naive girl named Clara Thorne. She thought she was helping an anonymous, wealthy couple. But when she found out the clinic was planning to terminate one of the twins because of a 'genetic deviation,' she ran. She went into hiding. I let her run. It was much more amusing to watch you spend fifteen years believing you were barren while your blood was growing in a cold tenement in Queens."
"You're a monster," Ethan hissed.
"I’m a Vance," she corrected coldly. "And now, Clara is dying of leukemia. The boys are about to become wards of the state. Unless, of course, you step forward. But here’s the catch, Ethan. The moment you claim them, the moment you run that DNA test to save Clara’s life, a trigger clause in our divorce settlement activates."
Ethan’s blood ran cold. He remembered the grueling, year-long divorce negotiation. He had signed a standard non-disclosure and asset protection agreement, but Victoria’s lawyers had inserted a bizarre, hyper-specific clause that he had dismissed as her trademark paranoia at the time: If any biological offspring of Ethan Blackwood is verified and claimed during his lifetime, 51% of Blackwood Enterprises automatically transfers to the Vance Trust.
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"She's not dying of natural causes, Ethan," Victoria whispered, her voice fading, the clicking of the ventilator growing louder. "Julian found Clara. He knows about the boys now. And he’s accelerating her illness. If she dies before you claim them, the boys disappear into a system Julian controls. If you claim them to save her, I take your empire. What’s it going to be, Ethan? The boys, or the billionaire?"
The line went dead.
