Chapter 2 - The Ice Queen's Verdict
The silence in the café was deafening. The nurses in the corner stopped laughing. The barista froze with a metal pitcher in his hand.
Standing in the doorway, framed by the pouring rain and flanked by four more armed guards, was Victoria Vance.
She was stunning in a way that felt dangerous. Her dark hair was styled in a sharp, flawless bob, her cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut glass, and her eyes were a piercing, icy gray—the exact same color as her daughters' eyes. She wore a tailored black coat that cost more than Leo’s truck, and she carried herself with the absolute authority of a woman who bought and sold empires before breakfast.
"Mommy," Sophia whispered, shrinking back into her chair, her hands diving deeper into her coat pockets.
Victoria didn't look at her daughters. Her icy gaze locked directly onto Leo. She walked toward him, her high heels clicking like a ticking time bomb against the floor.
"I don't know who you are," Victoria said, her voice quiet, controlled, and utterly lethal. "But you have exactly ten seconds to take your hands off my children before my security team ensures you never walk again."
Leo didn't back down. He stood his ground, placing himself firmly between Victoria’s guards and the four trembling girls.
"Your children?" Leo challenged, his voice steady. "That's funny, because when I sat down, they were sitting here alone in a public café during a rainstorm. No security. No nanny. Just an empty table and four terrified six-year-olds begging a stranger to pretend to be their father so they wouldn't get dragged back to your 'tower'."
Victoria’s eyes flickered—a brief, microscopic crack in her frozen armor—before going completely cold again. She turned to the scarred guard, Marcus. "Where is Ms. Gable?"
"We found her two blocks away, ma'am," Marcus muttered, looking down. "She was... occupied. We have terminated her employment."
"Good," Victoria said flatly. She turned back to Leo. "The nanny’s incompetence is a private corporate matter. It does not give a common laborer the right to interfere with my family. Move aside."
"No," Leo said.
One of the guards stepped forward, his hand reaching for Leo's shoulder, but Leo slapped it away with a lightning-fast reflex born of years of manual labor. "Touch me again and we’ll see how fast your expensive teeth break on this radiator."
"Leo!"
A voice gasped from the front of the café. Leo turned his head and saw the daycare director, Mrs. Gable (no relation to the fired nanny), standing by the counter with his five-year-old son, Noah. Noah was holding his little green dinosaur backpack, his eyes wide as he looked at the tense standoff.
"Daddy?" Noah called out, his lower lip quivering. "Why are those scary men looking at you?"
The moment Noah spoke, the dynamic in the room shifted. Victoria’s eyes darted to Noah, then back to Leo.
"So, you have a son," Victoria murmured, her mind clearly calculating a hundred moves ahead. She looked at her quadruplets, who were now staring at Noah with curiosity, their fear temporarily forgotten.
Suddenly, Marcus’s phone buzzed. He answered it quickly, listened for a moment, and his face went pale. He leaned in and whispered to Victoria: "Ma'am, the Board of Directors just called an emergency hearing. Your brother-in-law, Julian, has leaked the story about the girls being left unattended to the media. The press is already calling it 'maternal negligence.' The board is meeting in two hours to vote on suspending your voting rights. If they prove you are an unfit mother, Julian takes control of the firm."
Victoria’s hands clenched into tight fists inside her leather gloves. Her empire—the legacy she had sacrificed everything to build—was about to be ripped away because of a compromised nanny and a calculated leak.
She looked at Leo. She looked at his son, Noah. Then, she looked at her quadruplets, who were clutching Leo's jacket as if he were their lifeline.
"You," Victoria said to Leo, her voice dropping to a whisper that only he could hear. "How much do you make in a year?"
Leo frowned. "What?"
"Name your price," Victoria said, her eyes burning with a desperate, cold fire. "I need a husband. My daughters need a father. And I need him by 3:00 PM today."
May you like
HOOK FOR NEXT CHAPTER:
Leo stared at the billionaire CEO as if she had lost her mind. But before he could refuse her insane proposition, Julian Vance's black sedan pulled up outside, surrounded by paparazzi with flashing cameras. Victoria grabbed Leo’s hand, pulling him close. 'If you don't walk out of here holding my hand as my fiancé,' she whispered, 'I lose my daughters. And your son's daycare will be closed by sunset.'
