Chapter 2 - The Billionaire’s Obsession and the Missing VariableHigh above Midtown Manhattan, inside the panoramic glass-walled office of Sterling Global Holdings, Richard Sterling stared down at his desk phone as if it had turned into a venomous snake.
The line was dead. A monotonous dial tone hummed in his ear before the call automatically disconnected.
"Sir?"
Marcus Vance, Richard’s senior legal counsel and shadow, stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, holding a leather-bound folio. He took one look at Richard’s face—usually a mask of cold, unreadable marble—and immediately straightened his tie. In ten years of working alongside the ruthless tycoon, Marcus had never seen color drain from Richard’s face quite like this.
"Cancel the Frankfurt call," Richard commanded, his voice shaking with a cold, suppressed fury.
"Sir? The German delegation is waiting in the boardroom right now—"
"I said, cancel it, Marcus!" Richard slammed his palm down on the mahogany desk. The heavy thud echoed off the glass walls. He stood up slowly, adjusting his bespoke charcoal suit jacket with stiff, mechanical movements. "Get the private car ready. We are going to Mount Sinai Hospital."
Marcus blinked, utterly baffled. "Mount Sinai? Why? Are you unwell?"
"Not me," Richard hissed, his dark eyes narrowing into dangerous slits as memories of the phone call replayed in his mind. “I just gave birth.”
The words echoed in his brain like a physical blow. It was medically impossible, according to the top specialists he had hired and paid millions to consult during their marriage. For three agonizing years, they had run every test known to modern medicine. The consensus had been unanimous, stamped and sealed by medical boards: Natalie Hayes possessed a uterine anomaly combined with hormonal deficiencies that rendered her permanently incapable of carrying a child to term.
It was the very foundation upon which he had built his entire justification for the divorce. “You’re simply incapable of giving me a family.” It was his ultimate defense mechanism, a cruelty wrapped in pseudo-scientific fact designed to make her feel inadequate while he walked away guilt-free to find a younger, more compliant trophy wife who could secure his lineage.
If Natalie had a child... whose child was it?
And more importantly, when had she conceived?
Richard’s mind calculated the timeline with ruthless speed. Eight months since the divorce papers were signed. If she had given birth today... math dictated that conception would have occurred roughly a month before the ink on their divorce decree had even dried.
Before the final signatures. While she was legally still Mrs. Richard Sterling.
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A dark, towering wave of narcissistic rage crested inside Richard’s chest. The idea that his ex-wife—the woman he had deemed broken, cast aside like a defective piece of property—had either miraculously healed or, worse, carried another man’s child while still legally tied to him, was an insult to his name, his honor, and his absolute control over his world.
"Find out every single detail about Natalie Hayes’s medical records," Richard snapped, marching toward the private elevator bank. "Buy the hospital floor if you have to. I want to know who walked into her life the second I walked out."
