Chapter 34 - The Heir’s Autopsy
Before I could answer Eleanor, the heavy stainless steel doors leading down to the medical bay hissed open. A woman in surgical scrubs emerged, her face pale under the fluorescent lights, pulling down her paper mask.
"Madame Vance," the doctor said, her voice unsteady as she glanced between Eleanor and me. "The delivery is complete. A male child. Five pounds, eight ounces."
Eleanor didn't even look toward the hallway. "And the mother?"
"She suffered massive postpartum hemorrhaging," the doctor whispered, looking down at her gloved hands, which were stained with faint traces of pink fluid. "We stabilized her, but she is weak. She’s demanding to see Victoria."
"Not Alexander?" I asked, my voice slicing through the sterile air of the salon.
"She... she claims she has something for Victoria," the doctor stammered. "She refused to surrender her personal effects until she spoke with you."
Eleanor waved an dismissive hand. "Take whatever she has and sedate her. We don't have time for melodrama. Alexander’s helicopter will be touching down on the helipad within twenty minutes."
"No," I commanded, stepping between Eleanor and the medical corridor. "You might own this yacht, Eleanor, but I own the cryptographic ledger that holds your offshore shell companies together. You touch one hair on that girl’s head before I speak to her, and I wipe the Limmat data servers into pure digital ozone."
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed into slits of ice. For the first time, a hairline fracture appeared in her aristocratic facade. She knew I wasn't bluffing. In twenty-four hours, I had dismantled a twelve-million-dollar estate, severed a corporate network, and destroyed Ricardo Vance; I had no hesitation left in my body.
"Five minutes," Eleanor said, her voice dropping into a razor-thin whisper. "After that, Alexander arrives, and the auction begins."
I turned on my heel and walked down the narrow steel staircase into the yacht’s private medical suite.
The room smelled of antiseptic, copper, and despair. On an adjustable examination table lay Camilla. The radiant, glowing twenty-four-year-old girl who had sneered at me in my own kitchen, who had flaunted her diamond ring on Instagram while swimming in my private pool, was gone.
In her place was a broken, sweat-soaked girl with dark hollows beneath her eyes and blue lips. Her hospital gown was bunched up around her frail frame, and her knuckles were white as she clutched a tiny, blood-splattered plastic zip bag against her chest.
In a clear acrylic bassinet across the room, a newborn was crying—a thin, reedy sound that echoed painfully off the steel bulkheads.
"Victoria..." Camilla wheezed, her chest heaving as she fought for oxygen.
I stopped at the edge of the bed. I felt no pity, but the burning rage I had carried since finding that honeymoon post had hardened into something far more dangerous: pure, clinical clarity.
"You look terrible, Camilla," I said quietly.
A bitter, wet laugh escaped her throat. "He... he was going to kill me, Victoria. Alexander. He told me... he told me once the baby was born on international waters, he would report me missing. An accidental drown... off the coast of Corsica."
"I know," I said. "Alexander doesn't share power, and he certainly doesn't share estates with interns."
"It wasn't... it wasn't just the money," she choked out, tears cutting tracks through the grime and sweat on her cheeks. "Ricardo... Ricardo approached me three months ago. He told me Alexander was going to ruin both of us. He made me take this... from Alexander’s private safe in the Zurich penthouse before we flew to Monaco."
She reached out with trembling, blood-flecked fingers, pressing the plastic zip bag into my hand.
Inside was a micro-SD card and a heavy, tarnished gold signet ring bearing an insignia I recognized instantly—the crest of the Swiss Banking Federation, circa 1982. It was my grandfather’s ring. The one that was supposed to have been buried with him.
"What is this?" I asked.
"The autopsy," Camilla whispered, her eyes rolling back slightly as exhaustion threatened to pull her under. "Not mine... your grandfather’s. Ricardo found the real medical report. Alexander didn't just push you out of the trust, Victoria... thirty years ago, to take control of Vance Sovereign... Alexander and Eleanor poisoned your grandfather together."
The air left my lungs.
May you like
My parents hadn't been enemies. They hadn't been broken apart by an affair or corporate greed. They were partners in patricide.
***
