The silence in the boardroom after Elena's departure was thick enough to choke. Silas sat at the head of the table, his eyes fixed on the empty chair where she had sat just moments ago. The red of her suit seemed burned into his retinas, a vivid reminder that the woman he had once protected was now the primary predator in his waters.
"Silas! Are you going to sit there and let that... that ghost threaten us?" Beatrice's voice was a shrill weapon, slicing through the tension. "She's bluffing! Twelve percent? It's a drop in the ocean! We can dilute her shares, we can tie her up in court for a decade—"
"Enough!" Silas's voice didn't need to be loud to be terrifying. He stood up, his presence dwarfing everyone else in the room. "Twelve percent of this company is not a bluff, Beatrice. It's a declaration of war. And the offshore accounts she mentioned? If those are real, you won't be worrying about board seats. You'll be worrying about prison cells."
He didn't wait for her response. He grabbed his coat and walked out, his stride long and purposeful. He needed air. He needed to think. But more than anything, he needed to see his children.
Elena was waiting for him. Not at her penthouse, but at a neutral location—a high-end, private park where she knew the paparazzi couldn't penetrate. She sat on a bench, watching Leo and Mia run through the grass.
She heard his footsteps before she saw him. The heavy, confident rhythm of a man used to owning the ground he walked on. Silas stopped several feet away, his gaze immediately locking onto the two small figures playing near the fountain.
"They look happy," he said, his voice surprisingly soft.
"They are happy, Silas. Because they have lived in a world without the Vance name hanging over their heads like a guillotine," Elena replied without looking back.
Silas walked closer, finally sitting on the far end of the bench. "I checked the records this morning. I mean, the real records. Not the ones Beatrice showed me five years ago." He let out a dry, pained laugh. "I was a fool, Elena. I let my pride blind me. I thought I was protecting the legacy, but I was just destroying my soul."
Elena finally turned to him. The sunlight caught the sharpness of her features. "Apologies don't fix five years of missed birthdays, Silas. They don't fix the nights I spent crying in a cold room while you were drinking vintage scotch in your ivory tower."
"Then tell me what fixes it," he demanded, leaning toward her. "The company? You want the CEO chair? It's yours. You want the estate? Take it. Just let me be their father."
Elena looked back at the kids. Leo had stopped running and was staring at Silas with a suspicious, narrowed gaze. Even at four, the boy was a strategist.
"You think you can buy your way into their hearts?" Elena shook her head. "You have to earn them, Silas. And right now, you're starting from zero. Actually, you're starting from negative."
She stood up, signaling for the children. "Tomorrow, the audit begins. If I find one cent of my children's inheritance has been touched by Beatrice, I will take everything you have. Do you understand?"
Silas watched her lead them away, the twin suns of his life disappearing behind the tint of a black SUV. He realized then that Elena wasn't just back for revenge. She was testing him. She was giving him a choice: the Empire he had built, or the family he had broken.
And for the first time in his life, Silas Vance didn't care about the money.
He stayed on that park bench long after the SUV had disappeared into the urban labyrinth of the city. The shadows of the oak trees lengthened, stretching across the grass like reaching fingers, but Silas remained motionless. His mind was a storm of "what ifs." What if he had looked closer at the evidence five years ago? What if he had followed her that night in the rain?
The realization was a bitter pill: he had spent five years building a monument to a man who didn't exist—a man who thought he was cold enough to survive without a heart.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He didn't want to answer it, but the caller ID showed his head of security, Marcus.
"Sir," Marcus's voice was tense. "We have a problem. Someone is looking into the school records in the district where Ms. Elena was hiding. And it isn't our team."
Silas's blood turned to ice. "Beatrice?"
"Most likely. She's also reached out to a private investigator known for... less than legal methods. If she finds proof that you were deliberately kept in the dark, she might try to argue that Elena is unfit as a mother to protect the Vance inheritance from a scandal."
Silas stood up, his jaw set in a hard, lethal line. "Double the detail on Elena's penthouse. If one person so much as breathes in the direction of those children without my permission, I want them neutralized. Do you understand?"
"Understood, sir."
Across town, Elena stood in the kitchen of her penthouse, her hands trembling as she prepared a simple dinner for the twins. The high of the boardroom battle had faded, replaced by the crushing reality of the war she had started. She knew Beatrice wouldn't go quietly. A woman who could frame an innocent girl for a felony was a woman capable of anything.
She jumped at the sound of a soft knock on the door. Her hand went instinctively to the heavy brass vase on the counter.
"It's just me, Elena," Sarah's voice came through the door.
Elena exhaled, letting the vase go. She opened the door, finding her friend looking pale.
"Elena, someone was following us back from the park," Sarah whispered, glancing over her shoulder. "A black sedan with tinted windows. It stayed two cars back the whole way."
Elena's heart hammered against her ribs. She looked toward the hallway where Leo and Mia were playing with their LEGO sets, oblivious to the world outside. "Did they see you come in?"
"I don't think so. I took the service entrance through the garage, but they're parked at the corner. They aren't hiding."
Elena realized then that the "Board Meeting" was only the first move. She had threatened the power of a dynasty, and the dynasty was striking back. She grabbed her laptop, her fingers flying across the keys. She needed more than just shares; she needed leverage.
She opened an encrypted file she had been holding as her "nuclear option." It contained the original security footage from the Vance estate the night she was thrown out—footage that Silas had been told was deleted. In it, Beatrice could be seen slipping the "stolen" drive into Elena's bag while Elena was in the bathroom.
"I wasn't going to use this yet," Elena murmured to herself. "I wanted to take your money first, Beatrice. But if you touch my children, I will take your freedom."
Just as she was about to hit 'send' to an anonymous journalist, the lights in the penthouse flickered and died.
In the sudden, suffocating darkness, the only sound was the clicking of the electronic door lock being bypassed.