Chapter 3 - The Severing of Christopher Vance
The hospital room felt vast, clean, and terrifyingly cold once the door closed behind Jessica’s screams.
Christopher Vance fell to his knees on the linoleum, his tailored suit trousers dragging through the discarded divorce documents that still lay scattered across the floor.
"Eleanor..." Christopher wept, his forehead touching the edge of the mattress, his hands reaching desperately toward the hem of my hospital gown. "Eleanor, look at me! Please, God, look at me! I was an idiot! My mother forced this onto me—she told me you were holding back my career! She introduced me to Jessica! I never loved her, Eleanor, you have to believe me! I love you! I love our son!"
I looked down at the man who had promised to stand beside me in sickness and in health.
There was no hatred in my heart. Hatred requires investment, and Christopher Vance had ceased to exist as anything more than a hollow, pathetic shell.
"You didn't love me when you left me in this hospital bed to deliver our baby alone, Christopher," I said softly, my voice carrying the absolute, unbroken density of deep-ocean ice. "You didn't love our son when you signed a petition surrendering his life for fifty thousand dollars. You loved your mother's vanity, you loved Jessica's flattery, and you loved your own cowardice."
Thomas Valmont rose from his knees. He stood over the sobbing young man like an ancient oak.
He did not raise a hand. He did not need to. The sheer, overwhelming gravitational weight of his contempt was enough to pin Christopher to the floor.
"Arthur," my father commanded quietly.
"Yes, Lord Thomas?"
"Unseal the divorce counter-petition."
Arthur Ross stepped to the bedside, setting aside the worthless papers Margaret had thrown, replacing them with a bound, gold-embossed document bearing the seal of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division:
VALMONT vs. VANCE // EMERGENCY MATRIMONIAL COUNTER-PETITION
GROUNDS: GROSS ADULTERY, FINANCIAL FRAUD, INTENTIONAL EMOTIONAL CONSPIRACY
RELIEF GRANTED: 100% UNCONDITIONAL PHYSICAL AND LEGAL CUSTODY OF LEO THOMAS VALMONT
CIVIL SANCTIONS: COMPLETE FORFEITURE OF ALL SPOUSAL MAINTENANCE, PROPERTY DIVISION, AND VISITATION RIGHTS.
Arthur handed me a master gold-nibbed fountain pen—the same pen my grandfather had used to sign the North Atlantic Maritime Treaties.
I held my son against my left arm, steady and serene, and with a single, fluid stroke of dark blue ink, I signed my name:
ELEANOR VICTORIA VALMONT
The room seemed to inhale.
"Christopher Vance," Arthur Ross announced, his baritone booming through the suite like a tolling church bell. "Under the emergency orders signed two hours ago by Senior Presiding Judge Katherine Thornton, an absolute, permanent lifetime protective order has been entered against you, Margaret Vance, and William Vance. You are barred from coming within five hundred yards of Eleanor Valmont, Leo Valmont, or any property owned by the Valmont Trust."
Margaret let out a dry, broken sob from the corner, slumping against her husband’s arm. "You're taking our grandson... you're taking our family's blood..."
"He was never your blood, Margaret," I said, looking her in the eye. "He is a Valmont. And he will grow up in a house where honor is an iron law and love is not bought with thirty pieces of silver."
My father turned to Chief Investigator Thorne.
"Escort these trespassers from the building," Thomas Valmont said. "Have the federal receivers seize the Vance Commercial assets at midnight. And let every bank in New York know that whoever extends a single dollar of credit to this bloodline will answer to me."
May you like
The federal marshals moved in, their boots clicking sharply against the floorboards as they pulled Christopher, William, and Margaret out of the room.
Christopher’s screams of desperate, pathetic pleading echoed down the tiled hallway, through the security doors, and out into the rainy night, until the hospital corridor returned to the sacred, peaceful quiet of a mother and her newborn child.
