Chapter 5 - The Collapse of the Vances
True to his word, Rowan didn't have to call Selina—she showed up at the hospital less than an hour later.
Attracted by her son’s frantic, incoherent phone calls and the sudden silence from his end of the line, Selina burst through the hospital-room door like an invading general, wearing an expensive designer mink coat and an expression of supreme, unearned entitlement.
“Rowan, what on earth is going on? Why did you sound like you were having a nervous breakdown—?”
She stopped dead in her tracks.
Her eyes swept across the room, taking in Rowan sitting pathetically on the floor, my father standing by the window with his arms crossed over his chest, and me sitting comfortably in the hospital bed holding my newborn son.
Then Selina finally looked closely at my father’s face.
Unlike Rowan, Selina had attended high-society charity galas and corporate philanthropy auctions where Gideon Sterling was regularly seated at the dais of honor. The recognition hit her instantly, draining the arrogant smirk right off her face and replacing it with absolute, paralyzing horror.
“G-Gideon… Sterling…?” Selina stammered, grabbing onto the back of a visitor’s chair for balance. “You… you’re her father? Phoebe’s father?!”
“That’s right, Mrs. Vance,” Dad said, his voice dropping into a register of pure ice. “The retired hardware store salesman you and your son have spent three years mocking behind closed doors happens to own the majority equity stake in the commercial shipping conglomerate that currently employs your son—or rather, employed him, until about five minutes ago.”
Selina’s jaw dropped so low it looked as though it might unhinge. She whipped her head around to look at her son, who was still huddled on the floor like a whipped dog.
“Rowan! Tell me this isn't true! Tell me you didn't marry a—!”
“Shut your mouth, Selina,” Dad warned, taking a slow step forward. “Or I won't just fire your son and hand his federal embezzlement files over to the DOJ. I’ll personally foreclose on every single piece of real estate you own in Miami and leave you both sleeping on a park bench by nightfall.”
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The threat was not an empty one. Everyone in the Chicago financial district knew that when Gideon Sterling promised to ruin someone, he didn't use lawyers—he used bulldozers.
Selina opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water, realizing that her lifelong campaign of social climbing, toxic manipulation, and financial parasitism had finally crashed headfirst into an immovable wall of absolute power.
