Chapter 2 - The Return of the Prodigal CEO
Six days after vanishing into the Napa valley with Chloe Marr, Julian Vale finally graced our marital home with his presence. He stepped through the double front doors with an air of effortless entitlement, loosening his designer silk tie and tossing his leather briefcase onto the entryway bench. He smelled faintly of expensive cedarwood, high-end champagne, and expensive perfume that certainly did not belong to his wife.
He assumed everything was exactly as he had left it: a quiet, submissive home where his dinner would be warm, his laundry folded, and his wife none the wiser about his romantic excursion.
“Evelyn!” Julian called out lazily, tossing his keys onto the marble kitchen island. “I’m back. The Napa meetings went through the roof. We secured the expansion funding. You can stop sulking about me missing a few days of your nesting phase.”
The house was dead silent. There was no sound of running water, no aroma of home-cooked dinner, and no sign of me waiting in the living room.
Frowning in irritation, Julian strode down the hallway toward our master bedroom. The door was wide open. The bed was meticulously made, but my side of the closet—usually packed with designer coats, professional suits, and casual wear—was completely emptied out. The hangers clinked against one another in the drafty breeze of the open window. My vanity was bare; my perfumes, skincare bottles, and jewelry trays were entirely gone.
A sudden knot of unease tightened in Julian’s stomach. He pulled out his phone and dialed my number.
The number you have dialed is no longer in service or has been redirected.
Panic flickered across his features. He spun around and marched downstairs, grabbing his phone again to dial his corporate office. Before he could punch in the digits, the front door chimed and swung open.
It was Maya. She walked into the foyer, looking pale, professional, and carrying a heavy corporate compliance audit binder under her arm.
Julian intercepted her halfway across the marble floor, his face flushed with sudden anger. “Maya! What is going on here? Where is Evelyn? Why are her things missing from the master suite? And why isn't my phone connecting to her line?”
Maya stopped dead in her tracks. She looked up at her boss—the man who had spent the last 144 hours wining, dining, and bedding Chloe Marr while ignoring emergency hospital pages—with an expression of profound, unadulterated disgust.
“Mr. Vale,” Maya began, her voice trembling slightly not from fear, but from the immense weight of the truth she was about to drop. “You’ve finally remembered you have a wife.”
“Cut the attitude, Maya!” Julian snapped, stepping closer, his imposing corporate stature flaring up. “Where is my wife? Did she throw some kind of childish temper tantrum and go stay at her mother’s house because I was out of town for business?”
Maya’s jaw tightened. She looked straight into Julian’s arrogant eyes, letting every word land like a physical blow.
“Sir, your wife didn't go to her mother's house,” Maya said, her voice dropping to a harsh, crystal-clear whisper. “While you were living it up in Napa with Chloe for the past six days, Evelyn went into premature medical distress. She called you seven times. You told her not to spam your phone.”
Julian’s breath hitched. The color instantly drained from his sun-kissed face, leaving him looking sickly gray. “What... what are you talking about? Is she okay? Was it just false labor?”
“She bled out on an operating table at St. Jude's Memorial Hospital,” Maya recited coldly, her eyes locking onto his. “She lost the baby, Julian. She lost the son you abandoned while you were drinking wine with your mistress.”
The world seemed to tilt violently on its axis. Julian staggered backward, his hand catching the edge of the console table to steady himself. “No... no, that’s impossible. She was fine when I left. The due date isn't for weeks—!”
“Babies don't wait for greedy, selfish cowards to finish their affairs,” Maya interrupted, her voice sharp as glass. “While you were ignoring emergency calls, Evelyn was waking up in an empty room with a clear plastic bag containing a tiny blue blanket.”
Julian’s chest heaved erratically, panic finally piercing through his armor of denial. “Where is she? I need to see her! I need to fix this—!”
“You can’t fix anything,” Maya cut him off flatly, pulling a thick legal document from her binder and tossing it onto the marble table in front of him. “She already signed the divorce papers before she left the hospital. And that’s not all.”
Julian stared at the white paper stamped with legal seals, too terrified to touch it. “What else?”
May you like
“Before you even set foot in this house this morning,” Maya said, a cold, victorious smile touching the corner of her lips, “Evelyn revoked your proxy voting rights for the family trust. She called an emergency board meeting for nine o'clock tomorrow morning. As the sole trustee of Vale Meridian’s controlling shares, she has voted to strip you of your title as CEO, freeze your corporate accounts, and initiate a full forensic audit of every expense account you’ve misused over the last three years—including your little Napa getaway with Chloe Marr.”
Julian stood frozen in the center of the grand foyer, his mouth slightly open, utterly paralyzed. The golden empire he thought he ruled had just evaporated into thin air, and the wife he thought he owned had just pulled the rug out from under his entire existence.
