Chapter 3 - The Ghost on the Screen
The master suite had been rearranged in the three hours since our arrival. The king-sized bed was flanked by clinical telemetry screens, their gentle, rhythmic green lines showing the baby’s heart rate—a steady, galloping 155 beats per minute that filled the vast, high-ceilinged room with the only sound that kept my sanity anchored.
Dr. Mercer had completed the ultrasound an hour ago. The image was pinned to the magnetic board beside the vanity mirror: a tiny, bean-shaped shadow floating in an ocean of dark fluid. Nine weeks and two days. A viable, healthy intrauterine pregnancy.
""The hormonal medication you were given without consent was an ovulation induction agent mixed with high-potency progesterone,"" Dr. Mercer had explained before being escorted to the guest wing. ""It wasn't meant to harm the baby, Alina. It was formulated to ensure implantation succeeded during your cycle in early September. Whoever orchestrated this wanted this pregnancy to happen with absolute certainty.""
Now, the room was quiet except for the telemetry beeps. Dorian sat at the small writing desk by the terrace doors, three separate phones lined up in front of him. He hadn't changed out of his dress shirt, but his sleeves were rolled to the elbows, exposing the thick veins running down his forearms.
My phone, resting on the bedside table, chimed again.
A notification from my personal art studio email.
I reached for it, but Dorian’s hand was faster. He snatched the device, his eyes scanning the subject line before he swiveled the screen toward me.
The email contained a single attachment: a short, ten-second security clip from an underground parking garage dated three days ago. In the video, Dr. Adrian Cole—the doctor who had vanished that morning—was leaning against the hood of a sleek Audi. A woman in an ivory coat walked into the frame, handing him a thick envelope that looked heavy with currency.
She turned toward the camera for half a second.
The high cheekbones. The pale, almost translucent blue eyes. The thin scar running along her jawline from an old equestrian accident when she was eighteen.
It was Julianna. There was no mistaking the woman whose oil portrait still hung in the boardroom of Vance Industries.
""She's alive,"" I breathed, my hand flying to my mouth. ""Dorian... she’s really alive.""
""Adrian was her childhood friend,"" Dorian said, his voice flat, dangerously calm. ""Before he became my family's physician, his medical education was funded by the Vance Foundation. I thought his loyalty was to me. I was wrong.""
""Why the baby?"" I demanded, struggling to sit up against the mountain of pillows. ""If she survived that mountain, why didn't she come straight to you? Why wait four years, forge my medical records, and force me to get pregnant before showing herself?""
""Because of the Cross-Vance trust,"" a voice answered from the doorway.
Noah stepped into the room, holding a printed legal brief bound in black leather. He looked at Dorian with an expression that conveyed pure catastrophe.
""The original trust drafted by your grandfather and Julianna’s father forty years ago,"" Noah said, handing the papers to Dorian. ""I had our trust attorneys review the archival bylaws while you were in transit. The terms are monstrous, boss.""
Dorian flipped through the pages, his dark brows knitting together until his eyes widened with rare, unadulterated shock. ""This clause was repealed in 2018.""
""It was repealed on the assumption that Julianna was deceased,"" Noah clarified grimly. ""Her lawyers filed a formal petition of resurfacing with the Cook County probate court two hours ago. Legally, she is reclaiming her identity tomorrow morning at nine. And under the original charter, if an heir to the Cross lineage is conceived within seven years of the trust's creation, the biological custody of that heir must be supervised by the senior female of the Vance estate if the Cross union is terminated by divorce.""
I felt the blood drain from my face until my ears rang. ""Say that in plain English.""
Dorian looked up from the parchment, his expression carved from granite, but his eyes burning with a wild, feral panic.
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""If we had signed those divorce papers this morning,"" Dorian said slowly, ""Julianna’s legal team would have had the statutory right to petition for sole maternal guardianship of our child under the ancestral trust. She used Adrian to make sure you were pregnant, pushed us to the brink of separation, and waited until the ink was almost dry to take the child that secures the Vance family fortune.""
""She didn't want you,"" I realized, the horror wrapping around my throat like a garrote. ""She wanted my baby.""
