Chapter 14: Kaelen’s Restless Nights

Kaelen's POV 

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed 3:14 AM.

I was sitting in the dark behind the desk in my penthouse. Below, the city formed a grid of indistinct yellow lights, sleeping peacefully and completely unaware of the storm that had ripped through my life.

I hadn't slept for three days, and each time I shut my eyes I saw the falling stock prices, the Chapter 11 filings, and the angry faces of the Vance Global board members demanding I be dismissed.

I saw her.

I saw Valkyrie standing on the damp porch of the coastal cottage in Port Campbell, her dark hair blowing in the wind and her hand holding onto her cardigan over her chest. And above all else... I saw the child.

A muscle in my jaw jumped as I reached down, opened the top right drawer of my desk, and took out a small box with a velvet lining made of mahogany. 

I opened the lid with my thumb.

In there was her wedding ring, a thin and delicate circle of polished platinum, simple and unpretentious, just as she had been when I first introduced her to my world.

I took it in my hand and rolled the cool, smooth metal between my fingers. Four years after she disappeared into the night, I had told myself that holding on to this ring was a matter of discipline, a stern, daily reminder of the mercenary who had stolen my heart, broken my company’s encryption, and had nearly destroyed my empire. 

I reasoned that by keeping it I would never be weak enough to trust a woman again.

It was a lie.

I kept it since the memory of her softness was the only thing that still had a real feeling in a world composed of glass, contracts, and lies.

I recall the quiet nights I spent in this house before the storm came. 

I remembered getting home at two in the morning, completely worn out from sixteen-hour sessions of playing board games, to find her asleep on the sofa with a book open on her chest. 

I also remember how she would move when I picked her up, hiding her face in the curve of my neck, whispering my name as if it were a prayer.

She had never asked for my money, nor had she ever requested luxury cars or black credit cards; when my mother offered her millions in order to sign an annulment, she threw it to her face.

If she was a mercenary, the deep and painful doubt I was feeling in my ribs should have made her take some money; instead, why had she chosen to drive a twenty-year-old rusted Ford Falcon to the edge of the world? And why had she spent four years in a poorly insulated cottage, buying up shares in Vance Global through off-grid servers rather than selling them for cash?

The image of that four-year-old child stepping out onto the porch in his pajamas flashed behind my eyelids so sharply that it completely knocked the breath out of my lungs.

The clear, brilliant, and striking silver eyes.

My eyes.

Earlier today at the gate in the fog, I looked past the local doctor who was trying to prevent me from going through; my heart suddenly stopped beating altogether as soon as my eyes met those of the boy. 

The facts were severe, completely without mercy, and clear. 

Valkyrie was pregnant when she left Melbourne; she had kept my blood a secret, had brought my son into the world during a storm, and had given him a name without my knowledge.

A sudden and sharp knock on the doors of the study broke the silence.

I didn't jump. I dropped the ring in the box, closed the lid, and locked the drawer before looking up. 

"Come in."

Marcus walked into the room, his stature blocking the light coming from the hallway, and his face rigid and serious, with a dark file folder held under his arm.

"Mr. Vance," Marcus said, in a quiet voice with a strange note of hesitation. 

"The private investigators have completed the audit of St. Jude Private Care Facility's records from four years ago, the ones your mother archived."

I sat up straighter in my chair, my eyes narrowing in the dark. "What did they find?"

"The original digital signatures on the neurotoxin incident report... the ones accusing Valkyrie of tampering with Chloe’s IV line," Marcus said, taking a step closer and placing the file down on the desk between us, "were not signed by the attending nurses."

"Who signed them?" I asked, my blood running cold.

"The digital certificates were issued from a private terminal located in the administrative part of the hospital," Marcus whispered. "A terminal registered directly to your mother's personal secretary, Victoria Vance's private account.”

Everything from the last four years appeared in my mind as if the pieces had cracked and reformed, just like a broken mirror. 

The falsified medical reports. 

The sudden confession which Valkyrie had signed.

Her frightened eyes in the motel room at St. Kilda when she pointed a pocket knife at my chest, asking me to let her go.

" Kaelen, my mother keeps my sister's life on a distant switch. If Victoria sees us together, then Chloe will die." 

She never sold me out for money. She... wasn't a spy.

My mother had stuck a knife to her sister's throat and made her decide to either give up my empire or allow Chloe to die. 

Valkyrie chose to sacrifice herself, accepting the blame for a corporate leak she had no idea about, walking out into the storm by herself, carrying my unborn child in her womb to protect her sister.

I allowed her to go, and spent four years hating her.

A sound of intense, suffocating pain surged in my chest, so hot it seemed to tear me apart inside out. 

I folded my hands into tight fists on the desk, my knuckles going white as I ground my teeth till my jaw began to ache.

"Mr. Vance?" Marcus asked cautiously, noticing the terrifying change in my face. "What are your instructions about the Port Campbell cottage?"

I got up slowly, the chair moving backwards against the rug, and reached out for the drawer of the desk, unlocked it, and took out the small box and then inserted the plain platinum band into my coat pocket, right over my heart.

"I want the cars prepared," I said, lowering my voice to a tone so low and dangerous. "We're going to Port Campbell. And if anybody opposes me this time... I'll burn the whole world down to retrieve my family."