Chapter 2 - The Scent of Betrayal
"Because," Martin’s voice crackled through the phone, heavy with an apprehension Preston had never heard from the hardened investigator, "the courier receipts and delivery logs were signed off by your mother’s private secretary. And the legal injunction that sealed Naomi’s appeals? It was drafted by Thorne & Co. Legal."
Preston’s breath hitched in his throat. His knuckles turned bone-white against the edge of his mahogany desk.
"Julianna," Preston muttered, the name tasting like ash on his tongue.
"Julianna Thorne and Eleanor Hayes," Martin confirmed quietly. "The day Naomi sent the certified ultrasound scans and an urgent personal plea to your private residence, you were in Tokyo finalizing the Pacific transit contract. Your mother intercepted the package. Two days later, a formal restraining warning was drafted on Hayes Group letterhead and delivered to Naomi’s door, threatening to strip her of her civil liberties if she ever contacted you again. She was warned that if she pursued child support or claimed you were the father, the Hayes family would ensure she was declared legally unfit and lose the children to the state."
Preston staggered back, the room tilting violently.
He remembered that week in Tokyo five years ago. He had called home every night, exhausted, asking his mother if Naomi had signed the finalized dissolution papers. Eleanor had sighed with theatrical pity, telling him: *She took the settlement and vanished, darling. She never loved you. She only cared about her pride.*
And Julianna—the woman his mother had paraded before him at every charity gala since the divorce—had smiled and whispered that Preston deserved someone from his own world, someone who understood legacy.
"They threatened her," Preston whispered, his voice trembling with an explosive mixture of agony and incandescent rage. "She was carrying twins—my children—alone, sick, and they threatened to tear them away from her."
"Preston, what do you want to do?" Martin asked. "The board meeting for the Gold Coast acquisition reconvenes in forty minutes. The Thorne family representatives are already sitting in the executive boardroom waiting for your signature."
Preston looked down at the documents spread across his desk. A six-hundred-million-dollar empire deal. Prestige. Power. The very things his mother had spent thirty years hammering into his skull as the only metrics of human worth.
"Let them wait," Preston growled, picking up his car keys. "Cancel the signing. Cancel the Thorne merger. Freeze all joint ventures with Thorne Industries immediately."
"Preston, that will trigger massive penalty clauses—"
May you like
"I don't give a damn if it costs me every cent I own," Preston spat, walking out of his corner office with a stride that made his assistants scatter in fear. "Send me Naomi’s current address. Now."
***
