Chapter 11 - The Retaliation
Lucian stepped out of Mercy General into the freezing midnight air, his mind completely unraveling.
The ring was heavy in his coat pocket. Her words—*You were the arsonist*—echoed in his skull with every thudding beat of his heart.
He didn't care about Vance Holdings. He didn't care about his empire. For the first time in his life, Lucian Vance understood that all his billions could not buy back a single second of lost trust.
He pulled out a burner phone and dialed his private investigator.
"Find Bianca," Lucian commanded, his voice shaking with a terrifying, quiet fury. "Freeze every trust account I established in her name. Evict her from the Milan residence within the hour. Strip her of every asset, every passport, every visa. If she breathes anywhere near this country, I want her locked in a cell."
"Sir," the investigator replied hesitantly. "You might want to look at the news first."
Lucian froze. "What are you talking about?"
"Ten minutes ago, Bianca went live on social media from a clinic in Milan. She’s claiming she was carrying your second child—and that you abandoned her after she suffered a miscarriage caused by your domestic abuse. She’s leaked hotel surveillance footage of you kissing her on the balcony yesterday morning."
Before Lucian could even process the horror of the betrayal, his phone was interrupted by a deafening alarm blaring from inside the hospital behind him.
The glass doors of Mercy General slid open.
Elena ran out into the cold night air, her face twisted in absolute terror, screaming into the empty street:
May you like
"Doctor! Somebody get Dr. Katherine! Serena is bleeding out! She's having a secondary hemorrhage!"
The emergency doors slammed shut behind her, red lights flashing wildly against the snow, as the heart monitors on the fourth floor shrieked into the dark.
