Chapter 2 - The Midnight Flight
Moving a woman who had just given birth and two newborn twins out of a prominent Manhattan hospital without attracting attention should have been impossible. But I didn't become a billionaire by following the rules.
While Sylvie dressed with agonizing slowness, her face twisted in post-labor pain, I called Marcus, my head of private security and the only man in New York who feared me more than he feared my mother.
"Marcus," I said into my earpiece, holding both babies in a single, specialized neonatal travel carrier I had ordered from a high-end medical courier. "The freight elevator at the back of the maternity ward. Have the armored Escalade waiting in the basement loading dock. No lights. No sirens."
"Sir," Marcus’s voice crackled through the static. "Your mother's private security team is already in the lobby. They have paperwork."
"Then you make sure they have a distraction," I ordered. "Block the main elevators. Trigger the fire alarm in the cafeteria if you have to."
Thirty minutes later, we were in the back of the moving Escalade, the heavy rain masking the sound of our escape. Sylvie was leaning against the leather seat, her breathing shallow, her hand tightly gripping mine. The twins were fastened into the custom seats beside us, sleeping through the chaos.
"Where are we going?" she whispered, looking out at the blurred neon lights of Broadway. "Victoria knows about your penthouse. She knows about the Hamptons estate."
"We aren't going to any of my properties," I said, checking the digital tracker on my phone. "We're going to the one place my mother can't touch because she doesn't even know it exists."
Fourteen years ago, before the billion-dollar IPO, before the name Vexley became synonymous with pharmaceutical dominance, I had bought a small, converted brick warehouse in Queens under a dead shell company name. It was where I kept my original research notes, the raw formulas that built my empire. It was completely off the corporate grid.
As the SUV pulled into the dark, rusted garage of the warehouse, I looked at Sylvie. Her eyes were unfocused, her skin clammy.
"Sylvie?" I touched her cheek. It was burning hot.
"I'm fine," she lied, her voice barely a whisper. "Just... protect them, Julian. Don't let her take them."
Before I could answer, her head rolled back against the seat. She had collapsed.
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Panic, cold and sharp, pierced my chest. I had spent fifteen years managing corporate crises, but none of it mattered if the woman who had just given me a family died in the back of a dirty warehouse.
"Marcus!" I yelled, throwing the car door open. "Get the portable medical kit from the trunk! Now!"
