Chapter 3 - The Price of Abandonment
Vanessa Vance—the second wife of the late real estate mogul Arthur Vance—stopped dead in her tracks. The venom in her expression froze into a cold, paralyzing dread as she recognized the emblem on my tailored lapel.
"Ryker Steel," she whispered, her voice losing its shrill edge, replaced by the shaky breath of someone who had just stepped onto a landmine. "What... what are you doing here? These children have nothing to do with you."
"They do now, Vanessa," I said, stepping forward until the shadow of my frame completely enveloped her.
I didn't raise my voice. A man with my kind of power didn't need to shout to be loud. "I watched you walk away from them. I watched you hand over your boarding pass without looking back to see if they were breathing, let alone crying."
"You don't understand the situation!" she stammered, her eyes darting toward the marshals, who were holding her with an iron grip. "Their father left nothing but debt! The estate is bankrupt! I can't afford to raise two five-year-olds on my own. I was... I was leaving them in a safe, public place. Someone would have found them!"
"Someone did," I countered, my eyes turning to absolute ice. "But instead of a state agency that you could easily dodge, you found me."
I reached into my breast pocket and pulled out a sleek, black digital tablet, tapping the screen once.
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"While you were busy complaining to the flight attendants about your seat assignment, my legal team in Chicago was reviewing your late husband's true financial disclosures," I stated smoothly. "Arthur Vance didn't die bankrupt. He left a seven-million-dollar offshore trust explicitly designated for Lily and Owen. A trust that you attempted to liquidate and transfer to a private account in the Cayman Islands at 0900 hours this morning."
Vanessa’s face drained of color. Her lips trembled as she looked at the digital records flashing across the screen. "That... that's a lie. You can't prove that."
