Chapter 5 - THE CHILD HE TRIED TO TURN INTO LEVERAGE
The room erupted.
I didn't hear most of it.
All I heard was Damian.
Then you can't divorce me yet.
Not, Are you okay?
Not, Is the baby healthy?
Not even, Is it mine?
His first instinct was leverage.
Malik reached him before Adrien did.
“You're going to explain that sentence.”
Damian squared his shoulders.
“This is between my wife and me.”
“I stopped being your wife in every way that matters when you hit me.”
He looked past Malik.
“You're emotional.”
A strange laugh escaped me.
“Emotional?”
“You've been under enormous pressure.”
“You created the pressure.”
“Our child changes this.”
“Our child changes nothing about what you did.”
“It changes everything legally.”
Malik smiled without humor.
“You have no idea how divorce law works, do you?”
Damian ignored him.
He looked at me.
“Come home with me. We will deal with this privately.”
My stomach turned.
“Home?”
“Yes.”
“The home where you've been sleeping with Vanessa?”
Vanessa looked down.
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“We can repair this.”
I stared at him.
Forty minutes earlier, he had announced in front of four hundred people that I was dead weight and Vanessa was the woman he deserved.
Now I carried something he wanted.
And suddenly our marriage was repairable.
“No.”
“Isabelle.”
“No.”
His expression hardened.
“Don't make a permanent decision while you're upset.”
Adrien stepped forward.
“She already made it.”
“I'm speaking to my wife.”
“You're speaking to my sister.”
“I don't need your permission.”
“You need hers.”
Damian’s mouth tightened.
Then he looked at my stomach again.
“I have rights.”
The words chilled me.
Malik immediately answered.
“To the child, after birth and subject to the law. You do not have ownership of Isabelle’s body.”
Damian scoffed.
“Spare me the courtroom lecture.”
Malik's stare sharpened.
“You're going to hear plenty of courtroom lectures soon.”
Theo interrupted.
“We have another problem.”
He was staring at his tablet.
“What?” Adrien asked.
“Cole Global's market pre-open derivatives are moving.”
Damian glanced at him.
Theo kept reading.
“Someone dumped a massive block of options twenty minutes ago.”
Adrien’s expression hardened.
“Who?”
“Shell company.”
Damian said nothing.
Theo looked up.
“You knew this was going public tonight.”
“What?”
“You planned for the company to drop.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It does if you're shorting your own stock through a third party.”
Even I understood what that meant.
Damian had potentially positioned himself to profit from Cole Global's collapse.
Malik stared at him.
“Tell me you didn't.”
Damian laughed.
“You people think everything is a conspiracy.”
Theo turned the tablet around.
“Then why did Silver Birch Holdings open a seven-hundred-million-dollar short position against Cole Global forty-eight hours ago?”
Damian’s face shifted.
Theo saw it.
“There.”
“What?”
“That look.”
“You're imagining things.”
“Silver Birch was incorporated in Delaware eight months ago. Its beneficial ownership is hidden behind three LLCs.”
Theo tapped again.
“But the originating IP address used for one of the filings came from your Manhattan penthouse.”
Vanessa whispered, “Oh my God.”
Damian turned on her.
“Don't.”
Her eyes widened.
“You were going to crash the company.”
“Vanessa.”
“You were going to let me take the blame.”
Damian didn't answer.
She backed away.
“You told me the shares would transfer to you after Isabelle signed. You said we'd control everything together.”
“You're hysterical.”
“No.”
Vanessa’s face transformed.
It was subtle.
But I recognized it.
She finally understood.
She had never been the replacement wife.
She had been another useful piece.
“I was your exit plan,” she whispered.
Damian looked away.
That was answer enough.
Vanessa reached into her purse.
Damian moved instantly.
“Don't.”
She pulled out a second phone.
Not her normal phone.
A small black burner.
Damian’s entire body stiffened.
“Give me that.”
Adrien stepped between them.
Vanessa held it tightly.
“You said I was paranoid for keeping this.”
“What is it?” Malik asked.
“Proof.”
Damian’s voice rose.
“She stole private communications.”
Vanessa almost laughed.
“You sent them to me.”
“What communications?”
Vanessa handed the phone to Malik.
“Messages. Recordings. Everything.”
Damian lunged.
Adrien caught him by the chest and shoved him backward.
Security rushed forward.
“Enough,” Adrien said.
Damian glared.
For a moment, I genuinely thought he might swing at my brother.
If he had, he would have regretted it immediately.
But he stopped.
Malik unlocked the burner with Vanessa’s code.
He scrolled.
His expression changed.
Then he looked at me.
“You may not want to hear this here.”
“I've heard everything else here.”
“Belle—”
“Play it.”
He hesitated.
Then pressed a file.
Damian’s voice filled the ballroom.
Recorded.
Clear.
“If Isabelle signs before midnight, her voting rights are gone before the trust administrator can finalize control.”
Then Vanessa’s voice.
“And if she refuses?”
A pause.
Damian again.
“Then we go to plan two.”
Vanessa.
“The medical option?”
Damian.
“Keene says stress, medication changes, and documented instability could support temporary guardianship if we build the record correctly.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
Vanessa's recorded voice sounded uncomfortable.
“You're talking about making her look mentally unstable.”
Damian answered.
“I'm talking about protecting the company.”
The recording ended.
No one spoke.
I stared at Damian.
“You were going to have me declared incompetent.”
“No.”
“That's your voice.”
“It was hypothetical.”
“You paid my doctor.”
“To update me about my wife!”
“Without my consent.”
“Because you kept shutting me out!”
I took one step toward him.
My brothers let me.
“You want to know why I shut you out?”
His eyes flashed.
“Because somewhere in the last five years, I started understanding that every time I told you something vulnerable, you used it later.”
His face changed.
“When my mother died, you told reporters I was grieving too deeply to attend a shareholder event.”
“That was true.”
“When I had surgery, you told the board I was medically unavailable for weeks when I was back on my feet in four days.”
“You needed rest.”
“When fertility treatment became difficult, you told your attorney I was emotionally unstable.”
Damian said nothing.
I felt something settle inside me.
For years, I had blamed myself for becoming smaller.
For speaking less.
For checking his mood before sharing news.
For wondering whether ordinary sadness made me difficult.
Now I understood.
It had not happened accidentally.
He had trained me to doubt myself because a woman who doubted herself was easier to control.
“I am divorcing you.”
His eyes went cold.
“You'll regret it.”
“No.”
For the first time that night, I smiled.
“You will.”
My vision blurred.
I thought it was tears.
Then the ballroom tilted.
Theo grabbed me.
“Belle?”
I tried to answer.
A wave of dizziness hit so violently that my knees collapsed.
Adrien caught me before I struck the floor.
“Isabelle!”
The room exploded into movement.
Someone called for a doctor.
My brothers lowered me gently.
I couldn't focus.
Only one thought mattered.
The baby.
“My baby.”
“You're okay,” Theo said.
“My baby—”
An older woman pushed through the crowd.
“I'm a physician.”
She knelt beside me, checked my pulse, asked questions.
Then she looked at my brothers.
“She needs a hospital.”
Damian started forward.
“I'm going with her.”
Adrien looked at him.
“No.”
“She's carrying my child!”
“And twenty minutes ago you threatened to use that child to control her.”
“Get out of my way.”
Security blocked him.
I was lifted onto a stretcher.
The chandeliers above me blurred.
As paramedics rolled me toward the doors, I saw Damian standing in the center of the ballroom.
Alone.
Vanessa had moved away from him.
His father was gone.
His attorney was speaking urgently into a phone.
His empire was beginning to fracture around him.
But the last thing I saw before the doors closed was Damian pulling out his phone.
He called someone.
And although I couldn't hear the first sentence, I saw his lips form four words.
File it before morning.
Six hours later, lying in a private hospital room with an IV in my arm and the soft flicker of my baby's heartbeat still echoing in my ears, Malik entered holding a legal document.
His expression told me everything.
“What did he do?”
Malik placed the papers on my blanket.
Damian had filed an emergency petition.
He was requesting temporary control over certain marital and corporate assets.
And attached to his petition was a sworn statement claiming I was emotionally unstable, medically compromised, and incapable of making rational business decisions.
At the bottom was another declaration.
May you like
Signed by Dr. Samuel Keene.
My own physician.
