Chapter 2 : The Billionaire Who Refused to Lose His Daughter Again
The consultation room had become a crime scene.
Blood stained the polished tile beneath Elena Carter.
One hand pressed desperately against her swollen belly.
The other covered her broken nose as crimson slipped between her trembling fingers.
The pain was unbearable.
Not only from Derek Mitchell's punch.
But from the sharp cramp spreading across her abdomen.
The baby.
"Oh God..."
"My baby..."
The words barely escaped her lips.
Victoria Lawson stood only a few feet away, smoothing the wrinkles from her designer blazer as though nothing extraordinary had happened.
She looked down at Elena with an expression that carried no guilt.
Only satisfaction.
"I warned you," Victoria said quietly.
"You should have signed the divorce papers."
Elena looked up through blurred vision.
"You planned this..."
Victoria smiled.
"It became much easier once Jessica agreed to help."
The name hit Elena harder than Derek's fist.
Jessica Palmer.
Her best friend since college.
The woman who had held her hand during every ultrasound appointment.
The woman who had promised to be the baby's godmother.
"No..."
Elena whispered.
"Jessica would never..."
Victoria crouched beside her.
"Oh, Elena."
"You still believe people love you because you're kind."
She leaned closer.
"The four hundred thousand dollars disappeared because Jessica gave us every password."
Every password.
Her retirement account.
Her savings.
The trust fund her late grandmother had left her.
Gone.
Not stolen by strangers.
Handed over by someone she had called family.
Tears mixed with blood.
Not because of the money.
Because trust had finally died.
Then another contraction struck.
Far stronger than the last.
Elena screamed.
Outside the consultation room, nurses heard her.
Within seconds, the door burst open.
Dr. Hannah Collins rushed inside with two emergency nurses.
"What happened?"
No one answered.
She looked at Elena.
Then at Derek.
His knuckles were swollen.
Fresh blood covered his shirt cuff.
Dr. Collins needed only one second to understand.
"Call security!"
The room exploded into motion.
Nurses surrounded Elena.
Someone checked the baby's heartbeat.
Another placed an oxygen mask over Elena's face.
A fetal monitor was rushed into the room.
The rhythmic sound filled the air.
Fast.
Too fast.
Dr. Collins looked at the screen.
Her face changed instantly.
"Placental abruption."
"We're losing the baby."
Elena reached desperately for the doctor's sleeve.
"Please..."
"Save my child."
"We're going to try."
Dr. Collins looked toward security officers entering the room.
"Arrest him."
Derek stepped backward.
"This is ridiculous."
"My wife slipped."
One of the nurses turned sharply.
"We all heard her scream."
Security seized Derek's arms.
Victoria quietly picked up her handbag.
"I'm leaving."
An officer blocked the doorway.
"No, ma'am."
"You're staying too."
For the first time that afternoon...
Victoria stopped smiling.
Two hundred miles away...
William Ashford stared silently out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his Manhattan penthouse.
The city stretched beneath him.
Skyscrapers.
Traffic.
Helicopters.
A kingdom he had spent forty years building.
Yet none of it mattered anymore.
His phone remained in his hand.
The words spoken by the elderly woman still echoed through his mind.
"Elena is your daughter."
Thirty years earlier...
He had loved a young woman named Margaret Carter.
She disappeared before he ever learned she was pregnant.
He searched.
He hired investigators.
Nothing.
Eventually...
He believed both mother and child were gone forever.
Now...
Someone had told him the impossible.
His daughter was alive.
And she was fighting for her own life.
His executive assistant entered quietly.
"The helicopter is ready."
William turned.
"Cancel tomorrow's meetings."
"Every one of them."
"Sir, the Singapore investors—"
"Can wait."
"My daughter cannot."
The assistant froze.
He had worked for William for fifteen years.
He had never once heard him use that word.
Daughter.
Within five minutes, the billionaire's helicopter lifted into the evening sky.
Its destination...
St. Andrew's Regional Hospital in Columbus.
Back inside the operating suite...
Doctors rushed Elena toward Emergency Operating Room Three.
Her blood pressure continued falling.
The fetal monitor became erratic.
Dr. Collins looked at the anesthesiologist.
"We have minutes."
The operating-room doors slammed shut.
Outside, Derek sat handcuffed on a bench.
He looked more annoyed than frightened.
His attorney arrived twenty minutes later.
"This is domestic."
"We'll have you released tonight."
Derek nodded confidently.
"My wife won't testify."
The lawyer frowned.
"Why not?"
"Because she still loves me."
He actually believed it.
Neither man noticed Detective Maria Lopez approaching.
She carried a sealed evidence bag.
Inside it...
A hospital security drive.
Every hallway.
Every consultation room.
Every second.
Including Derek striking his pregnant wife.
Lopez looked directly at him.
"You might want a different defense."
Derek's confidence faltered.
An hour later...
The emergency C-section ended.
A tiny cry echoed through the operating room.
Weak.
Fragile.
But unmistakably alive.
Dr. Collins smiled beneath her surgical mask.
"It's a girl."
A neonatal nurse carefully wrapped the premature infant.
"Three pounds, eleven ounces."
"She's breathing."
The relief lasted only seconds.
Elena remained unconscious.
She had lost too much blood.
Dr. Collins stared at the monitors.
"Keep transfusing."
"She isn't out of danger."
Outside, Clara—the elderly nurse who had first comforted Elena weeks earlier—stood beside the nursery window.
She watched the tiny baby fighting inside the incubator.
"So much strength..."
she whispered.
At that exact moment...
The elevator doors opened.
William Ashford stepped onto the maternity floor.
He had never seen Elena.
She had never seen him.
Yet as he looked through the nursery glass at the little girl...
Something inside him shifted.
The nurse approached.
"May I help you?"
William's voice was unusually quiet.
"I'm looking for Elena Carter."
The nurse hesitated.
"Are you family?"
William looked through the window once more.
Then answered with tears gathering in his eyes.
"I've been trying to become family..."
May you like
"...for thirty years."
End of Chapter 1
