My husband beat me with a heavy leather belt just to impress his arrogant mistress. Covered in bruises, I pulled out my phone to — Part 2

“Who are you calling? Your mechanic father?” Julian laughed, a dark, mocking sound that vibrated in his chest. He pressed the speakerphone button, his eyes wild with arrogant cruelty. “Let’s tell your pathetic old man exactly how worthless his daughter is.”

The phone rang exactly half a time before the line clicked open.

Julian leaned down toward the phone. “Listen to me, old man. Your daughter is a barren, useless—”

“Julian Croft.”

The voice that echoed out of the small speaker was not the hesitant, confused tone of a working-class mechanic. It was a deep, resonant, impossibly powerful baritone. It was a voice Julian had spent his entire life idolizing. It was the voice he listened to on CNBC every morning.

Julian froze. The blood drained from his face.

“You have just made the final, fatal mistake of your pathetic, subsidized life,” the voice of Richard Sterling, the legendary billionaire titan of Sterling International, declared with lethal calmness. “Look at my daughter again, and I will erase you from the face of the earth.”

“Very funny,” Julian stammered, though his hands had begun to tremble visibly. He stared at the phone as if it had turned into a venomous snake. “Who is this? Is this some kind of joke, Victoria? Did you hire an actor?”

Chloe frowned, stepping away from the bar, forgetting to hold her supposedly aching, pregnant stomach. “Julian, what is going on?”

Minute One.

I stayed on the cold marble, looking at the bloody fingerprint I had left on his ridiculous non-disclosure agreement. I didn’t try to stand. I simply kept my eyes locked on Julian’s face, watching the fragile architecture of his ego begin to splinter. He had absolutely no idea. He was entirely, blissfully oblivious to the invisible, catastrophic financial guillotine that was currently in freefall toward his neck.

Minute Two.

Julian’s personal smartphone, resting on the marble counter of the wet bar, emitted a sharp, high-pitched chime. He picked it up with a shaking hand.

ALERT: Platinum Centurion Account Suspended. Please contact fraud prevention.

Julian swallowed hard, aggressively swiping the notification away. “Fucking banking glitches,” he muttered, trying to project strength for his mistress. “Remind me to have my assistant fire our account manager tomorrow, Chloe.”

Minute Three.

The phone didn’t chime this time. It began to ring violently, the vibration rattling the device against the marble countertop. Julian looked at the caller ID. It was David, his Chief Financial Officer. Julian pressed the green button, desperately needing to hear a subservient voice to restore his dominance.

“David, what is it?” Julian barked, trying to sound irritated. “I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed tonight.”

“Julian! What the hell did you do?!”

David’s voice exploded from the speaker. He wasn’t speaking with his usual deferential, polished corporate tone. He was hysterical. His voice was shrill, breathless, and bordering on a full-blown, panic-induced scream.

“Excuse me?” Julian’s posture stiffened. “Watch your tone, David.”

“Watch my tone?! Julian, Apex Holdings just pulled our entire liquidity line!” David shrieked, the sound of frantic typing and shouting echoing in the background. “The primary lenders just triggered the morality and emergency recall clauses on our operational loans! They are demanding immediate repayment in full! Do you understand me? Right now!”

Julian froze. “That’s impossible. We have a thirty-day grace period on any recall—”

“There is no grace period!” David screamed, his voice cracking with sheer terror. “They are actively liquidating the company! The servers are locking us out. Our stock price is plummeting into the dirt in after-hours block trading! Every major investor is pulling out simultaneously! We are ninety million dollars in the red, and it’s been three minutes!”

Minute Four.

Julian dropped his phone. It clattered against the marble floor.

“That’s impossible,” Julian whispered, the air leaving his lungs. “Sterling International owns our debt. I met their acquisitions director last year. They love my vision!”

“Sterling International doesn’t care about your vision, you arrogant idiot!” David sobbed through the dropped phone on the floor. “I just got off the phone with their legal department. The Chairman of Sterling just issued a direct, irrevocable kill order on our entire corporate portfolio!”

Minute Five.

Julian went entirely, terrifyingly still. He slowly, agonizingly turned his head away from the phone. He looked down at the bleeding, battered woman kneeling on the floor of his estate. He looked at my dark hair, my dark eyes. He watched as I slowly, agonizingly pushed myself up into a sitting position.

He stared at me, his mind desperately scrambling, gears grinding as five years of narcissistic delusion collided with a horrifying, apocalyptic reality. He finally remembered my maiden name. A name I had begged him to keep out of the press because I claimed I was “shy.” A name I had used to quietly co-sign the loans that built his fake empire.

Victoria Sterling.

Before Julian could even open his mouth to speak, before the full, crushing weight of his insignificance could even fully register in his brain, the massive, custom-built oak front doors of the estate did not just open.

They were violently, explosively breached.

The heavy oak doors slammed inward with such force that the brass handles cracked the drywall of the grand entryway.

Six men in impeccably tailored, dark charcoal suits flooded into the grand hall. They moved with a silent, terrifying, militaristic precision. Two armed guards immediately flanked the shattered entrance, securing the perimeter. Following closely behind the security detail were three elite private trauma paramedics carrying heavy medical jump bags.

They rushed past a paralyzed, trembling Julian and dropped to their knees beside me. They treated my husband as if he were an invisible, irrelevant piece of furniture.

“Ms. Sterling,” the lead medic said, his voice laced with profound deference and urgent care. “Let’s get you off the floor, ma’am.”

They gently, expertly lifted me from the bloody marble, supporting my weight, and guided me into the massive, tufted leather wingback chair near the fireplace. I refused the stretcher. I sat perfectly still, my jaw clenched against the stinging pain of the antiseptic they applied to my back, and kept my eyes locked dead onto Julian.

Julian had collapsed onto his knees. He was hyperventilating, his chest heaving as he stared at the men swarming his house.

A tall, distinguished man with silver hair and wire-rimmed glasses walked through the front doors. He carried a sleek, titanium briefcase. He exuded an aura of absolute, bureaucratic lethality. This was Winston Hayes, Chief Legal Counsel for the Sterling International Trust.

He walked past Chloe, who was backed against the wet bar, clutching her face in sheer terror. Winston stopped directly in front of Julian, looking down at the bloody contract resting on the marble floor.

Winston slowly bent down and picked up the paper. He examined my bloody fingerprint on the signature line.

“A void document, tainted by physical coercion and profound stupidity,” Winston stated clinically. With deliberate, agonizing slowness, he tore the contract in half, then into quarters, letting the shredded pieces flutter down onto Julian’s lap.

“Mr. Croft,” Winston said, his voice echoing with absolute, untouchable authority. “You have exactly ten minutes to vacate this property.”

“Vacate?” Julian gasped. His voice cracked, high and pathetic. He pointed a trembling, desperate finger around the opulent grand hall. “This is my house! My name is on the deed!”

Winston unlatched his titanium briefcase. He pulled out a heavy stack of legal dossiers and dropped them onto the floor directly in front of Julian’s knees.

“Your name is on a lease, Mr. Croft,” Winston corrected smoothly. “A lease heavily subsidized by a blind trust wholly owned by Ms. Sterling. You do not own this property. You do not own the ground it sits on.”

Julian stared at the papers, his mind fracturing. “My company… I built it…”

“The venture capital that miraculously saved your logistics firm from bankruptcy three years ago?” Winston continued, his words falling like heavy stones, crushing Julian’s ego into dust. “Her money. The board members who suddenly approved your elevation to CEO? Her father’s employees. You are not a self-made titan, Julian. You are a poorly performing, highly subsidized investment that has just been liquidated with extreme prejudice. You own nothing.”

Chloe, who had been listening in horrified silence, suddenly realized she had attached herself to a sinking ship. The parasitic survival instinct kicked in immediately.

She pushed away from the bar, backing away from Julian as if he were highly contagious. She clutched her silk-covered stomach and looked frantically at Winston, tears streaming down her face.

“Wait! Please!” Chloe begged, her voice shrill. “I didn’t know! He lied to me! I thought he was rich! You can’t throw me out on the street, I’m pregnant with his child! The stress is going to hurt the baby!”

Winston Hayes looked at Chloe with an expression of profound, clinical disgust. He didn’t answer her. He turned his gaze to me.

“Winston,” I whispered. My voice was dark, raspy, and carried the weight of absolute vengeance. “Bring her the medical file.”

Winston reached back into his titanium briefcase. He retrieved a single, sealed manila envelope bearing the embossed gold crest of Sterling International. He didn’t hand it to Chloe. Instead, he opened it and pulled out a small stack of private medical records printed on official hospital letterhead.

“What is it?” Julian demanded. The mention of his child, his “heir,” snapped him out of his catatonic shock. He scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees.

Winston stepped back, holding the paper up. He cleared his throat and read aloud, his voice projecting clearly across the grand hall.

“Medical records from Dr. Aris at Cedars-Sinai,” Winston announced. “Patient: Chloe Vance. Blood panels drawn forty-eight hours ago. Highlighted notes read: Patient is not currently pregnant. Nồng độ hCG bằng không. Zero. Furthermore, patient underwent an elective tubal ligation four years prior. Pregnancy is physically impossible.”

The air was violently sucked out of the room.

Julian stopped breathing. He slowly looked up, his eyes wide, wild, and filled with a manic, fracturing realization. He looked at the mistress who had just spent the last hour rubbing her stomach and demanding sparkling water for a phantom baby.

“You… you aren’t pregnant?” Julian whispered, his voice a horrifying, hollow rasp. “You’ve been lying? For months? You told me you were late. You told me we were having a son.”

Chloe backed away, hitting the edge of the mahogany bar. The mask of the elegant, nauseous mistress was entirely gone, replaced by the desperate, ugly panic of a cornered con artist.