Chapter 4 - The House of Lies
The motel in Long Island City smelled of damp carpeting, cheap industrial bleach, and despair.
Julian Vance sat on the edge of a stained queen-size mattress, staring at the muted television screen. On the screen, a news crawl along the bottom of CNBC read: *BREAKING: VANCE GLOBAL ENTERPRISES OUSTS CEO JULIAN VANCE AMID FINANCIAL PROBE; CLARE MONTGOMERY NAMED INTERIM CHAIR.*
His phone, an old prepaid burner he had purchased at a bodega with fifty dollars borrowed from Mia’s purse, sat on the nightstand. It hadn't rung once.
His private legal team at Carter & Hall had dropped him forty-eight hours ago after his personal retainer check of one hundred thousand dollars bounced. The banks had frozen his personal accounts under federal anti-money laundering protocols. Every asset he thought he owned—his vintage Porsche collection in the Hamptons, his bespoke watch collection, his luxury apartment share in Aspen—was tied to corporate accounts that Clare had placed into immediate receivership.
In the corner of the small, dingy room, Mia was screaming into her phone.
“What do you mean, you can’t take us in, Sarah?” Mia shrieked, pacing between the peeling wallpaper and the humming mini-fridge. “I’m your sister! We have a baby! We have nowhere to go!”
She paused, listening, her face contorting into an expression of pure, venomous rage.
“A gold digger? You’re calling me a gold digger? After everything I did for you? Fuck you, Sarah!”
Mia slammed the phone down onto the laminate desk, breathing heavily. She spun around, glaring at Julian with eyes that burned with pure, unadulterated hatred.
“You’re pathetic,” she hissed, pointing a trembling finger at him. “Look at you! The great Julian Vance! The billionaire! Sitting on a dirty motel bed in your wrinkled five-thousand-dollar suit like a dog waiting to be put down!”
Julian didn't move. He didn't even look up. “Mia, please. I have a migraine. Shut your mouth.”
“Shut my mouth?” Mia lunged forward, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket, shaking him with all the strength in her slender body. “I gave up my career for you! I had your baby! I’m pregnant with your second child! And what do I have? Two suitcases of clothes and a warrant from the Sheriff’s department! The press is camped outside my parents’ house in Paramus! My father won't even answer my calls!”
Julian reached up and weakly shoved her hands away. “You didn't give up a career, Mia. You were an intern making forty-five thousand dollars a year. You saw a mark, and you jumped into my bed.”
“Because you promised me the world!” Mia screamed. “You told me you were going to divorce her! You told me she was a pathetic, sexless lawyer who lived for paperwork! You said you had all the power!”
“I was wrong!” Julian roared, finally leaping to his feet, towering over her. “I didn't know she had constructed the trust that way! I didn't read the fine print, okay? I trusted her to protect the family, and she protected herself!”
In the portable crib by the bathroom door, little Leo woke up and began to wail, his small voice echoing against the cheap linoleum tiles.
Mia didn't move to comfort him. She stood panting, staring at Julian as if he were a piece of rotting garbage.
Suddenly, a knock sounded on the motel room door.
Julian froze.
Mia gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “Is it the police? Julian, are they here to arrest you?”
Julian swallowed hard. He stepped toward the door, peeking through the warped fish-eye peephole.
Standing outside was not a federal marshal or a police officer.
It was Marcus Vance.
He stood alone on the outdoor concrete balcony of the motel, dressed in a leather jacket, looking relaxed, his hands shoved into his pockets.
Julian hesitated. Then, with a mixture of desperate curiosity and dread, he unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door two inches. “What do you want, Marcus? Come to gloat? Come to watch the mighty Julian rot in a twenty-dollar motel?”
Marcus pushed the door open effortlessly with one hand, stepping inside. He looked around the dismal room, his nose crinkling slightly at the smell of stale smoke and bleach, before resting his eyes on Mia and the screaming toddler.
“Turn the kid off, Mia,” Marcus said calmly. “We have business to discuss.”
Mia, terrified by Marcus’s imposing presence, rushed to the crib, picking up Leo and bouncing him frantically against her hip.
“What business?” Julian demanded, backing away toward the television. “Clare sent you? Tell her she won! Tell her she destroyed my life! Is she happy now? Is she celebrating in her five-hundred-acre estate with her little girl?”
“Clare isn't celebrating, Julian,” Marcus said, pulling a manila envelope from the inner pocket of his leather jacket. “Clare is running a 1.5-billion-dollar enterprise. She doesn't have time to think about you. I’m here on my own initiative.”
Marcus tossed the envelope onto the unmade bed.
It landed with a heavy, ominous slap against the floral polyester bedspread.
Julian frowned, looking from the envelope to Marcus. “What is this? Another lawsuit? Another injunction?”
“Open it,” Marcus said softly.
Julian stepped forward. His hands trembled as he picked up the envelope and unspooled the red string closure. He reached inside and pulled out a stack of medical records, laboratory analysis sheets, and high-resolution surveillance photographs.
Julian looked at the top sheet. It was a genetic paternity panel from the New York Diagnostic Center.
His brow furrowed. He read the technical jargon: *Allele matching… loci distribution… statistical probability of paternity.*
He reached the conclusion at the bottom of the page.
*Probability of Paternity between Alleged Father (Julian Vance) and Subject Child (Leo Laurent): 0.00%.*
Julian’s breath stopped in his lungs.
The room seemed to tilt on its axis. The humming of the mini-fridge grew deafeningly loud.
“What… what is this?” Julian whispered, his eyes darting frantically across the numbers. “This is fake. This is a trick. Clare forged this!”
“Clare didn't commission that test, Julian,” Marcus said, his voice dropping into a register of cold, clinical amusement. “I did. Two days ago, when my team inventoried the Willow Street brownstone, we collected hair samples from the child’s crib and hair from your personal hairbrush in the master bath.”
Marcus pointed a finger toward Mia.
Mia stood rooted to the floor. The color had fled from her face so completely that her skin looked translucent, like parchment paper.
“Check page four, Julian,” Marcus commanded.
Julian’s shaking fingers flipped the page.
Beneath the DNA report were six high-resolution photographs taken sixteen months ago.
They showed Mia entering a boutique hotel in SoHo with a tall, handsome man with sandy-blond hair and a surfer’s build. Another photo showed them kissing passionately on the hotel balcony. Another showed them leaving a luxury car dealership together.
“Meet Tyler Vance,” Marcus said, a cruel, mocking smile playing on his lips. “Your second cousin. The one who manages the family’s West Coast vineyard operations. The one you fired three years ago for supposedly stealing wine inventory.”
Julian’s head snapped toward Mia.
His eyes were wide, bulging from their sockets, filled with an agony so profound, so devastating, that he looked like a man whose skin was being peeled off alive.
“Mia?” Julian choked out, the word dying in his throat.
Mia began to back away toward the bathroom door, shaking her head frantically, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. “Julian… no… listen to me… it was a mistake! Tyler was… he was helping me get through the weeks you were traveling with Clare! He told me he loved me!”
“You told me he was my son!” Julian screamed, the sound tearing from his lungs like the howl of a wounded animal. “You brought him into my wife’s delivery room! You told me he was my heir!”
“I didn't know!” Mia shrieked, backing into the small bathroom, her voice echoing off the tile. “I wasn't sure! Tyler didn't have any money! You had billions! You were supposed to be the CEO! You were supposed to take care of us!”
Julian dropped the papers.
He stared at his hands, staring at the empty air, the sheer, crushing magnitude of his humiliation caving in his skull.
He had sacrificed everything.
He had betrayed Clare—the woman who had saved his family from bankruptcy, the woman who had stood beside him through five years of corporate warfare, the woman who had carried his legitimate daughter in her womb. He had spat on his grandmother. He had alienated his board. He had thrown away a 1.5-billion-dollar empire, his reputation, his freedom, and his soul.
All for an intern who was sleeping with his cousin.
All for a child that wasn't even his.
Julian fell to his knees on the stained motel carpet. He clutched his head in his hands, let out a ragged, broken sob, and began to weep—dry, suffocating, wretched tears of a man who had dug his own grave and jumped into it headfirst.
Marcus Vance looked down at the broken man with not an ounce of pity.
“By the way, Mia,” Marcus said, turning toward the bathroom where the woman cowered. “The second baby? The one you’re carrying right now?”
Mia looked out through the crack in the door, her eyes wild with terror.
“We spoke to Tyler this morning in San Francisco,” Marcus said smoothly. “He’s signed an affidavit confirming the ongoing affair. He’s already agreed to take a court-ordered paternity test the moment that child is born. You’re all on your own, sweetheart.”
Marcus turned on his heel, walking toward the motel door.
He paused on the threshold, looking back at Julian, who was rocking back and forth on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Clare gave you everything, Julian,” Marcus said quietly. “And you traded diamonds for broken glass.”
May you like
Marcus stepped out into the Long Island City rain and pulled the door shut behind him, leaving Julian Vance alone in the darkness of his own creation.
***
