Chapter 2 - The Green Room
The corridor behind the main stage was quiet, smelling of dry-erase markers, cold coffee, and old velvet curtains.
I found them in Green Room B.
Elena was sitting on a folding chair, carefully placing the boys' gold medals into two velvet-lined boxes. Leo and Ethan were leaning over a laptop, closing out code terminals and packing away their presentation drives.
When the heavy wooden door creaked open, all three of them looked up.
For a long, agonized moment, nobody spoke. The silence was louder than the applause in the auditorium had been.
"Elena," I said. My voice cracked on her name.
She set the velvet box on the table, stood up smoothly, and smoothed down her skirt. "Hello, Julian. You've aged well. Prosperity suits you."
Her tone was polite, distant, like an old acquaintance meeting at a trade conference. It killed me faster than an insult would have.
"They... they look like me," I stammered, my eyes darting between the two boys. Up close, the resemblance was undeniable. Leo had my sharp jawline and the faint scar near his left eyebrow; Ethan had my high cheekbones and posture. "Elena... why didn't you tell me?"
A sharp, incredulous laugh escaped Elena’s lips—the only crack in her composed exterior.
"Why didn't I tell you?" she asked softly, walking two steps toward me. "Julian, I called your office thirty-four times in November 2013. I stood outside your security gate in the freezing rain while I was four months pregnant with twins. Do you know who met me at the gate?"
My throat felt dry. "Victoria."
"Victoria," Elena confirmed, nodding slowly. "She brought two private security guards and a restraining order signed by a judge she went to law school with. She told me that if I ever came near you again, she would use her family's connections to ensure my medical license was revoked and my parents' mortgage was called in by the bank."
"I didn't know," I whispered, grief clawing at my throat. "I swear to God, Elena, I thought you moved to Europe with—"
"With David Vance? Dr. Vance's nephew?" Elena finished the sentence for me, her eyes flashing with cold fire. "The man Victoria paid to stand next to me at a coffee shop so her photographer could take long-lens photos? I never even knew his name, Julian! But you... you saw three photos and a forged bank statement, and you threw away five years of marriage in five minutes."
Leo stopped packing his backpack. He stood up, placing himself subtly between his mother and me. He was only thirteen, but he looked at me with an authority that made my heart ache.
"Mr. Vance," Leo said, using my last name like a stranger's title. "Our mother worked eighty hours a week as a medical researcher to raise us. She paid off her own loans, built her own firm, and never spoke a single bitter word about you in our home. We discovered the truth about the divorce ourselves when we were eleven, using public court records and IP tracking."
Ethan walked up beside his brother, folding his arms. "We didn't design tonight's presentation to win a trophy. We designed it because our mother deserved to have her name cleared in front of the entire academic and financial community that Victoria blacklisted her from."
I looked at my sons. My blood. Two brilliant, proud young men who had grown up without a father because I had been too arrogant, too trusting of a viper, and too blind to seek the truth.
"I am so sorry," I choked out, tears finally breaking past my eyes. "Leo... Ethan... Elena... I was a fool. A blind, wretched fool."
"Apologies are emotional clutter, Mr. Vance," Ethan replied calmly, though his gaze softened ever so slightly as he saw the genuine pain in my face. "They don't alter the historical timeline."
"No," I said, wiping my face with the back of my hand, stepping firmer onto the tile floor. "They don't alter the past. But they dictate what I do next."
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Elena looked at me closely, searching my face for the man she used to love. "What are you going to do, Julian?"
"I am going to burn Victoria’s empire to the ground," I said coldly. "And then I am going to ask you for a chance to earn the right to be called their father."
